YOU’RE MINE, Miss Intern.

Chapter five

Ann made it back to the apartment with the paper bag clutched to her chest like it might vanish.

Her mother was awake on the couch, a blanket pulled to her chin, the television on mute. Relief moved through her face when she saw Ann, then worry right after it. “You’re late.”

“Work ran long.” Ann brought out the pills, poured water, and waited until her mother swallowed. Only then did she sit. “It’s handled.”

“You look like someone chased you.”

Ann almost laughed. “Someone did but not the way you think.” She did not say his name, saying it in this room would make him too real.

Sleep came in pieces. At five she was up again, ironing the same shirt, telling herself yesterday had been a one time thing. People like Mikel Damaris did not remember interns in the morning.

The lobby proved her wrong. Rhea was waiting by the security desk with two coffees and a look that said Ann had already done something inconvenient.

“You’re with me today,” Rhea said, shoving one cup into Ann’s hand. “Site visit. Do not speak unless I look at you, do not get lost and if he asks you a question, keep the answer short.”

“He?” Rhea’s mouth tightened. “Who else?”

The car was already at the curb with a driver who did not greet them.

Mikel sat in the back with a file open on his knee. He did not look up when they got in, Ann took the seat farthest from him and kept her bag on her lap like a shield.

The city slid by. Rhea talked numbers, Mikel answered in short lines that ended conversations. Ann stared at her cup and tried not to notice how small the space felt.

“Cole.”

She lifted her head. Mikel still had his eyes on the file. “The error you caught last night, how did you see it so fast?”

Rhea went still beside her. Ann chose the short answer. “I checked it twice before I touched anything else.”

“Why.”

“Because pretty numbers are usually the ones lying.” The car hit a light and for a second the only sound was the blinker.

Mikel closed the file. When he looked at her, it was direct and unblinking. “Who taught you that?”

“Bills,” Ann said. “They do not like being rounded.”

Rhea made a small sound that might have been a warning. Mikel did not smile, he did not look away either. “You’ll sit in on the walkthrough. You will take notes, if you see another lie, you tell me not the room.”

Ann’s fingers wrapped firmly around the cup. “All right.”

The site was a glass building mid renovation, dust in the air and men in hard hats moving around a man in a suit who laughed too loudly when Mikel arrived. Ann kept behind Rhea and wrote everything down. Halfway through, the site manager pointed at a budget line that did not match the folder in her hands.

Ann felt Mikel’s attention before he spoke. She stepped closer and said it low, only for him. “That number moved since yesterday.”

He did not thank her. He turned to the manager and cut the man’s laugh in half with one question. The rest of the visit went colder after that, faster too.

In the car back, Rhea took a call and spoke in a hush. Mikel watched the window, Ann watched the notes she had written so she would not watch him.

“You ran last night,” he said. Ann kept her eyes on the page. “I had to.”

“Did you make it?” The question was so plain it startled her. “Yes.”

He moved his head once, as if a box had been checked, then his voice dropped back into steel. “Do not make a habit of leaving my work for the last hour of the night. If I keep you, you stay until I say otherwise.”

Rhea ended her call and pretended she had heard nothing. The car pulled up to Damaris Group, Mikel got out first without looking back.

Rhea caught Ann’s arm before she could follow. “Listen to me,” she said, quiet and sharp. “He does not ask how people spend their nights. He does not ask if they made it anywhere, whatever that was, do not dress it up as kindness.”

Ann pulled free and smoothed her sleeve. “I wasn’t going to.”

But on the way up to the forty-second floor, the question sat in her chest anyway.