My Alien Husband Might Be in the Mafia (Inter-Galactic Matchmaking App Romance #1)

Chapter 1

CORA

“Hey, Mack, my login’s not working.”

Mack took a big gulp of his break room coffee, staring at me over the rim of his World’s Okayest Team Lead mug with dead eyes.

“What?” I demanded. “It’s not me. I’m using the correct password.”

“I bet,” he drawled, swiveling his chair toward his computer with a sigh. “Hold on. I’ll send you the link to reset it.”

I twirled in slow circles in my less-than-ergonomic desk chair as I waited.

Beside me, Brandy was already taking her first call of the day with a painfully chipper voice.

I knew from experience that her energy level would not deplete, no matter how much overtime she put in.

On my third spin, I met Andrew’s eyes as he clocked in.

He held a finger gun to his temple and fired.

Tell me about it, buddy. If I didn’t need the paycheck so bad, I’d be out of here.

Oh, and the health insurance. Lately, I had this catch in my wrist that was killing me.

I’d been meaning to make an appointment to have it looked at, but the co-pay was so high.

Maybe if I sold a kidney, I could have my wrist taken care of and my teeth cleaned.

“Cora Keaton.” The deep, authoritative voice came from the end of the cubicle row. Along with everyone on my team, I swiveled to look. One of the security guys was there with an empty box and an envelope.

I looked around at my co-workers, confused and tempted to hide under a desk. Brandy, ever the helpful one, pointed at me. Andrew ducked deeper into his cubicle and hurried to put on his headset.

“Mack?” I looked to the team lead, but he wasn’t much use for anything but recovering passwords. He shrugged and sipped his coffee.

“Here’s your severance letter,” Security Guy said.

“Severance letter?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding bored. “You’re the fifth one on my list today. Layoffs.”

“Uh, how many names do you have on that list?” Andrew asked.

Security Guy shot him a deadpan look. “A bunch. It’s a good day to be in a union.”

My eyes zoomed over the letter, not really taking it in.

Laid off? I had rent due on Friday! I thought about getting mad, but…

Why? Security Dude didn’t lay me off. I could yell and scream about how I have rights, but this wasn’t exactly my first rodeo.

I knew from the last two layoffs I’d been through that no, in fact, I do not have rights.

Security Dude had rights, because he was in a union, apparently, but customer service minions had none.

“I don’t need the box,” I sighed, gathering my purse and sweater.

I’d learned not to get too attached to my workspace and left my personal effects at home.

Anyway, I was a single thirty-something with no kids and no family to speak of.

What did I have to display pictures of? Framing a picture of Mr. Darcy, my cat, would have been pathetic.

Also, if someone asked his name, they might realize he was my emergency contact.

“What’s your name?” Security Dude asked Andrew.

Reluctantly, he said, “Andrew Rolfstad.”

Wordlessly, Security Dude handed him the box.

Andrew’s shoulders slumped. To me, he said, “Brunch at Gigi’s?”

“I’ll get us a table.”

What the hell? Bad days called for bad decisions.

“How long have you been here?” Security Guy asked as we rode the elevator down.

“Six months,” I said. “This is my third layoff in three years.”

“That sucks,” he said.

We finished the ride in silence, and he led me to the security desk in the lobby, where I turned in my badge for the door and signed a paper stating I had no company equipment at home. Then he walked me to the door.

“Hey, you wanna hook up sometime?” he asked as he held the door open for me.

I blinked in the hot summer sunshine, trying not to be too obvious as I looked him over.

He wasn’t bad to look at, but not my type.

Slender, with stylish hair and a thin mustache, no beard.

“I feel like I would unfairly link you with this job in my mind,” I said.

“I’m gonna pass. Andrew’s single, though. Hit him up.”

Security Guy nodded and waved as I stepped out into the wide, unforgiving world, jobless and alone. “Have a good one.”

I was on my second Bloody Mary by the time Andrew sank into the chair across from me at Gigi’s Cafe.

“Oh no,” he said, scrunching his nose. “Bottomless Bloody Mary’s? I thought that was Wednesdays.”

“It is Wednesday.”

“Oh,” he said. “Gross.”

“So I’ve been looking at this severance letter,” I said, waving the paper, “and I’m going to be destitute in less than a month. I’ll get enough for rent and utilities, but after that, I’ll maybe have groceries covered for a week or two at the most.”

“Time to move home,” Andrew said. “Mom’s meatloaf always tastes better when I’m broke. I appreciate it more, you know?”

“Hmm.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“Am I going to move home?” I asked, my brows raising at the thought. “Um. No.”

“Don’t get along with your parents?”

“I don’t get along with their Soul Guide, Ricky,” I said.

“Oh nooooo,” Andrew gasped. “Not Emissaries!”

“Afraid so.”

“Honey.”

The Emissaries of the Enlightened popped up soon after the President announced that Earth leaders had been officially and intentionally contacted by beings from another galaxy.

Apparently, there was a star system out there with several habitable planets and moons, and much more advanced tech than we had on Earth.

Bion 8KV. The images we’d been given of the worlds there were breathtaking, and sounded almost utopian.

But the daernir, the dominant intelligent species of Bion 8KV, had a problem.

Only one in twelve infants born in the star system were female, and it meant their populations were dwindling as older generations died out.

Through means no earthly government had yet been willing to disclose, the daernir discovered human beings were sexually compatible with daernir, and produced strong, viable offspring, with a rate of approximately sixty percent female.

Obviously, we all had questions, but they were mostly going unanswered.

Everything was highly classified. But some nations, ours included, had entered into agreements with Bion 8KV to allow human women to accept alien matches across the universe.

There was a dating app, or rather a matchmaking app, because once you accepted a match and went to Bion 8KV, you probably weren’t coming back.

It was a two-month trip and cost more than Earth’s most obscenely rich billionaires made in a year.

Who knew, though? Maybe you could get there and get rich enough to come back to earth if you wanted.

Although if wealth was that easy to come by, why would you want to leave?

There were a lot of opinions on the morality and safety of hooking up with an alien in another galaxy, presumably to have little alien babies and never see your family again.

And one of those opinions was that it was an abomination of nature.

A group called the Emissaries of the Enlightened began to gain traction, preaching that anyone who considered such a thing was not only immoral and mentally ill, but also infected with spiritual darkness, likely spread by the aliens through our food, water, air, and wifi.

They commanded their followers to surrender their homes, bank accounts, and 401Ks to their local Soul Guide and live a life of organic gardening and no electricity.

So. Yeah.

Mom and Dad joined a cult. They were now penniless, anti-alien, Amish hippies.

And they broke off all contact with me when I refused to join them.

I wasn’t exactly hopping on the first UFO out of here, but I wasn’t interested in a life without AC and cat videos.

It might have hurt me more if I wasn’t used to butting heads with my parents over the state of the world already.

I wasn’t sure where they stood on it now, but they’d been climate change deniers for years and jumped at every conspiracy theory they came across with their whole hearts.

Don’t get me wrong. I think some shady things go on in our world.

I doubt Congress okayed this whole alien baby matchmaker scheme in a sweeping bipartisan bill without some incentives.

But aside from faster internet speeds, we hadn’t seen the kickbacks yet.

To me, and a lot of people, that’s pretty suspicious.

I’ll take the internet upgrade, though. And one probable conspiracy is hardly proof that all the conspiracies are true.

Like the one about corn being genetically modified to release organic nano-bots into our bloodstream and control our minds? Um? Probably not.

“So what are you going to do?” Andrew asked.

I lifted my glass for another sip of tomato juice and vodka. “Find another job,” I said with resignation.

“You could sell feet pics,” he suggested.

“I tried that,” I said. “It’s a lot of work, and there’s no health insurance.”

“Hmm.” Andrew tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Camming?”

“I don’t think I’d be comfortable showing off anything above the knee.”

“But you’re gorgeous,” Andrew gushed. “You broke Kyle’s heart when you rejected him.”

“Who’s Kyle?”

“Security Guy.”

“Oh. Did he ask you out?” I wondered.

“Yeah,” Andrew said. “We’re on for Saturday. His treat since he basically fired me.”

“Make him pay,” I nodded.

“You bet,” he agreed. “What about Bion Marriage Match?”

“What? No.”

“Why not? You don’t have to actually match with anyone,” Andrew said. “You just chat with hot, rich aliens and never commit. You get paid just to sign up and accept messages.”

“That seems kind of mean,” I frowned.

“Please,” Andrew said. “Everyone does it. My sister does it, and it keeps her in designer footwear. You could definitely pay a few bills with it. I’d do it, but they only want vaginas.”

“Wow.”

“I tried to catfish,” he admitted with a pout. “Their tech is too good. My account got deleted.”

“Andy.”

“Twice.”

I laughed.

“Okay, five times, and my IP address is banned now.”

“That’s embarrassing,” I said. “You’re better than that.”

He gave me a flat look as our waitress approached. “I’m really not. And my dear, neither are you.”