𝐍𝐄𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐄. || 𝘴𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘹 𝘰𝘤

𝟎𝟒 ➻ all about mike

♛ ┇ ▒ ⋅⋅⋅ WALKER ENT. V. GREENFIELD CORP. ⋅⋅⋅ ▒ ┇♛

𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 the entire night without asking Mike about his dirty little secret. And by the end of it, when he sent her home with a complete understanding of how to fill out and file a subpoena, she realized that she didn't want to ask. Ever.

The first time she'd ever met Michael Ross had been their senior year. He'd just transferred out of St. Andrew's private high school, a shaggy-haired new student with impossible genius and a knack for skipping class because he didn't really need to go, anyways.

In any other situation, she never would have affiliated with him. She had been the class valedictorian before he showed up with his perfect GPA, and she chafed against the competition from the get-go. But he was a new kid. And she knew what it was like to be smart enough to get good grades, but too stupid to keep out of trouble.

Trevor Evans was his only friend, and Trevor Evans was the first name that popped up when you Google'd bad influences. If Quinn and Mike hadn't gotten along so well from the start, Trevor's presence would've been too much for her.

It almost was, the one time she came over to Mike's house during college and found Trevor with a briefcase full of weed. Mike had to peel her off of him, and she hadn't spoken to Trevor since she'd given him two black eyes.

It wasn't that she was against drugs. One night earlier, it was Trevor's test-selling schemes that got Mike Ross expelled from college and denied transfer to Harvard. And for all his faults and mistakes, Mike Ross was a good person, and he deserved to be a lawyer.

Trevor took that from him for little more than money. Quinn wasn't going to take it from him for something as useless as her own moral standings. Not after everything she'd done for Mike. Not after everything he'd done for her.

The rest of the week passed uneventfully. Bagels in the morning, break room sandwiches for lunch, and ordering in for dinner using the firm's money. An artifact of a woman by the name of Norma Schultz nearly passed out at Quinn's desk on Wednesday trying to deliver the time and date of the Walker depositions. Quinn sent her off with a cup of coffee from the break room and told her to rest her legs. Other than that and a few mini-conversations with Rachel mostly pertaining to the case at hand, Quinn's life was absorbed by legal work.

It was easy to forget about Mike and his own litany of problems as she researched private investigators, finally coming back to the burden of proof. She didn't have the right to dive in and demand access to personal emails from both corporations, but she could hire someone else to dig deep and find digital records.

The only issue was that she couldn't just hire anyone. Any PI would chomp at the bit to work for Pearson Hardman, even if they were only being hired by an associate. The best private investigators weren't found on the internet, either. That's what made them private.

She'd have to find another way.

Quinn shut her computer off and leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms. Maybe she could speak to Louis, or try her hand with Norma on the grounds that the woman wouldn't sneeze herself off this mortal coil. She doubted Rachel had deep knowledge on where to find the best detectives in the city, but there wasn't harm in asking. Her last resort...

She didn't want to think about her last resort, so she got to her feet and directed herself towards the break room before she gave her iron deficiency anything else to work with.

She didn't even make it halfway to the room before stopping, her eyes not processing what she was seeing.

Mike Ross, sitting in a corner office playing with a basketball. And at the desk of that office... the man she'd run into at the bagel shop earlier this week. Her eyes darted to the name on the door.