The Alpha King Call Boy: Chap 47-128

“Fiona! Wait up!” The young man who delivered our mail flagged me down, whisper-shouting my name, as I walked down the hall toward Conrad’s office in the morning, on my way to turn in some reports.

“Hello,” I greeted him cordially. “Do you have something for me?” I passed my boss’s door and met the young man a few yards beyond it.

He clenched his teeth, making an exaggeratedly anxious face, before he confessed, “No. Sorry, I just saw that you were about to go into Mr. Knight’s office, though, and wondered if you would take his mail in?

Since you are going in there anyway? Do you mind?”

I turned to look through the tinted windows that lined

this side of the boss’s office. We could see him pacing the length of the room inside while talking on his headset. He had a tennis ball in one hand and was intermittently bouncing it against the walls when his arms were not otherwise occupied with the expressive movements that accompanied yelling at someone on the phone.

I felt the sides of my mouth tugging upwards and held back a smile. I was just imagining why the mail kid was scared of knocking on Conrad’s door in this moment. Maybe he was worried the ball might be thrown at his head.

“I don’t mind. I’ll take it to him.” I held out my hand, expecting a few letters. The young man shoveled a big stack of envelopes in various sizes into my arms instead. “Oh. Alright.”

“Thank you so much,” he whispered frantically,

dragging his cart behind him as he ran away in the direction of the elevator.

I glanced down at the haphazard pile of mail in my arms. There was no way I about to walk into Conrad’s office with what looked like a heap of garbage in hand. There was a small room just next to Conrad’s where a few of our printers resided. I went in there and set everything down on a table beside the door, then started sorting all the envelopes by size. I put the small ones together, those I would stack on top, and then –

I paused, holding a heavy manila envelope that was about half an inch thick. I had been about to stack it with all the other big envelopes, but I froze when I saw the name on the front was not Conrad’s.

The envelope was addressed to Alexander.

I narrowed my eyes at the printed address label, the wheels turning in my mind already. Why was Alexander receiving mail at Crescent Ventures? And at the CEO’s office, no less?

I narrowed my eyes at the printed address label, the wheels turning in my mind already. Why was Alexander receiving mail at Crescent Ventures? And at the CEO’s office, no less?

I turned the envelope over and found that it was not permanently sealed. It was only tied closed with the wiry red string that they use downstairs in the legal department when they notarize contracts and then send them back for final reviews.

Before I could stop them, my hands were rapidly unspooling the string from the metal fixture, flipping the envelope open, and sliding all the contents out.

My eyes flicked up to the hallway. There was no one around. And I could faintly hear, through the supposedly sound-proofed walls, the consistent drone of Conrad’s booming voice as he yelled unintelligibly on a phone call in his office next door.

I only needed to take a cursory glance at the first page of the documents to understand what I was looking at. They were acquisition papers, showing that ownership of Crescent Ventures had apparently just changed hands. And the new owner of the company that I worked for? That would be none other than my own fiancé.

I flipped quickly through the rest of the paperwork, reading as fast as I could to scan for important details.

These were the facts as I came to understand them.

Alexander and his uncle had just jointly bought out all the company’s minority shareholders, making him and

Conrad the sole owners of Crescent Ventures. And in addition to that, Alexander had apparently already been the controlling owner of the business, having owned, before this acquisition, a slight majority share of the company already.

I hurried everything back into the manila envelope and started retying the red string around the temporary seal. My hands were shaking, and I felt warmth rushing to my cheeks. I did not have time immediately to sort out what this all meant for me.

And I would need more information, too, before I could really do that.

It gave me a bad feeling, though. Like the start of a stomachache, when you’re not sure yet just how sick you are about to be.

I looked up again, acutely aware that I had been loitering in an odd place for several minutes now. But the coast was clear. It was quiet as church in the hallway, and just as still.

I took a few seconds to fix my face, took a long breath in and out, shut out my feelings and put on my mask of indifference. Then I shuffled Alexander’s envelope pseudo-randomly into the middle of the mail stack and piled everything neatly into my arms.

At Conrad’s door I knocked twice only, my way of letting him know that it was just me.

He approached quickly, flipped the lock over, and then walked away again in the other direction immediately without missing a beat in his phone conversation. I opened the door quietly, dipped inside, then closed and locked it behind me.

Since we had no meeting scheduled, my boss understood I was just here to deposit something on his desk. He continued his pacing and heated phone argument as if no interruption had occurred at all. I crossed the room and went around behind his desk, kicking his rolling chair to the side since my hands were full. I stacked the mail neatly into a wire bin on the corner of the desk, then arranged my reports in the center. I also took the opportunity to straighten out Conrad’s pen tray and toothpick holder, setting everything just-so on the desktop, exactly the way he liked it.

Passing him on my way back out, Conrad turned in my direction and winked, with a tiny flicker of a smile appearing on his mouth for a split second. I offered him a polite smile of my own in return before exiting.

Back in my own office at last, I locked the door behind me and pressed my back up against it.

I still had a full day of work ahead of me, including several meetings at which I was scheduled to speak.

There was no use in letting my thoughts spiral on this confusing discovery, distracting me from important matters, until I could give the subject my full attention anyway. I would focus on work for the next several hours, then tonight over dinner, I would find a way to drag an explanation out of Alexander.

And maybe figure out what else he might be hiding from me, and why.