His to Punish:Claimed by the CEO's amnesia

Chapter 7 A Natural with Circuits

Noah's POV

The sign above the door read MIKE'S ELECTRONICS in faded blue letters, and the windows were plastered with posters for virus removal and screen repair.

The shop occupied a narrow storefront on a street lined with pawn shops and discount liquor stores.

It wasn't the kind of place that asked for a resume or a polished interview. It just needed someone who could hold a screwdriver and follow instructions.

I walked in on a Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon, I had a job.

Mike was a bearish man in his fifties with a graying beard and fingers stained yellow from years of nicotine.

He had been running the shop alone since his last employee quit without notice, and the backlog of broken devices was threatening to bury him.

He handed me a laptop with a shattered screen and a fried motherboard, told me to figure it out, and disappeared into the back office to argue with a supplier on the phone.

I sat down at the workbench.

In front of me lay a mess of plastic and metal. I had no memory of ever touching a circuit board.

I had no recollection of learning to solder or splice or diagnose.

But when I picked up the screwdriver, my hands moved with a certainty that surprised me.

The tool felt right in my grip, balanced and familiar.

I opened the casing, my fingers finding hidden clips and releases without any conscious thought, and the internal architecture of the machine unfolded before me like a map I had somehow always known.

When Mike came out of the back office an hour later, I had the laptop fully functional, its new screen glowing in the dim shop light.

Mike stared at the machine, then at me.

His bushy eyebrows climbed toward his receding hairline.

"You've done this before," he said. It was not a question.

I wiped my hands on a rag. "I don't remember."

"Right. The amnesia thing."

Mike had asked few questions during the interview, and I had offered even fewer answers.

"Well, I don't know who you were before, but you sure as hell knew your way around a board. You could take these things apart and put them back together with your eyes closed."

The phrase lodged itself in my mind.

With your eyes closed. It felt true.

It felt like the first true thing about myself I had discovered since waking up in that hospital bed with a stranger's name in my mouth.

I did not know who I was, but my hands did.

Mike hired me on the spot for part time hours.

The pay was barely above minimum wage but steady enough to matter.

The work was repetitive and sometimes frustrating, a parade of cracked screens, water damaged phones, and ancient desktops that wheezed like dying animals.

But I found a strange peace in the order of it.

I came home that evening with grease under my fingernails and a small paycheck in my pocket.

The Brooklyn apartment welcomed me with its familiar smell of old plaster and the faint, sweet scent of the daisy Ella had bought at the corner store.

She had placed it on the windowsill, a scraggly replacement for the sunflowers.

She was sitting at the small kitchen table, her laptop open, her face lit by the cold blue glow of the screen.

"Good day?" she asked, looking up.

"I fixed a laptop," I said.

"And a tablet. And a coffee maker that someone tried to hack with a screwdriver."

I paused, the corner of my mouth twitching. "Mike said I could do it with my eyes closed."

Ella smiled, a genuine smile that reached her tired eyes. "So you're a natural."

"Apparently." I sat down across from her.

The distance between us was small but charged with everything unspoken.

"What are you working on?"

She turned the laptop so I could see.

A logo design for a local bakery, clean and minimalist.

"Freelance work," she said.

"Graphic design. It's not much, but it's something. I found a few gigs online."

I knew she had been rebuilding her portfolio from scratch.

She hadn't said so directly, but I had seen the late nights, the cold calls to strangers on job boards, the way she sometimes stared at the screen with an expression that looked like defeat before shaking it off and starting again.

Fifty dollars for a logo. Twenty for a social media banner. The money was inconsistent and often insulting, but it was money.

We worked together in the small apartment, our separate labors filling the silence.

The hours slipped by, marked only by the changing light through the single window and the distant sounds of the city below.

"I'm going to bed," she said softly.

I looked up. "Goodnight, Ella."

She paused in the doorway of the small bathroom, her hand on the cracked doorframe.

"Noah," she said, and the way she spoke my name sounded heavy, like it carried more weight than a simple goodnight.

"I'm glad you found this job. The repair shop. It suits you."

I tilted my head, thinking about it.

"It's the first thing that's felt right," I said.

"Since I woke up. The first thing that feels like mine."

She nodded and looked at me for a moment longer before slipping away.

I heard the bathroom door close, then the soft creak of the bed.

Later, I lay on the pullout sofa, staring at the ceiling.

The city hummed outside, a constant low murmur of traffic and distant voices.

I could hear Ella's breathing from the other side of the room, slow and even.

She was asleep.

We were like so many young people scraping by in this city, grinding against the machinery of monthly bills and living expenses.

Rent. Groceries. Utilities. The formula was simple and brutal and allowed for no mistakes.

One missed payment, one unexpected expense, and everything would collapse.

I didn't let myself dwell on it too long.

I just kept working, saving what I could, trying to be someone she could lean on.

But sometimes, in the quiet dark, I felt the weight of all the things I didn't know.