YOU’RE MINE, Miss Intern.

Chapter eight

Ann closed the door behind her because he had told her to the last time, and she was learning which silences were instructions.

Mikel stood at the window with his jacket off, the city was starting to light itself. He did not turn until he was ready. “You’re late,” he said.

“I know.”

“Yesterday you left without a word. This morning you came in after the hour, I do not run a floor on guesses.”

Ann kept her bag on her shoulder. “My mother fell. She said she was fine but I went home anyway.”

That landed just true enough to change the air. Mikel looked at her fully now. “Is she in hospital?”

“No.”

“Are you lying to keep this job?”

“If I was going to lie, I would have said the train.”

A faint crease showed in his mouth. He pointed at the chair across from his desk. “Sit.”

Ann sat down, but Mikel remained standing. He preferred it that way because it kept the power in his hands. “The floor is talking,” he said. “Hartwell, the car, my asking for you by name. This morning’s arrival. I will not pretend I did not help it along.”

“I didn’t ask you to say my name in front of them.”

“I did not ask the building for a vote.” He picked up a scanty folder and set it in front of her. “This is the problem, unofficial late work makes you look kept. Official extra hours make you look hired, I prefer the second.”

Ann opened the folder. It was a short contract for additional paid hours, document review, and confidential files. The reporting line listed Rhea on paper, but Mikel in practice. The money made her flinch, not luxury money, just enough money. The kind that paid for tests and still left her proud enough to hate needing it.

“This is a favor,” she said.

“It's a correction. I kept you past eight, put you in a car, and used your eyes on a file that wasn't an intern's business. If the building wants a story, they can read this one.”

Ann’s fingers rested on the signature line. “If I sign, they will still talk.”

“They will talk with less room.”

“And if I don’t?”

Mikel’s eyes did not move. “Then you go back downstairs and hope Rhea can bury you in copy work until the rumor dies. It will not die and you know that.”

Ann thought of Evan's smile, her mother's bruise, and the pharmacy total still living in her phone. “I don’t want to owe you.”

“Then do the work.” His voice stayed even “This isn't a gift. You'll be in this office after everyone else leaves. You'll catch what my people miss. I won't call it rescue, and you won't call it kindness.”

Ann almost laughed, but it came out sounding tired instead. “You really cannot stand being thanked.”

“Gratitude is a leash people like to hand you, so don't give me one.”

She read every line twice. There was no clause saying he owned her evenings, but there was no clause saying she could pretend those evenings would stay simple either. “Rhea won’t like this.”

“Rhea likes clean stories. This is cleaner than the one they are writing now.”

Ann picked up the pen, her hand not shaking this time, which almost worried her more, then signed.

Mikel took the folder, checked the signature, and set it aside like the moment had already become paperwork.

“Hours start tonight,” he said. “The Hartwell revision and the vendor packet from the site visit. You eat first, there’s food in the lounge, and I won’t have you fainting over a column because you forgot you have a body.”

“I can work hungry.”

“I did not ask what you can do.”

Ann stood. “Is that all?”

“No.” He came around the desk and stopped far enough that it was still decent. Close enough that it was not nothing.

“If your mother falls again, tell me before the floor does, if you’re going to be late, say so, I won’t hear it from gossip or from Rhea after the damage is done.”

Ann held his eyes. “That sounds like you want my life on your desk.”

“I want no surprises on my floor.”

“That is not the same sentence.”

Mikel looked at her for a long second, something restless moved behind the control. “Do not thank me,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

She made it to the door, her hand closing around the cold handle. She should have left, but something made her look back. “Why me?” Ann asked. “You have a building full of people who already belong here.”

Mikel slipped his hands into his pockets, as if that could keep the answer in. “Because you see the lie in a number and you say it while other people are still smiling, that is rare. It is also why this will get worse before it gets useful.”

Ann nodded once. “Then we understand each other.”

“No,” Mikel said. “We have an arrangement, understanding would be something else.”

She left before something else could find a chair. The food in the lounge was still warm. Ann ate standing up, as if sitting down would make the contract feel more real. Then she returned to the table, and they got back to work.

He sat on one side of the desk, she on the other. Outside, the city darkened by degrees. The vendor packet lay open between them like a mouth, spilling out dates, invoices, a payment that had arrived two days early, and a delivery that had come four days late.

Ann marked it. Mikel didn’t praise her, he simply said, “Again,” and slid the next page across the desk.

At eight forty she sat back. “That’s the last of this set.” Mikel closed his own file. “Go home.”

Ann picked up her bag. The signed contract was already gone from the desk, filed away in whatever system Mikel used to make messy things look deliberate.

At the door he spoke without lifting his head. “Cole.”

She waited.

“This keeps you close to the work, it doesn’t make you safe. Don’t confuse the two. ”

Ann held the strap of her bag firmly. “I know what I signed,” she said.

She took the elevator down through a building that would still talk tomorrow.

On the train, she opened her banking app and watched the balance shift as she calculated what the extra hours would bring in. It wouldn’t change her life, but it might give her enough room to breathe.

That was how he had done it, not by rescuing her, but by making himself necessary. The money felt like help until she understood what it was really buying: not her freedom, but her continued closeness to him and the work.

And she had put her name on it because the other choice was watching her life run out of money while the floor invented a story anyway.