YOU’RE MINE, Miss Intern.

Chapter two

Ann showed up early because late felt like a good way to get sent home.

Sleep had not come easy. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the office, the window, and Mikel Damaris looking at her like she had already failed.

The forty second floor was quieter at this hour. Computers hummed, someone laughed behind a closed door and then stopped, as if the building itself did not allow it for long.

A woman in a black dress waited by an empty desk with Ann’s misspelled badge sitting on top of a box of pens.

“You’re the replacement,” she said. “I’m Rhea. You work under me. That means you move fast, you listen once, and you do not wander toward the executive offices unless I send you.”

Ann nodded. “Understood.”

Rhea’s eyes drifted down to her cheap shoes, holding there just a little too long. “Good. Yesterday was a mess, don’t let it happen again.”

So people already knew. Ann sat, the chair squeaked. She kept her bag under the desk and tried to look useful before she had been given anything to do.

The morning came in pieces. Print this, take that downstairs, do not use the wrong elevator, do not speak to the board assistants unless spoken to. Ann did all of it with her mouth shut and her hands careful. She could still feel yesterday on her skin, she almost managed it until lunch.

Rhea dropped a sealed envelope on her desk without looking up. “Forty-eighth. His office, leave it with the assistant, not him. Then come straight back.”

Ann’s fingers tightened on the paper. “His office?”

“Did I stutter?”

The elevator ride seemed to drag on longer than it should have. Ann stared at her reflection in the door, quietly reminding herself she was just delivering mail, nothing more.

The executive floor was colder than yesterday. The assistant outside Mikel’s office was not at her desk, the door was open just enough to show the corner of a dark desk and the city behind it.

Ann hesitated, then she heard him.

“I said I wanted it handled yesterday.” His voice was low, worse than shouting. “If they cannot keep a schedule, replace them.”

Ann stepped back, ready to wait. The door opened fully, Mikel came out with his phone in one hand and his jacket over the other. He stopped when he saw her.

For a second, neither of them spoke. Ann held out the envelope. “This is for you. Rhea said to leave it with your assistant but she isn’t here.”

He took it, his fingers did not touch hers, but they came close enough that Ann felt almost. “You were told not to linger,” he said.

“I’m not.”

A faint crease touched his brow, like her answer had surprised him or annoyed him. She could not tell which. “Name.”

She blinked. “You saw my badge yesterday.”

“I asked for your name.”

“Ann.”

He studied her as if the single word needed checking. “Last name.”

She almost lied. The habit sat there, ready then she let it go. “Cole.”

Mikel looked at her a moment longer. People moved in the hallway behind her and still he did not step aside. “Go back downstairs, Ann Cole,” he said. “If Rhea sent you, she would be timing you.”

Ann turned. She made it five steps before he spoke again. “And next time, wait. Do not stand in my doorway like you belong there.”

Heat stung her face, she kept walking. On the way down, her phone buzzed with a message from the pharmacy. The medicine was ready, the total made her feel sick.

She stared at the number until the elevator doors opened. Rhea was waiting with her arms crossed. “Twelve minutes. That is not straight back.”

“His assistant wasn’t there.” Rhea’s mouth flattened. “Then you wait in the hall, you do not get seen. Especially not by him.”

Ann sat down and went back to work because there was nothing else to do. She answered emails that were not hers, she fetched coffee she would never be allowed to drink and kept her head down.

But her mind would not stay down with it. Ann pressed her palms against the desk until they stopped shaking.

Do not get noticed, that was the rule. She had broken it twice in two days, and Mikel Damaris did not look like a man who needed a third time.