The M.I.L.F Rebate System: Every Woman I Spoil Makes Me Richer!

Liam’s phone buzzed against the coffee table, loud enough to cut through whatever Darren had been saying mid-sentence.

He glanced at the screen. Unknown number. No name attached, no context, nothing to explain why it was ringing.

He hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen, weighing whether it was worth answering at all. Scam calls came through unsaved numbers all the time. But something made him lift a finger toward his lips instead, motioning for Darren to go quiet, and he answered.

“Hello?”

There was a pause on the other end—breathing, uneven, followed by a voice that took Liam a second to place.

[“…Liam?”]

“Mateo?” Liam sat up straighter. “How’d you get this number?”

He meant it half as a joke, expecting Mateo to answer with something proud about tracking it down through Sophia’s phone or some minor act of twelve-year-old espionage. But the response never came. Instead there was a shaky inhale on the other end, the unmistakable sound of someone trying very hard not to cry and failing.

Liam’s posture changed instantly, all trace of humor gone.

“Hey. Mateo. What’s wrong?”

[“…Nothing. I’m fine.”]

A sniff.

[“Just having a bad day.”]

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

>”It’s fine, Liam. Really.”] A pause, quieter now.

[“Can you—can you come get me? From school?”]

Liam sat with that for a second, mind already running through the implications. He didn’t know Mateo’s school pickup situation, didn’t know if this was something Sophia normally handled, didn’t know if showing up unannounced would read as overstepping into territory that wasn’t his to occupy. He wasn’t Mateo’s guardian. He wasn’t even officially anything yet, not in any capacity that gave him standing to make this call.

But the kid had gotten his number without his sister knowing—which was, Liam had to admit, mildly impressive for someone his age—and he’d used it to ask for exactly one thing, quietly, like it cost him something to even ask.

“Does Sophia know you’re calling me?”

Silence was the response to that question.

Liam waited, giving him space to answer. It never came.

He clicked his tongue, more out of resignation than actual irritation. Whatever the reason, leaving him hanging on this wasn’t happening.

“It’s fine,” Liam said. “I’m on my way. Send me your school’s name and address.”

[“Really?”]

Mateo’s voice brightened instantly, the relief audible even through the phone.

“Really. Send it now.”

The address came through seconds later, along with the school’s name typed out underneath it. Liam scanned it, filed it, and stood up from the couch.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said. “Hang tight.”

[“Okay. Thank you.”]

The call ended.

Darren was already watching him with a raised eyebrow. “Who was that?”

“Sophia’s little brother.” Liam grabbed his keys off the table. “Something happened at his school. He wants me to pick him up.”

Darren’s brow furrowed slightly. “You sure that’s a good idea? Look at the time—school shouldn’t even be letting out right now.”

Liam paused halfway to the door, turning that over. Darren had a point. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t a normal end-of-day pickup, which meant something had actually happened, not just a kid bored and looking for an excuse to leave early.

But it didn’t change anything.

“He didn’t sound good,” Liam said finally. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll go.”

Darren didn’t push further. He just stood, grabbed his own keys off the counter out of habit, and said, “Go already,” before falling into step behind him without a single additional question.

They made it down to the lot and into the car within a minute, Darren sliding into the passenger seat without comment, Liam pulling out onto the road with the address already keyed into the GPS.

Neither of them said much on the way. Liam’s mind was elsewhere—running through what could’ve happened, whether this connected to something bigger, whether Sophia knew any of it was happening right now. He’d have to figure out how to explain this to her eventually. Showing up to pick up her brother without her knowledge wasn’t nothing, and depending on how she reacted, this could complicate things between them before they’d even had the chance to properly start.

But that was a conversation for later.

Right now, a kid who’d trusted him enough to call instead of his own sister was standing somewhere waiting, trying not to cry in front of people who wouldn’t understand why.

As they pulled out of the lot, Liam felt a small measure of relief at not crossing paths with Rachel on the way down. Given what Darren had told him earlier—whatever truth or exaggeration sat inside it—an encounter with her right now, carrying that new information in the back of his mind, wasn’t something he had the bandwidth for.

Not today. Today was Mateo.

–

Liam pulled up right in front of the school and killed the engine, exactly where Darren had predicted—still in session, kids nowhere near dismissal yet.

He glanced at his phone, thumb hovering over Mateo’s contact. Calling felt like the obvious move. But then the thought crept in—if this ever came up, if Sophia ever went through his phone for whatever reason, a call log to her twelve-year-old brother wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he wanted sitting there unexplained. He locked the screen and set it down instead.

Darren sat beside him, scrolling through his own phone, seemingly unbothered by any of this. He was in a sleeveless shirt today, the kind that did nothing to hide the scars along his forearms, and combined with his size and the flat, unreadable look he got when he was bored, he had the general aesthetic of a man three bad decisions away from a police sketch.

Liam scanned the front of the building and spotted him—Mateo, slouched against the corner of the wall just outside the entrance, knees pulled up, head down.

Something in Liam’s chest tightened.

He reached for the horn instinctively, then caught himself.

Nope. Terrible idea. Nothing said “not suspicious” like a grown man laying on his horn outside a school.

“Is it this easy to kidnap kids?” Darren asked, not even looking up from his phone.

“This isn’t kidnapping!” Liam snapped.

“Yeah, you look creepier than that, though,” Darren muttered.

“What?” Liam questioned with a raised brow.

“Nothing.” Darren dismissed it.

“Shut up,” Liam said—and then immediately regretted engaging, because now the phrase Chris Hansen was lodged directly in the center of his brain and refused to leave.

He sat up a little straighter. Darren’s comment, unfortunately, had landed. He glanced around at the empty curb, at himself, parked directly in front of a school, staring intently at a child. This did not read well from any angle.

He tried a different approach—rolling the window down slightly and lifting a hand to wave, hoping Mateo would glance over and clock him.

It did not read as reassuring. If anything, it looked worse.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Darren said, sitting up now, alarmed.

“I’m trying to get his attention!”

“You’re doing jazz hands at a sixteen-year-old outside a school building, Liam.”

Liam yanked his hand back inside and grabbed his phone instead, deciding calling was worth the theoretical risk after all. He dialed.

It rang. Mateo answered—barely a word exchanged—and then, in the exact window of time it took Liam to say his name, the school bell went off, and the doors burst open with the chaos of several hundred children being released at once.

By the time Liam looked back up from his phone, Mateo was gone. Swallowed into the crowd.

He tried the call again.

Rejected.

“…That’s weird,” Liam said, frowning at the screen.

Darren’s eyes had gone still in a way Liam recognized but didn’t immediately register the meaning of.

“How about this,” Darren said, already unbuckling. “I go get him, you stay in the car so you don’t end up on a registry before your girlfriend even gets to hear about it.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Sure, man.”

“She’s genuinely not.”

“Cool. Stay in the car.” Darren was already halfway out the door.

“Thanks for helping,” Liam called after him.

Darren just shrugged, unbothered, and shut the door behind him.

The second his feet hit the pavement, something in his posture shifted. The easy looseness he carried around Liam dropped off entirely, replaced by something sharper, more focused—the look of a man scanning a room for the specific thing he already suspected was there.

A few parents glanced his way as he moved through the crowd, taking in the scars, the size of him, the general don’t-mess-with-this-man energy radiating off his frame. Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to.

Darren ignored all of it.

He reached the corner where Mateo had been sitting and found the spot empty—but the backpack was still there, exactly where it had been dropped, half-open on the ground like it had been abandoned mid-motion rather than set down.

That told him everything he needed to know before he even started looking.

He followed the thinning edge of the crowd around the side of the building, past a stairwell, toward a narrower strip of space between two sections of the school that most kids probably never had a reason to walk through.

And there he was.

Mateo, backed against the wall, and standing over him—too close, deliberately close—one of the bigger kids from the hallway earlier, jabbing a finger toward his chest, voice low enough that it wasn’t meant to carry.

“—and if you tell anyone, I swear to God, I’ll—”

The kid didn’t get to finish his sentence because Mateo got the message.

“I see, he is being bullied,” Darren thought to himself but here is where it got tricky.

Darren had no idea if he should step in or let it play out.