Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
She saw him. She'd always seen him.
And this morning, in his kitchen, with her back against the counter and her fingers in his shirt, she'd been right about every word.
His phone buzzed.
He shouldn't check it. He was driving. He was on the ramp between the garage and the motorway, and the Monaco traffic required attention, and he was a man who didn't check his phone while driving because discipline was the architecture of his entire life.
He checked it.
One message. From Mia.
Your hands were shaking. That wasn't a mistake and you know it.
His foot hit the brake. The car stopped in the middle of the ramp. A horn blared behind him. He didn't hear it.
He read it twice. Three times. The words were simple and merciless, because Mia Robertson had never learned to pull her punches, and the worst part, the part that made his chest crack open right there in a concrete ramp with a Fiat screaming past him, was that she was right.
His hands had been shaking. It wasn't a mistake. He knew it.
He sat there for ten seconds. Fifteen. He was typing before he could stop himself.
I know.
He hit Send. Pulled the car into gear. Drove.
Two words. The most dangerous two words he'd ever typed, because I know wasn't a denial. It wasn't a wall. It was a door left open, and Mia Robertson was a girl who walked through every door he failed to lock.
He tightened his grip on the wheel and drove to Ace Royale and didn't let himself think about what he'd just done.
It didn't work.
MIA
The clinic was nothing like she expected.
She had imagined something sterile. White walls, fluorescent lights, a reception desk with pamphlets about addiction and a woman who spoke in the soothing, practised tones of someone trained to handle fragile people. Something clinical. Something that whispered: This is a place where broken things get fixed.
Instead, the space adjacent to Ace Royale was warm and wood-panelled and smelled like fresh coffee and old books. The chairs in the waiting room were leather, not plastic. The art on the walls was abstract but expensive, the sort you found in Monaco penthouses, not government offices. And the woman behind the front desk, who introduced herself as Dr. Vasquez, was small and dark-haired and sharp-eyed and wore heels that Mia could never have walked in without injuring herself and at least two bystanders.
"Mia Robertson?" Dr. Vasquez's handshake was firm. "Artem briefed me. You're starting in intake."
"Yes. I think so. I mean, he told me I'd be doing intake, but if that's changed, that's totally fine, I can do whatever you need, I'm very flexible, I once volunteered at a dog shelter and they put me in the cat wing and I didn't even complain—"
Dr. Vasquez's mouth twitched. "Intake is fine."
"Great. Amazing. I'll stop talking now."
"Don't worry about it." Dr. Vasquez's expression softened, just a fraction. "Artem mentioned you talk when you're nervous."
Fantastic. So Artem had warned everyone.
"I talk when I'm calm, too," Mia offered. "It's a full-time condition."
Dr. Vasquez gave her what might have been a smile and led her through the clinic. It was bigger than it appeared from the entrance. A corridor opened into a series of consultation rooms, each one designed like a living room rather than an office. There was a small kitchen with a coffee station that put Whitmore to shame. A courtyard with a fountain that caught the sun. And everywhere, the hum of the casino on the other side of the wall, distant and muffled but present, like a heartbeat.
"We see between ten and fifteen clients a day," Dr. Vasquez explained, walking fast enough that Mia had to half-jog to keep up. "Most are self-referred. Some are brought in by family. Your job in intake is paperwork, initial assessment, and making people feel like this isn't the worst decision they've ever made. Can you do that?"
"I'm very good at making people feel like things aren't as bad as they think."
"Even when they are?"
Mia considered this. "Especially when they are."
Dr. Vasquez glanced at her. Something in the expression read maybe this will work, and Mia's chest loosened by a fraction.
The morning passed in a blur of forms and systems and learning which consultation room had the sticky door handle and which coffee machine worked and which one made a sound like a dying animal when you pressed the espresso button. She met two counsellors, both kind and overworked. She filed nine intake forms. She spilled coffee on one of them, which she cleaned up before anyone noticed.
And she checked her phone eleven times.
I know.
That was it. That was all he'd given her. Two words, no punctuation, no follow-up, no indication of whether I know meant I know and I'm coming back or I know and it changes nothing or I know and I'm currently driving my car into the sea because you've broken my entire operating system.