Werewolf Single Dad 2, page 31
And I had to hand it to him, that strange little wererat really had come through for me, and I genuinely hoped his crazy-sounding sweet pizza was the stuff dreams were made of.
Trent and I trundled off to bed at around midnight, and for the first time in a long time, as I closed my eyes and settled down to sleep, I felt excited for what the next day would bring.
And, just like Christmas morning, as I loaded Charlie into the backseat of Trent’s car, my phone buzzed, and Frosty Claws delivered my gift into my inbox.
Hello, Mr. Brewyer.
My legal team and I have amended the first draft of the contract to include all the necessary revisions you expressed a want for in your message on the AWOO portal last night. The new contract has been printed off and is ready for you to view. If you are free today any time before twelve or after two, please come by my office, and we can look over the revised document together.
Best wishes,
F. Frost.
Fuck yeah. Big man Frost had been backed into a corner. It was time to seal the deal.
And this time, I was ready for his bullshit.
Chapter 16
I told Trent about the email, and we both practically jumped with giddy excitement.
At first, I was going to jump in the car with Trent and the kids so I could see Whitney, since I hadn’t seen her all week and we were missing each other, and then he’d swing me around to Frost’s.
But the haze of giddiness soon wore off, and Trent realized he didn’t really want to drive the half hour-- longer with traffic-- it took to get there after dropping the kids at WereCare, to have to wait in the car or the waiting room for me for a couple of hours, and then have to drive all the way back. It just made more sense if I missed dropping the kids off that morning and sent Whitney an extra-long and loving text telling her I missed her.
I stamped my feet a little bit about it, since I wanted Trent to be there to hype me up on the way to meeting Frost, but I agreed it was a long way for him to travel just to have to sit around and wait for me.
I felt horrible for leaving Trent to ferry the kids around on his own again, but my frosted-tipped friend reminded me that there was a week solid where I’d done all the driving and dropping off on my own, so this was in fact him paying me back for that.
I grinned and thanked my buddy for being so understanding, and I kissed all the kids goodbye before I climbed into the van and followed them out of the cul-de-sac.
Today, I wasn’t bothering with hiding behind the niceties of wearing a suit. The gloves were coming off.
I’d given up on sending my wagon into hiding for the time being. The temporary cardboard patch on the window looked a darn sight better than a gaping great bullet hole, and it meant I could carry on getting inventive with my excuses until I found the time to get the window replaced.
Had I driven over a stone like Trent said? Or had I taken the kids on an interstate visit to a safari park, where a sugar-crazed howler monkey spotted a pack of Jolly Ranchers on my dashboard and crashed through my window fist-first like Superman to get to them?
I didn’t know what I was going to say when I was approached about the cardboard patch on my window, but I did know where the money to fix it was coming from.
Unless Frost had taken that part out of the contract through spite, he was offering me a twenty grand non-refundable down payment on my land, and all I had to do to get it was sign on the dotted line.
The rest might turn into a little bit of a circus depending on what loophole Frost found to exploit, but Trent’s lawyer, Casey, had assured me it would be safe to sign the contract if all the relevant changes had been made.
Which was what I was on my way to check.
Frost had shown himself to be a stroppy, petulant child, and I was sure he was going to be extremely pissed off about all the changes I’d requested when I went to see him. But I’d already resigned myself to the idea that if I came away from this deal with twenty grand and one less territory to manage, then that was still a huge win for me.
As far as the rest of the money was concerned, I was just fishing to see how much more I could get.
And for the fun of it.
Plus, now that I was ready to deal with Frost’s bitchy behavior, I could hardly wait. I was almost excited for him to yell at me.
The roads were a little busy, but Frost hadn’t specified a time other than ‘before twelve,’ so I wasn’t feeling the pinch about getting there on time like I had been the day before. Besides, I had a debt to pay for my manic driving yesterday, so I cruised through the lanes and let every other stressed-out school mom out before me, and I spread joy and mid-July Christmas cheer as I smiled widely at every pedestrian who stepped out onto the road with zero regard for anybody’s safety in order to cross it.
Though, I still called them all kinds of obscenities through my gritted teeth.
Finally, I rocked up in Frost’s territory like I was king of the world, and I felt absolutely no fear of being sniped by his Betas as I pulled my minivan into the parking lot around the back of Frost’s office block.
This time, I didn’t even care if he could see the damage done to my van. In fact, I wanted him to see it.
You sent a guy after me with silver bullets? Just look how that went. They must have been pretty expensive, what a waste.
You can’t get rid of me that easily, Frosty.
I sauntered into the office block and cruised all the way up in that elevator to meet the lovechild of Paul Hollywood and Gustavo Fring himself, and I couldn’t help but grin when I saw him through the slim window of his office door, sitting at his table with a face like a scowling British Bulldog.
Though, of course, he tried in vain to feign a polite smile when he heard me knocking, but I could see the agitation on his face.
That was a real Heisenberg moment for me.
I am the one who knocks.
“Good morning, Mr. Frost.” I bowled into the office with my hand outstretched, ready to throw down the gauntlet.
“Ah, Mike.” Frost approached me and shook my hand in his usual aggressive manner. “Morning.”
“Thank you for responding to my requests in such a prompt manner,” I said as I welcomed myself to my usual seat. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“Nor I you.” Frost let out a weak chuckle. “I didn’t realize you were off to see your legal advisor quite so soon after our meeting.”
“Neither did I.” I grinned. “That turned out to be a pure twist of fate.”
“Fate has terrible power.” Frost pursed his lips and offered me a forced smile. “I believe it was Sophocles who said that.”
“Ah, well, I don’t know much about Sophocles, though I am very well versed in the works of Popsicles,” I said with a shit-eating grin.
“Pop-si-cle-- oh.” A look of pure detestation fell upon Frost’s face as he realized my joke, and I felt like a toddler who had just discovered the joy of replying ‘why?’ to everything they hear.
This was too good.
“Should we get on with reviewing our new contract, then?” The gray-haired Alpha sighed as he opened his briefcase, and he pulled a brand-new stack of paperwork out that was bookmarked on various pages with little pieces of colored paper. “As you can see, I have elected to save us both on our valuable time, and I have already marked the clauses which have been amended so you may readily find them. Of course, you may read through the whole thing again, but be assured this is the contract I have uploaded to our shared workspace for AWOO to peruse, and I have been notified that someone from their legal team has started reading through it already. They are remaining impartial, of course. They are just interested in reviewing the process of our dealings.”
“Naturally,” I said with a smirk.
The big bad wolf with the piercing blue eyes and the double-breasted suit pushed the contract to a point on the table where I could reach it, and I felt a slightly more threatening pheromone in the air as I began to flick through the pages.
Yesterday morning’s Frost was a simpering man who was all about answering my questions and was nervous that I’d realize the contract had more holes than a golf course.
But this morning’s Frost was a ball of pure antagonistic vitriol, and I could tell he was ready to explode if I so much as let out a questioning peep when reviewing this contract.
It’s like that nursery rhyme: Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child wants to go toe to toe.
But Friday’s child is loving and giving, and I was sure Frost would wake up in good spirits tomorrow, just in time to deposit a healthy twenty grand into my bank account.
He might even send me another sweet good morning message.
I decided not to take Frost’s word for it, and I did start from the beginning of the contract, but it didn’t seem like any of the clauses that I hadn’t raised an issue with had been altered in any way that might have been unfavorable to me.
But, true to Frost’s word, everything that I’d requested to be amended in the contract had been updated correctly.
I’d been feeling generous and offered a three-week window for Frost and his team to perform all the necessary checks of the area before he bought it, and it was there in writing that three weeks was all it would take.
It took me around an hour to go through the whole thing again, and though Frosty’s disdain for me was still hanging thick in the air, I didn’t notice any of that telltale flinching when I passed over anything in the contract’s second iteration.
It all looked good to me, and Casey said if all the changes were made, then the contract would be good to go. So, after performing a quick cross-reference with the email I’d sent to Frost just to make sure neither party had missed anything, I felt secure in the knowledge that this contract was safe to sign, and I set the paperwork down on the table with an overexaggerated satisfied sigh.
“This all appears to be in good working order, Mr. Frost,” I said. “And I know you’re a busy man and you’re not in the business of fleecing anyone, so I’d like to let you know that I am happy to continue with this process.”
“Wonderful news.” Frost seemed a lot more relaxed in his seat now, and he offered me something of a genuine smile. “And of course, I’m sure you’re anxious to know when the down payment of twenty thousand dollars will reach you.”
“Just wire it over to me tomorrow morning,” I said casually. “I understand you’ll probably need to move your money around and get some things in order after we both sign the contract today, and I understand this has moved on faster than we both anticipated. I’ll email you over my bank details soon. As long as I’m flush by the weekend, I’m a happy camper.”
“Ah, you see, there’s the snag,” Frost said almost apologetically. “I do believe I told you before, I’m a little bit old-fashioned. Although the modern world calls for it for a lot of things, I don’t so much like to put all my trust in computers when it comes to big things, like sending multiple thousands of dollars from one account to another. I believe we place far too much of value in the hands of computers, and I shudder to think what would happen if someone were to intercept, or there were to be a technical error in the process that leaves us both out of pocket. I was actually planning on heading to the bank today to withdraw the down payment in cash. Then I was hoping I’d be able to deliver it to you in person. If you are willing to make that accommodation for me, I’ll be able to bring it straight to your door before noon tomorrow. And who knows? It’s a lot of money, I might even lose my place while counting and throw another five or so thousand dollars into the briefcase.”
I was wary of being the guy who saw dollar signs in his eyes and got lured in, but the stakes had just been raised by an extra five grand, and all I had to do was meet Frost one more time to get it.
I knew I needed to keep my guard up, but I was pretty confident Frost wasn’t going to go through all this effort of drawing up multiple contracts to legally own my land just to kill me at the last minute. If he did, sure, he’d get away with it, but he’d definitely lose business clientele when word got around about how low he’d stoop to get his own way.
I didn’t know much about big business dealings, but I kinda shared Frost’s sentiments about transferring huge amounts of money by wire, especially since I knew so many who’d been scammed, and scammers only ever got smarter.
And actually, if I could get twenty K and have it bypass my bank account, did that mean I could “forget” to pay taxes on it?
AWOO was only overviewing the proceedings as far as the sale of land went, they surely weren’t going to go poking their noses in my bank statements and checking that I’d paid my due diligence.
And anyway, there weren’t any shifter-specific banks around. Frost would have been able to put buying the rights to another man’s land down as some business expense or another, but what was I realistically going to file earning twenty grand under?
Selling territory I got from an Alpha werewolf to another Alpha werewolf?
I didn’t think so.
It would surely be better for everyone if I just took the briefcase full of money and said no more about it.
What the hell? I’d let Frost make this into a cash sale.
But before I put my hand out to shake on it, I had one condition.
I wanted the drop-off to be in a location of my choosing.
“This tiny memorial park?” Frost scoffed as he looked at a map on his phone. “I can understand you wanting me to come to you for a change, but why would you want to meet me in this tiny memorial park?”
“I want to keep it out in the open.” I shrugged. “And this is a good open space, but because it’s small, I won’t get all jumpy and feel like there are any shadowy figures lurking in the trees who are going to jump out at us while we make our transaction. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“Hmm.” Frost stroked his stubbly chin. “Yes, I can see where you’re coming from. Alright, we’ll meet in the memorial garden tomorrow at noon.”
“Actually, I was wondering if we could meet at night,” I said.
“At night?” Frost cocked his head to the side.
“I’ve just never done a deal like this before, and it makes me really nervous to think of someone seeing us, especially if it’s a load of human thugs who then try and rob me on my way out of the park, and I won’t be able to fight them off because I won’t be able to shift in plain sight,” I explained. “Look, I’m going to have to roughly count the money out with you there in front of me-- just for my own peace of mind-- and I’m just trying to make it so we both go home feeling comfortable that we’ve made a fair deal. To me, it makes more sense to do the deal at night, because if there are any punks hanging around, they’ll only be human kids, and they won’t be able to make out what we’re doing anyway. We’ve both got werewolf night vision, so it’s no different for us to count it out in the night than it is in the day. We can count it all out right then and there, and both go home happy.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Frost begrudgingly agreed before peeling into a smile. “And if those human punks do try and cross us, we can just shift under the cloak of night, and they’ll have to blame it on wild dogs when they find their bodies in the morning.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.” I was a little disturbed by Frost’s sudden leap to violence against humans, but I wanted to seal this deal so badly that I smiled through the strange knot of queasiness in my stomach.
I actually ended up believing in my own reasoning as to why we should meet in the tiny memorial park at night, but that wasn’t my original excuse for suggesting the location.
The truth was, I still didn’t trust Frost enough to come anywhere near my home, so I didn’t want to give my address to him, and I hoped that setting the deal up to happen in public would act as a deterrent in case he had any foul play in mind.
Sure, setting the big deal up to happen at night may have felt like it was going to open me up for an attack, but like I said to Frost, because our night vision was so good, what happened to werewolves at night might as well have been happening to them in the day.
And besides, I knew I was bigger and stronger than the average Alpha-- hell, I’d recently learned that the most recent biggest Alpha on the block who had everyone quaking in their boots had been pumping himself full of drugs to get to my size. There was no way Frost or any of his cronies were going to stand a chance against me in a battle.
That was, of course, unless someone brought a gun to a knife fight.
A silver-bullet-firing gun, to be exact.
But I’d already thought about that.
I was going to see if I could order a ballistic vest that would protect me against silver bullets for same-day pick-up from any of the local WereWear warehouses. They weren’t cheap, but with the threat of silver bullets being something that was on just about every shifters’ minds at one point or another in their lives, they were definitely attainable.
But if I was getting myself one, I’d have to get Bluto one, too, since it was his turf I was planning on hosting this business-meeting-come-potential-duel on, and I very much doubted the Alpha of the small park was going to curl up and go to sleep to allow the proceedings to take place on his turf in peace.
Come to think of it, where did Bluto even live?
Surely not in the tiny memorial park?
Ah, well. There’d be time for questions with Bluto later. But first, I had to seal this deal with Frost and put pen to paper.
I stretched my arm out to take Frost’s hand, and the old business mogul grabbed hold of it enthusiastically. Then we shook on meeting in the memorial park at ten PM, with minimal claws digging into each other’s flesh.
Next, Frost pulled a gold-plated Parker pen out from a gilded black box, and he handed it to me to sign my name along the dotted line.
Ordinary folk like me could never even dream of blowing fifty bucks on a pen, and I was sure Frost used theatrics like this to entice the poor into signing their lives away all the time. He probably thought he was greatly impressing me with his ostentatious display of wealth.
