Chapter 152 Loyalty For Sale
Chapter 143
Rosa's POV.
He sat. Slowly, carefully, the way a person sits when they are not entirely sure the chair beneath them is safe.
I stepped closer to his desk and leaned forward just slightly. When I spoke again, my voice dropped low. Low enough that it would not travel past the walls of this room.
"Brielle is my soldier." I let the words land one at a time, and I pointed one perfectly shaped fingernail directly at his face. Not touching. Just pointing. The way you point at something you want a person to pay very close attention to. "I will not have a single fly land on her skin while she is in this building. Do you understand me?"
He opened his mouth.
"My lady, that is treasonable …"
"Quiet."
The word came out of me like a door slamming.
His mouth closed.
I reached into my purse. I did not rush. I took my time, because rushing was for people who were nervous, and I was not nervous. My fingers found the first bundle and I pulled it out and set it on his desk with a soft, solid thud.
Ten thousand shekels. Neat. Wrapped. Sitting right there between us like a third person who had just joined the conversation.
He looked at it.
His mouth opened again. "My lady, are you trying to bri…"
The second bundle landed beside the first before he could finish the word.
His mouth stopped moving.
His eyes darted.
His eyes were doing it work, moving rhythmically like the eyes of someone who was about to give up his last breath. They moved from one cash to the other, gently, precisely, his eyes quickly drifted to the roof, like he was calculating something in his head and the number kept showing up like he never expected.
"That," I said, pointing at the two crispy bundles on the table "is for you and the guards standing outside."
I observed his throat move hard. Finding it hard to swallow anything down its path. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. His nose flared, a heavy breath came out from it like the smoke from an exhaust pipe of a vehicle.
"But…" he started, the word barely making it past his lips.
I held a finger up to his face. Words stuck in his lips.
"I am not here for long conversations," I said simply. "Nothing happens to her. She should be comfortable. She should be very fed. She should be treated well, better than well. She should walk out of here in the same condition she walked in. That is the only arrangement I am offering."
I could see him wrestling with something behind his eyes. Some last little piece of resistance trying to hold its ground. I watched it struggle. Then I reached into my purse one final time.
Five thousand more shekels. This bundle landed on the desk with the same calm authority as the others.
"That," I said, "covers her food and everything else she needs until she leaves."
The wrestling match behind his eyes ended. Decisively.
A wide grin broke across his scarred face. It started slowly, like sunlight coming out from behind a cloud, and then it was fully there, stretching his cheeks and crinkling the corners of his eyes. He nodded his head, quickly, eagerly, the way a dog nods when it finally understands what its owner wants.
"Yes, your honor," he said warmly. "Yes, absolutely, your…"
"But."
The grin flickered.
I leaned forward again, and this time my voice went somewhere very quiet and very sharp at the same time.
"If you think," I said slowly, "that you can take my money and then play some clever little loyalty game behind my back…" I paused, letting him sit inside that sentence for a moment, "...then I would like you to think very carefully about something."
I straightened up.
"I know who your real boss is, not alpha king jax. Your real boss is Alpha Ryder."
A smile tucked to the corner of his lips but yet he still managed to make eye contacts.
"And I know that Ryder does not take kindly to hearing that one of his foot soldiers has been doing foolish things."
I tilted my head just slightly.
"Can you imagine how that conversation would go?"
The grin was completely gone now. In its place was something much more cooperative. His hands came up in front of him, both of them, palms out, like he was trying to stop something from rolling toward him.
"No, no, your honor, you do not need to …I would never… I give you my word, I swear it, she will be treated better here than she ever was in the palace. I will personally check on her. I will report to you. You have my complete…"
The door swung open.
A cadet security guard walked into the room, his eyes drifted to the three stacks of cash sitting on his boss's table. His suddenly twisted with something like surprise, confusion, joy or something I couldn't add meaning to.
A kind of desperate attempt to pretend as if he didn't walk into the room. He didn't see anything, before he eventually managed to gather himself to speak.
His breath piqued but came out rough like a dull knife.
"B … Boss, the k…king sent for you.”