Page 16 of Grumpy Alien Boss

"Mr. Rook! We got reports of-" The guard's eyes lock onto the unconscious gunman. "Holy shit."

"Call the police," I order, grateful for the interruption. "And get medical attention for this waste of oxygen."

The next hours blur into a parade of uniforms and questions. Detectives document the scene while paramedics cart away our would-be assassin. Olivia and I give separate statements, never getting a moment alone to finish our conversation.

I watch her from across the room as she describes the attack to an officer. The bullet sits in an evidence bag, along with the gun. Her fingers keep drifting to her throat, a nervous tell I've noticed before.

When she finishes her statement, Olivia glances my way. Questions burn in her eyes - about the rainforest, about the bullet, about everything. I should go to her, try to explain. But what could I possibly say that wouldn't make things worse?

She gathers her purse and coat. My feet stay rooted to the floor as she walks to the elevator. Tomorrow. I'll figure out what to tell her tomorrow.

The doors close, taking her away. Taking with her all the warmth and light from my day.

CHAPTER 7

OLIVIA

The numbers blur together on my laptop screen as I scroll through another financial report. My eyes ache from staring at spreadsheets for hours, trying to make sense of the rainforest acquisition.

"This makes no sense." I shift on my couch, the leather sticking to my bare thighs. "No minerals, no oil, not even good lumber. Why level a hundred acres?"

My finger traces the edge of the red scale on my coffee table. The same scale I plucked off Darwin's collar before he... No. Focus.

Another search leads me to a locked V-Truth file. The same damn roadblock I keep hitting. My teeth grind as I type in another combination that fails.

"Fine. Let's see what the tinfoil hat brigade has to say."

Three conspiracy sites and two alien blogs later, my cursor freezes over an image. My breath catches. There, held between grimy fingers, sits an identical crimson scale.

The photo belongs to some guy named Hurst Popenga. His website "Who are the Reds?" splashes across my screen in garish comic sans font. The scale in his photo gleams with the same iridescent sheen as mine.

"Holy shit."

I click through his rambling posts about red-scaled aliens. Most of it reads like the deranged manifesto of a basement dweller, but he has more photos. More scales. And they all look exactly like mine.

My fingers drum against the scale on my table. The one Darwin tried so hard to get back during lunch. The one he claimed was "nothing important" even as his eyes never left it.

A new tab opens and I type "Darwin Rook background" into the search bar. The usual puff pieces pop up - Forbes profiles, Wall Street Journal interviews, charity galas. But nothing before his arrival in the US.

"Okay, let's dig deeper."

Immigration records show he came from Munich at age twelve. Listed as an orphan from Sankt Maria's Home for Children. My German's rusty, but Google Translate helps me wade through old newspaper archives.

"What the hell?"

Sankt Maria's shut down right after Darwin turned eighteen. A suspicious fire gutted the building months later. The article mentions "total loss of records" and "investigation ongoing" but nothing after that.

My phone buzzes. A text from Darwin himself: "Working late tonight. Need anything before I go?"

The scale catches the light as I turn it between my fingers. Red. Iridescent. Definitely not plastic or metal.

"No thanks, all good here!" I type back, my hands shaking.

The coincidences pile up in my mind: The missing background. The mysterious V-Truth files. The scales. The rain forest demolition that makes zero business sense.

I hold the scale up to my desk lamp. Light refracts through it in ways that seem impossible, creating patterns I've never seen before.

"Who are you really, Darwin Rook?"

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