Page 47 of Belong to Me
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.
Twelve times. She checked it twelve times.
On the thirteenth check, she put the phone in her desk drawer and closed it with more force than was strictly necessary.
Focus, Mia. You have a job. You have responsibilities. You are a professional adult who doesn't refresh her text messages like a fourteen-year-old waiting for a boy to—
She opened the drawer. Checked. Nothing.
She closed it again.
It was just after lunch when he walked in.
Not Alexei. Someone else. Someone she had never seen before.
He was tall and blond, with blue eyes and a face that belonged on a cologne advertisement. His clothes were expensive in a manner that announced the money had been there long enough to stop being interesting. He moved through the clinic entrance with the easy confidence of someone who was used to being welcome everywhere he went.
