Chapter 113: 113. It Is A Huge Amount of Money, But I Still Need The Mother~!

The number settled into the air between them, and Mike let it sit there for a moment because it deserved the moment and also because he was watching her.

She was watching him back.

’HOLY FUCKING SHIT...!!! THIS AIN’T A DREAM, IS IT?!’ Mike screams in his thoughts. ’She’s giving me much, and that... I could use it with a lot of things that I wanted!’

He closed the case himself, carefully, and rested one hand on top of it. "That’s a significant number," he said.

"Tyler is a significant person," she replied.

"He is," Mike agreed.

And then, because the moment called for it and he had been reading the room since he walked in, he said, "But I want to be honest with you..."

"Money is necessary. It’s not always sufficient." He said it evenly, without pressure, letting it be the simple observation it was shaped to appear.

Aveline tilted her head. "Meaning?"

"Meaning that the kind of trust this arrangement requires—access, communication, and the ability to be present in Tyler’s environment in a way that isn’t conspicuous but actually functions—comes from a different kind of relationship than a contract establishes." He kept his voice relaxed, conversational, like a man making a point about logistics. "I’m not saying the money doesn’t matter..."

"I’m saying that money alone is what you offer a security company."

"This is something more specific."

She was quiet for a moment. When she looked at him, there was a quality in her expression that was harder to name than the others, something more considered and also more personal.

"You’re asking for something else," she said.

"I’m saying there’s a foundation that needs to be built," he said. "Between you and me, specifically."

"So that when something comes up, and things will come up, we can address it without three layers of formality between us."

’Time to rizz her up, baby~!’

She looked at him steadily. "And what does that foundation look like, in your view?"

"It looks like this," Mike said. "You and I are talking at three in the morning like two people who understand each other, rather than like two people negotiating a service agreement."

Aveline looked at him for a moment and then looked at the case. "You make it sound uncomplicated."

"It is uncomplicated," he said. "People complicate it by not saying the thing they mean."

"And what do you mean?" she said. She said it with the tone of someone who already sensed the answer and was deciding whether to confirm it.

Mike leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees, and looked at her with the particular directness that he reserved for moments where looking away would be the wrong choice. "I mean that you’re a person who has been managing a large number of things for a long time, and most of the people in your orbit are either employed by you or need something from you, and neither of those categories produces a conversation that feels like an actual one."

He took a moment to exhale. "I’m not employed by you yet."

"And the only thing I need from you right now is for you to be honest about whether this makes sense."

She sat with that thought. The clock ticked steadily. Somewhere deeper in the house, a sound echoed, likely the building settling, and then silence enveloped the room.

"You’re very direct," she said.

"You said you prefer direct."

"I said you prefer direct."

"I do. And so do you," he said it without arrogance, just the simple confidence of someone who had been paying attention since the gate opened. "You’ve been sitting across from me for the past forty minutes, and every question you’ve asked has been precisely the question you meant to ask."

"You didn’t avoid any questions. That only happens when you’re accustomed to being straightforward."

She tilted her head again. It was a small movement, and it happened when she was recalibrating something. "You noticed that."

"I notice most things," Mike said. "It’s not a party trick. It’s just how I’m built."

She looked at him with the careful attention of someone who is deciding whether to find something impressive or unsettling, and then she said, "I believe you."

There was a beat of quiet, but it had a different quality from the ones before it. The earlier quiet had been evaluative.

This one was something else, something that happens when two people have moved past the part of a conversation where they’re assessing each other and into the part where they’re simply present in the same room.

"My husband," she said and then stopped, as though she were deciding how to finish it. "He travels a lot."

"He’s been abroad for most of the last eight months."

"He’ll be back eventually, but." She gestured slightly with one hand, a small movement that contained a larger meaning. "The practical day-to-day is mine."

"That’s a lot to carry," Mike said.

"It is what it is," she said.

He looked at her steadily and said, "Does he know what happened tonight?"

"He’ll know what I tell him," she said. "I will inform him that Tyler had an incident at the university and that I have arranged for someone to be present on campus in the future."

She paused. "He trusts my judgment on these things."

"He should," Mike said. "Your judgment is good."

She looked at him. "You’ve known me for forty minutes."

"Forty-five," Mike said. "And I’ve seen enough."

Something in her expression shifted, something small but legible.

"What exactly have you seen?" she said, and the question was still analytical, but the quality of it had changed, the way the same word sounds different depending on what key it’s played in.

"Someone who doesn’t make decisions slowly," Mike said. "Someone who opened a gate at three in the morning for a stranger because her son was hurt and she had already decided in the first ten seconds whether that stranger was a problem or not."

He kept his voice level. "Someone who cleaned a cut on a person she’d never met before because waiting for staff to do it felt like the wrong distance to keep."

Aveline was quiet. She was looking at him, and he did not look away from it.

"You noticed that too," she said.

"I told you," Mike said. "Most things."

She laughed then, briefly, and it was genuine and slightly surprised, the laugh of someone who did not often get caught out by observations they hadn’t anticipated. It changed her face in the way that a real laugh always does, in ways that are harder to manage than the composed version.

"You’re going to be either very useful or very inconvenient," she said.

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive," Mike said.

"No," she agreed. "They’re not."

She looked at him again, and this time she didn’t quite look away. "What do you actually want from this arrangement?"

"And I don’t mean the answer you gave me earlier about foundations and communication channels. I mean the real one."

Mike looked back at her calmly. "I want Tyler left alone."

"I want to be paid fairly. And I want the conversations to be like this one."

"Like this one," she repeated.

"Where we say the thing we mean," he said. "Without three layers of formality between us."

She was quiet for a long moment. She had a particular stillness to her when she was thinking, not the stillness of someone waiting but the stillness of someone who was very much in motion internally and had learned to keep that invisible. Mike watched it and found it interesting.

"You said that already," she said finally. "About the formality."

"I know. I meant it both times."