Wait For You - 'Look After You' Sequel - A Michael Jackson Fanfiction

Chapter 20

Michael
-

The lobby was too bright for this late.
Bleached tile. Buzzing lights. A desk clerk pretending not to clock us like we were ordinary.

Evelyn walked beside me, heels silent but sharp. Her perfume trailed behind her, not soft, not sweet. Something spiced and weaponized.

We didn't speak in the elevator. Never did when it counted.

In the suite, I shut the door with a quiet click and locked it.

She moved like she always had. Like she owned any room she entered and didn't need permission to prove it.

Her purse hit the table like a deadline.

"Ground rules," I said, dragging my coat off. "If my people run your floor, they answer to your leads. But after hours, they're mine. No split loyalties."

She didn't miss a beat. "Fine. I want two on the cage, one on the east exit, one floater who can read a room without killing the mood."

"Ramon'll float. He disappears when needed."

She nodded, "Two-week rotations," she added. "Nobody gets too comfortable with one angle."

"Make a list," I said. "I'll handle the rest."

She moved toward the window. Checked her reflection. Not for vanity, just for threat. She scanned herself like she was casing a mark. That mark just happened to be her.

"What about the sellers Dom left behind?" she asked.

"They'll feel the vacuum," I said. "And people who feel start slipping."

"Could be messy," she muttered.

"It's useful," I corrected.

The silence stretched. That kind of silence that shifts the atmosphere instead of ending a conversation.

Then she turned. "What now?"

"Now we stop bleeding on the carpet," I said. "Pick your four. I'll keep 'em paid, quiet, and close."

Her fingers touched the edge of the table. "You were going to leave."

"I still am."

That wasn't a lie. But it wasn't the full truth either.

"Sure," she said. Not a question. Not sarcasm. Just the mirror held up.

I set my phone face-down. "Don't start a debate you can't win."

She didn't flinch. "We both know leaving's easy. Staying's the risk."

She was right.

But I didn't nod. Didn't give her the inch.

Instead, we sank back into logistics, people, gaps, names we didn't trust. Letting the work be the buffer we needed to pretend we weren't still bleeding from what came before.

Then she asked it.

"When did it hit you... that I wasn't dead?"

I looked at her. And I didn't try to hide the truth.

"When you walked into my office. No warning. Just a door creaking open and every part of me I'd buried walking back in like it never left."

She didn't flinch either. She just stared at me for a moment before speaking, "For me it was the way you said my name."

Like it still belonged to me.

She didn't say that part out loud.

"It never stopped weighing something," I said.