Chapter 6 : Run

Every time Mia feels like she is starting to get the hang of this job, something new happens to throw her completely off track. She is still actively applying to other jobs, but ever since the day in the library, two major things happened.

Firstly, Elon seems to be finding time to talk to her every day, if only for a few minutes. That time has truly become the best part of her day. After she finished his book, he traded her for a novel about a CEO and his assistant getting involved in an embezzlement scam. He told her that he knew it wasn’t exactly the how-to guide that she might have needed, but that the themes were close enough. Mia loved it and made him promise that she could choose the next book.

Hesitantly, Elon agreed.

Secondly, however, not everything changed for the better. Elon’s younger brother, Shir, has seemed to take a liking to her. It isn’t the kind of attention she is particularly interested in. The other maids gossiped about his reputation, and a few of them had even been the subject of that attention for a bit before, but he eventually moved out to travel the world.

Mia isn’t surprised to hear any of this. What she is surprised about, however, is that most of them seem to find him charming, or even endearing. Everyone but Sabrina, it seems.

Whenever Mia remembers the sight of him effectively standing close to her, she feels something cold in her stomach. She considers bringing it up to someone, but Sabrina already dislikes her enough, and she really doesn’t want to be the one to tell Elon that his brother is a creep.

Shir hasn’t attempted anything too bad, but his constant trailing after her and treating her like she is a fresh out-of-school girl just waiting to be manipulated is starting to grate on her nerves.

She has never been great at confrontation. The last confrontation she had attempted left her hand swollen for days and she isn’t eager to repeat that. Not to mention, if she hauls off and hits her boss's brother, no matter the context, she knows she will be out of a job faster than she can blink.

Mia won’t risk it just because a man wants to hit on her. She has dealt with worse before, and she knows that Shir won’t be staying forever. He'll get bored eventually, right?

As Mia walks into work for the day, she has her novel choice tucked under her arm. She has absolutely no confidence that Elon will like it, but trying to find a book that he hasn’t already read took a higher priority. There is a decent amount of overlap between what the two are interested in reading, but Mia feels like it mostly has something to do with the fact that she would read just about anything that he puts in front of her.

Mia spots Sabrina walking toward her and deftly hides the book in a pocket in her apron. Mia doesn’t exactly know why she feels the need to keep this “club” to herself, but she does know that Sabrina won’t approve of it.

“I’m going to need you to pull a double shift today,” Sabrina starts, not even bothering to greet her.

Mia has learned at this point not to react, especially since Sabrina had her working until late in the night at least every other day. The overtime pay is just too helpful to turn down. Not to mention, she isn’t exactly given a choice in the matter.

“Okay. Is there anything in particular you want me to take care of today?”

This question always seems to make Sabrina more frustrated, but Mia isn’t going to give her any excuses to get her fired, especially not because of a petty, one-sided grudge.

“Yes. Mr. Shir has been on…how do I say this delicately? A bender, since yesterday morning. I imagine he won’t be back until late tonight, so you have all day to make sure his room is spotless. You’ll need it,” she says with a smirk before taking off again.

Great. While everyone else is busy polishing the same vases they had polished twelve hours ago, Mia will be entering a room that has not been touched since Shir rolled in. He specifically told the staff to take it out of their rotation, but apparently, it got bad enough that it required intervention.

The second that Mia opens the door, she realizes what Sabrina warned her about. Trash is strewn carelessly across every surface, and clothes are crumpled and litter the entire floor in a stomped-down layer through which no part of the floor can be seen.

This isn’t even including the biggest issue. Every table has several plastic bags filled with pills in powders that make every bone in Mia’s body scream at her to not touch them.

She gives herself exactly thirty seconds to curse out both Shir and Sabrina quietly in her head before she gets to the task at hand.

All in all, it takes her five hours to clean the room to the “Dahan expectation”. Though she does make the personal decision to leave the tables untouched. If Sabrina has a problem with that, she will just have to deal with it herself.

Mia goes through the last inspection when she feels a presence in the doorway. When she looks up, she finds Shir, barely on his feet and staring down at her.

Blinking slowly, Mia stands up from the floor and watches him in uncomfortable silence, her stomach dropping steadily down into her feet.

“Maid. Maid Mia. That’s your name, did you know that?” Shir giggles, but his pupils are blown out so far that Mia can’t help but feel like she is staring down a shark.“Why are you in my room? I remember specifically telling you to leave my stuff alone.” Shir’s tone grows more and more serious with every word.

“I’m sorry. Sabrin—”

“I didn’t ask about that bitch. I asked why you were in here. What did you touch?” Shir lurches forward out of the door frame and lands, stomach first, on a table.

“I just cleaned what was on the floor. I did laundry and threw away some trash. I didn’t touch…any of that.” Mia does her best not to let her voice waver.

“But you saw it.” Shir looks up at her like a man possessed, his mouth stretched into a wide, mirthless grin.

“No, I…won’t say anything. I saw nothing, I swear.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you, Mia.” He tilts his head to the side, pouting his lip out. “How are we going to fix that, huh? I think I’ve got a few ideas.” He reaches out a hand toward her wrist and Mia jolts back.

“That wasn’t very nice.” His eyebrows knit together as a wave of slow anger starts to build on his face.

Before Mia knows what she’s doing, she breaks out in a sprint.

“Mia!” he roars after her, and she hears something crash behind her.

But she doesn’t look back.

She runs until her lungs are heaving, a cold sweat dripping down her back.

It’s dark in the mansion; everyone else has clearly gone home already, leaving just her in what feels like a never-ending hallway.

She starts to slow down, hoping to catch her breath, when she hears a singsong voice calling out her name from close by.

Without thinking, she opens the first door she sees and closes it behind her quickly.

She exhales deeply, eyes closed as she shakes off the feeling. When she opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is Elon, walking toward her slowly, face filled with fear.

“Mia, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you okay?” He offers a hand, which she immediately takes. He leads her to a small couch and sits her down, kneeling in front of her and checking her forehead with the back of his hand. “You don’t have a fever, at least. Can you tell me what happened?”

Mia shakes her head aggressively. How could she? He would never believe her.

“Why not?”

The sound of Elon’s voice and the look of pure worry in his gray eyes calm her down.

“It…it was nothing. I’ve been inhaling cleaning supplies with no ventilation for the past few hours. I think I just saw something that wasn’t there,” she lies.

While a part of her desperately wants to tell him, she can’t help but doubt herself. Shir hadn’t technically done anything to her, although the implications in his voice were more than clear to her. But maybe her tired brain exaggerated the situation.

She is away from him now, that was all that mattered.

Elon looks like he doesn’t know if he should believe her, but he ends up dropping it.

“Why are you here so late anyway?” He frowns.

“I was taking some overtime, it happens more often than you’d expect.”

Elon hums. “You could have told me you were here for so long. The least I can do is get you dinner.”

Mia chuckles lightly, her voice still on the edge of unsteady. “Do you have dinner with all your maids?” She smiles at him softly. It's amazing how easily Elon can calm her down just with his presence. Completely different from his brother.

“No, but for you? Any day.” Elon’s fingers brush lightly against her knee as he gets up from the kneeling position to sit next to her. “I can get food now if that would help.”

“No. If you don’t mind, I would rather just sit here with you for a minute.”

Mia knows she's walking on thin ice by asking him that, but she can't think of anything else right now. Her hands are still shaking and her chest hurts from her erratic heartbeat.

Elon nods, not taking his eyes off her. “Can I ask you something?”

She simply nods, unable to say anything else.

Elon gestures to his desk. “Did you leave that book for me?”

Mia can’t fight the smile starting to spread on her face. “You caught me. I didn’t think you’d find it so fast though.”

Elon gives her a strange look. “You seem to have a knack for guessing where I am. I don’t know how to feel about that.”

Mia focuses only on his face, letting all other thoughts slip away. “You really like thinking that you’re mysterious, huh? I know rich people have that tendency to pretend that they’re Gatsby, but you’re really on a whole other level.”

Elon chuckles, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “That’s quite the statement. I won’t deny that I like my privacy, but I suppose I don’t mind if it’s you. I am concerned now with what you think I do all day though. I do actually have a legitimate business.”

Mia waves her hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve completely reformed the tech industry to produce high-end but affordable computer equipment with a large focus on energy-efficient and greener production methods than ever seen before. It’s all very impressive.”

Elon looks at her in shock. “I didn’t tell you that. Mia, have you been…researching me?” He breaks out into a wide grin, looking genuinely touched.

Mia flushes instantly. “I— uh. Maybe. You do fascinating work, that’s all.”

Elon shakes his head, still caught off guard, but trying to regain focus. “Fair enough. Want to tell me about the book then?” Elon encourages.

“Well, it’s a murder mystery…”

Elon gives her a skeptical look.

“But it has one of the best plot twists I’ve ever seen,” she insists.

“Didn’t this start as you wanting to read books that helped you get a job that wasn’t being my maid? How did we get off the rails so quickly?” Elon raises his brow, but she can tell he's enjoying this as much as she is.

“You started it, you never should have given me a novel,” Mia retorts.

“In my defense, the novel was still related to the corporate world.”

“Yes, but you forget that I’m much more likely to be a murder suspect as I am to ever, ever being a CEO,” she jokes.

“You have grand ambitions, Ms. Rodriguez, I wouldn’t put it past you.” Elon stretches his arm out around the back of the couch, his knuckles barely grazing against the back of her neck.

What is he doing? It's always so hard to read his intentions, but Mia can't find it in her to step away this time. Elon is a flirty guy, she knows that by now. And even though she tries to keep it to herself most of the time, she can't deny it's one of the hardest things she has ever had to do in her life.

Elon is not the type of man someone can simply ignore. But Mia needs to think about her. About her future.

Right?

Mia can’t tell if she is the one leaning closer, or if Elon is. All she knows is that every second that passes with him looking into her eyes like that, the closer she finds herself to him.

“What are you doing?” Mia’s voice drops down to a whisper.

He doesn't say anything, but he is so close to Mia that his cologne is inebriating her thoughts.

"Tell me now if you want me to stop," he whispers.