Chapter 126: The Contract

The house was louder than yesterday.

He was away for one evening and today was Saturday.

Rosa had taken his old room on the second floor yesterday that put Emily in Eren’s parents’ old room. But the master bed had a lot of empty space and Mel had walked in at midnight, dropped into the other side of the bed with a casual “good night” and fallen asleep with her in Emily’s words.

That girl was losing her serious sides real fast after coming to this side.

If I hadn’t gone to Evon last night and spent it with Lyra, this bed would have looked real different right now.

He thought about that for half a moment longer than he should have. Then he caught himself and ran both hands down his face.

He came downstairs and it was chaos. The whole house had been getting louder every day since the thirteen old and three young elves had found the television remote’s functions. Eren reached the top of the stairs and already heard four different things going at once.

In the main living room Emily was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a bowl of chopped fruit in her lap, staring hard at a Turkish daytime drama on the big TV. Her lips were moving along with the actress. She had been trying to force a new skill to show up like other elves had. But for it to happen she had to learn a few words from the languages first.

Now, she had complete focus on the target show like it was a job. Eren found her face funny and kissed her lips and run away.

“Hey!”

On the floor in front of her three of the older elves were watching the same drama but understanding roughly eight percent of it. They kept pausing to argue about what the crying woman on the screen had done wrong. Galadrim was referee.

In the small second living room across the hallway Nimbo had plugged the old DVD player into the smaller secondary TV and was working his way through Eren’s father’s shelf of old action movies from the early two thousands. Right now it was sounding like a car chase. Nimbo watched movies the way a cat watches a bird.

Upstairs on his old CD player Rosa had rigged an even older movie collection up to a portable screen. Two more elderly elves were up there watching something in black and white with subtitles they couldn’t read.

Eren’s old game console was plugged into a third smaller monitor in the corner of the main living room. Mel had left it paused on a menu screen last night after spending four hours trying to understand why her character couldn’t jump twice.

Emily looked up from the drama and her face brightened. She pointed at the television with her spoon.

“Listen. This woman is about to tell that man he isn’t the father of her baby. I understood the whole build up this time.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“Good morning silly.” She went back to the screen without taking the spoon out of her mouth. “Sit. Watch with me. He is going to cry.”

“I have to go meet with Kalina about our business.”

“The red hair woman.”

“Yes.”

Emily scooped another piece of fruit and chewed on it slowly. Her eyes were still on the screen.

“Come home fast. The man on the television is about to learn something important and I want to explain it to you.”

“I will come home fast.” He was smiling with her antics.

He pulled a coat off the rack by the door, laced his shoes properly because he was walking today and stepped out into the cold.

..

The walk to the café in Nişantaşı took him forty minutes from the metro exit. He was wearing jeans for the first time in two weeks and the thick denim pulled uncomfortably across his much larger thighs. It made him feel like he had stolen clothes from a weaker man.

The café had a long marble counter, four small tables and a barista who actively avoided eye contact with the customers. Kalina picked these expensive, quiet places specifically to make the other person feel out of their depth.

Kalina didn’t look up from her laptop immediately when he dropped his heavy frame into the small wooden chair across from her. She just hit a final key and closed the screen.

“You didn’t ride the bike today.” She observed, her eyes dropping to his legs for a fraction of a second.

“I walked from the metro.” Eren pulled his chair closer to the table. The wood creaked loudly under his weight.

Kalina raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. She studied his broad chest for a second and slid a thick folder across the marble. “Everything we agreed on. Three pages. My lawyer cleaned it up last night.”

Eren picked the folder up. He flipped through the dense legal text but didn’t really read the words.

“I’m not signing this here.” He dropped the folder back onto the table.

Kalina leaned forward and rested her elbows on the marble. “Why not?”

“Because Rosa is going to read every single line of it before anything gets signed.” He leaned back in his creaking chair. “You said yourself you wrote the supplier clause tight. If it is that tight, you have nothing to worry about when a second pair of eyes checks the wording.”

Kalina didn’t look annoyed. She just looked amused. “Rosa is a kindergarten teacher, Eren.”

“Rosa finished law school before she switched to teaching.” Eren crossed his arms. “She didn’t take the bar but she knows how to read a contract.”

Kalina blinked in genuine surprise. She clearly hadn’t known that detail about Rosa’s past.

“Fair enough.” She picked up her tiny black coffee and took a small sip. “Take it. Sign it tonight. Send it back to me scanned before midnight and the deal starts on Monday.”

Eren rested his thick arms on the table. “Tell me where the import is routed through.”

“Italy.” She placed her cup back on the saucer gently.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I have a cousin on my father’s side who owns an organic agricultural export operation out of Bari.” She pulled a printed page from the back of the folder and slid it toward him. “He already has certification for twenty-six organic product types across the EU. Your fruits will be listed under ’heritage botanical samples, variety pending classification’ for the first ninety days. That gives us enough time to get real volume through customs before anyone asks questions. After that we reclassify.”

Eren looked at the heavy paper. It was a proper registration extract with real stamps and registration numbers. The cousin’s name matched the surname on the contract header perfectly.

“You had this ready before you ambushed Rosa at the kindergarten.” He realized, tapping his finger against the Italian stamp.

“I had most of it ready two months ago.” Kalina answered completely casually. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I was preparing all of this for another project and your products provided exactly what was missing in my old plan. It is a huge stroke of luck for both of us I think.”

Eren frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “What project was it? Were you going to pretend to import fruit but actually traffic drugs? Last time I checked, we were selling security systems to luxury summer houses.”

Kalina glared at him. Her lips pressed together in a tight, angry line that somehow looked exactly like a pout. She looked genuinely annoyed but the expression made her look incredibly cute instead of intimidating.

Eren shifted in his creaking chair. Seeing his normally strict, cold ex-boss act like a pouting, emotional woman was surprisingly attractive and it made him deeply uncomfortable.

“I was building a structure to use when you eventually came back.” She broke the silence and set her coffee cup down with a sharp clink. “Or when your body showed up somewhere. I built it either way.”

He didn’t have a good response to that. He picked the folder back up and tucked it under his arm.

“Wednesday at your place.” She said before he could stand up.

Eren stopped. “Wednesday?”

“Yes, during the week.” She tilted her head slightly. “I will bring the wine.”

“My wife will want to pick the wine.” He warned her.

Kalina didn’t back down. She gave him a soft, competitive smile. “Then we will compare.”

He got up and pushed the chair back under the table.

“One more thing.” Kalina said, looking up at him.

He stopped.

Kalina kept her eyes firmly on the marble table this time. “Your wife is going to hate me on sight. I will try to earn the second meeting.”

“She will make her own call.” Eren said softly.

“I know.” She nodded once.

He turned his back and walked out of the café.

..

The walk back to the metro felt shorter because his head was busy.

She built the whole import structure two months ago when she thought I might be dead in a ditch somewhere.

His mother had been telling everyone he was on a business trip, but Kalina was already setting up an international pipeline for him to flow through the second he reappeared.

That isn’t jealousy. That is aggressive planning. I just never saw her aim it in my direction before.

He got back to Zekeriyaköy a little after three and the house was still incredibly loud. Emily was now halfway through a completely different daytime show. She made a frustrated hissing sound from the couch when he came through the door because he hadn’t come back in time to translate the big paternity reveal for her.

“Later Emily. We have to read something first.” He patted her shoulder as he walked past the couch and took the folder straight into the kitchen.

Rosa was sitting at the kitchen table eating cold leftover pasta straight out of a plastic tupperware container with a fork. She looked up with her mouth full.

“How bad is it?” She mumbled around the food.

“Not bad. She is organized.” He tossed the folder onto the table next to her plastic bowl. “It is routed through an Italian cousin of hers in Bari.”

“Italian.” Rosa raised an eyebrow and swallowed her bite.

“Her father’s side.” Eren pulled a chair out and sat backward on it. “She said her cousin has an EU organic certification operation. She had the whole thing set up two months ago.”

Rosa stopped chewing entirely and put the fork down slowly.

“Two months ago.” Rosa said, staring at the closed folder.

“When she thought I was dead.” Eren confirmed.

“Yeah.” She breathed out.

She pushed the pasta aside and opened the folder. Eren rested his chin on his arms and waited.

He had watched Rosa read a lot of things over the seven years he had known her. Right now her jaw was tight and her eyes were moving fast over the lines. She wasn’t frowning, so that was a good sign. She was just highly focused.

Three minutes passed before she turned the last page and flattened it on the table with her palm.

“Can I call Serkan?” She looked up at him.

“Who is Serkan?” He asked.

“A guy from my university.” She tapped her fingers against the paper. “He does corporate contract work now. He owes me a massive favor and he will read this in an hour for free.”

Eren gestured toward the door with his chin. “Go ahead.”

Rosa pulled her phone out of her pocket and walked out the back door into the garden. He could see her through the kitchen window pacing in the cold grass in just her socks while she made the call. He made himself a cup of tea and stopped thinking about Kalina when Emily walked into the kitchen. She dropped her empty fruit bowl into the sink with exaggerated dignity.

“The man on the television wasn’t the father.” Emily announced, crossing her arms over her maternity sweater.

“I figured.” Eren took a sip of his tea.

“The real father was his brother.” Emily leaned against the counter next to him. “His brother was in prison for murder. The woman had been having an affair with him before the brother went to prison but nobody knew. The mother of the family slapped the daughter-in-law and the grandmother cried for a long time.”

Eren lowered his mug. “That is a lot of plot for one morning.”

“Turkish shows are very dense.” She watched Rosa pacing outside through the glass. “How is your contract?”

“Rosa is calling a lawyer friend to check the language.” Eren explained, following her gaze.

“Good.” Emily scowled slightly. “I don’t trust the red hair woman.”

“Neither do I.” Eren agreed and bumped his shoulder gently against hers.

“But you will do business with her anyway.” Emily looked up at his face, searching his eyes.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Alright.” She shrugged casually, accepting his decision. She turned around to walk back to the living room but stopped in the doorway. She grabbed the wooden doorframe and looked back. “If she crosses a line on Wednesday I am locking her in the small guest room and throwing the key into the forest.”

“Emily, that isn’t how we handle guests on Earth.” He laughed softly.

“I know silly.” She gave him a sweet smile that didn’t match her threat at all. “I said if.”

..

Rosa came back inside half an hour later. Her socks were completely soaked from the wet grass and her nose was red from the cold. She dropped heavily into the chair at the kitchen table.

“Serkan read it.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and picked up a pen. “He says it is clean. There are two small wording fixes he wants. I already wrote them in the margin. Kalina will agree to them because they protect her as much as they protect us.”

“Good.” Eren stood up from his chair.

“The Italian cousin is legitimate too.” Rosa flipped to the last page of the document. “Serkan actually recognized the surname from some other client’s import paperwork last year.” She set the pen on the table and pushed it toward him. “You can sign it now. I will scan it on my phone and send it to her tonight.”

Eren sat down at the table, picked up the pen and signed his name on both dotted lines. He pushed the folder back across the wood.

“Thank you Rosa.” He said genuinely.

She picked up the pen and capped it. “I’m not doing this for you Eren.”

“I know you aren’t.” He said with a dry, sarcastic tone.

She gave him a small, genuine smile. “Good.”

She took the folder and walked toward the stairs to scan the pages in her room. On the way up she stopped and shouted over the banister.

“Whoever paused the game console in the living room has exactly seventeen seconds to save their game before I throw the whole machine in the trash!”

Mel came sprinting out of the downstairs bathroom. Her hair was soaking wet and she was wearing an oversized Earth hoodie that practically swallowed her. She completely slipped on the hardwood floor in her socks, crashed into the sofa and scrambled over the cushions to grab the controller with absolute desperation. She was adapting to Earth technology way too fast.

Eren sat at the kitchen table, listened to his strange, incredibly loud house and felt a comfortable warmth spread through his chest.

His eyes moved to the signed papers sitting on the edge of the table.

The deal is almost done. Then I can make a lot of money..

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