“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!”—THE PARALYZED MAFIA BOSS SCREAMED WHEN A PENNILESS MAID TOUCHED HIS LEGS, BUT WHEN SHE STOPPED THE SPASMS HIS DOCTORS COULDN'T CONTROL, HE DISCOVERED THE WOMAN WHO GAVE HIM HOPE WAS CONNECTED TO THE NIGHT HE WAS SHOT / Chapter 3 / 10

Chapter 3 - THE PARALYZED MAFIA BOSS FOUND HIS YOUNG MAID CRYING OVER AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH IN THE SERVANTS' QUARTERS—BUT WHEN HE RECOGNIZED THE MAN STANDING BESIDE HER, HE REALIZED SHE WAS CONNECTED TO THE NIGHT SOMEONE TRIED TO MURDER HIM

I stared at the message until the letters stopped looking like words.

Ask her what she did to yours.

I had no brother by blood. But Carmine Russo had lived under my father's roof from the age of fourteen, after his own parents died in a warehouse fire. We had learned to fight together, stolen our first car together, and buried my father together. He was the only person who knew where the old emergency operations account was kept. He was also the man who had dragged me into the armored car at Pier Nineteen while bullets struck the concrete around us.

I called him to my study. He came without delay.

“Did you tell Victoria about the account?” I asked.

He looked offended. “She had access when you were engaged. Your signature authorized it.”

“Did you tell her where I would be that night?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

His expression hardened. “We have been asking that question for six months.”

I held out the phone. He read the message, then looked at me. For the first time since the attack, he appeared genuinely hurt.

“You think I did it.”

“I think someone wants me to.”

“That isn't a denial.”

“Neither is it an accusation.”

We had survived too much together for me to destroy him on the strength of a message sent by a stranger. But trust was not a reason to stop asking questions. It was a reason to ask them carefully.

“Keep the original image,” I said. “Have it examined. And Carmine? Until we know who sent it, don't share the investigation with anyone outside this room.”

He nodded, but the old ease between us was gone.

The next morning I found Fay crying in the servants' quarters. I hadn't gone there looking for her. I was testing the new wheelchair route Margaret had insisted the staff clear, a route that let me reach the garden without passing through the grand staircase. A half-open door revealed Fay sitting on the edge of a narrow bed, holding a photograph in both hands.

Her shoulders shook once. She wiped her face with the heel of her palm, then tried to fold the picture away. I should have rolled past. Instead I knocked on the frame.

“May I come in?”

She looked startled. “You're asking permission?”

“I'm learning.”

She gave a broken laugh and nodded.

The room was smaller than one of my closets. A blue blanket covered the bed. A mug of cold tea sat on the windowsill. Her eviction notice lay on the dresser, beside an envelope addressed to a landlord. I noticed the date: Friday. Tomorrow.

“You don't have to tell me why you're upset,” I said.

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you looked alone.”

She glanced at the photograph. “I am.”

I waited. When she finally turned it toward me, my mouth went dry.

Fay stood beside a smiling man with brown hair and a scar along his chin. Ethan Willis. I knew his face from Carmine's file. But there was a third person in the photograph, half hidden behind Ethan's shoulder: a broad man in a navy jacket with a distinctive tattoo rising above his collar.

I knew that tattoo.

It was a black anchor wrapped in barbed wire, the emblem of a waterfront crew that had worked for me before the shooting. Its leader, Paul Vescari, had supposedly died in a fire three months earlier.

“Where was this taken?” I asked.

“Outside the St. Catherine's loading dock. Ethan sent it to me two days before you were shot.”

“Why is Vescari with him?”

She frowned. “You know that man?”

“He worked for me. Then he stole from me. We were trying to find him when the warehouse burned.”

Fay looked down at the photograph. “Ethan told me the man with the tattoo had promised him money to move medical supplies. Ethan thought it was a legitimate delivery. Later he discovered the crates didn't contain medicine.”

“What did they contain?”

“He wouldn't say. He told me he was afraid someone would listen to his phone.”

The photograph had a date stamped in one corner. Two days before Pier Nineteen. If Vescari had been coordinating deliveries through the hospital, the attack on me might have involved more than an ambitious rival. It might have involved someone using a medical facility as cover for criminal shipments.

“Why didn't you show Carmine this?” I asked.

“Because Ethan told me not to trust anyone with a Corso badge.”

I looked at her. “That includes me.”

“Yes.”

The answer was painful. It was also honest.

“Then why show me?”

“Because you asked before coming into my room. And because last night I heard you tell Mrs. Gable to pay the night cleaners even though they couldn't finish their shift during the storm. People who do that aren't always the people the newspapers describe.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong about me. Instead I asked whether I could have a copy of the photograph. She agreed, provided the original stayed with her. We took a picture with my phone, making sure the date and faces were clear.

When I returned to my study, Dr. Brooks was waiting with a physical therapist named Nina Patel. They had come to discuss whether I would consider a supervised rehabilitation assessment. My first impulse was to send them away. Then I remembered Fay saying that standing and happiness were not the same thing.

“I'll listen,” I said.

Brooks looked surprised. Nina did not. She explained that rehabilitation could help with strength, transfers, skin protection, pain management, and independence regardless of whether I recovered the ability to walk. She emphasized that spasms were not proof of restored voluntary movement. I disliked the caution, but I appreciated that she refused to sell me a miracle.

“We start with what you can do today,” Nina said. “Not what you wish had happened yesterday.”

For the first time, I agreed to a trial session.

It was harder than I expected. Not physically, at first. Emotionally. I had to let someone watch me attempt a transfer I could not complete without assistance. My hands shook. My temper rose. I nearly ordered Nina out.

She waited without flinching. “We can stop. Or we can adjust the setup and try again. Your choice.”

Choice. I had spent six months convinced I had none.

We adjusted the chair, checked the brakes, and tried again. This time I managed more of the movement myself. It was a small victory, invisible to the men who used to salute me. I wanted to tell Fay. I did not know why that mattered so much.

I kept the photograph open on my phone long after Fay returned to her work. The man I had been before the shooting would have sent a team to find Vescari and demanded answers at gunpoint. The man in the wheelchair had to confront a different truth: rushing toward an enemy was not the same as protecting the people caught between us. I called a lawyer I trusted outside the organization and asked her to preserve copies of the photograph, the threatening message, and the financial records. If crimes had been committed at the hospital or the docks, I wanted evidence that would survive more than one man's anger. The lawyer asked whether I understood what such evidence might reveal about my own businesses. I told her I did. For once, I meant it.

Later, as the sun sank behind the frozen lake, I tried to remember my last conversation with Ethan Willis. He had stood outside the shipping office, cap in his hands, asking whether he could speak privately. I had been late for a meeting. I told him to talk to Carmine. He had looked disappointed, then frightened, but I hadn't stopped. That memory bothered me more than any accusation Victoria could make. Perhaps Ethan had tried to warn me. Perhaps I had taught everyone around me that telling the truth was dangerous. If he was alive, I intended to give him the chance I had denied him the first time.

At lunch, Mrs. Gable announced that Victoria Ashford had requested a meeting. She had sent flowers and a handwritten note about wanting to make peace. I ordered the flowers returned.

“She says it's about the shooting,” Margaret added.

That changed things.

Victoria arrived at three wearing a cream coat that cost more than Fay's yearly wages. She looked around the drawing room with the proprietary confidence of someone who had once planned to redecorate it.

“Dominic,” she said softly. “You look well.”

“I look seated.”

She flinched, then recovered. “I heard you've hired a new girl.”

“I've hired several people.”

“This one has a history.”

“So do you.”

Victoria crossed her legs. “I came because I'm worried. Fay Willis was at St. Catherine's when your medical records went missing. She was questioned about unauthorized access.”

I kept my face still. “Who told you that?”

“A friend.”

“Which friend?”

She looked away. “I don't want to involve anyone else.”

“Then you shouldn't have involved yourself.”

Her smile disappeared. “You think she's innocent because she knows how to rub your legs?”

I felt a cold anger, different from the rage that had made me throw trays. “Don't speak about my injury like that.”

“I only mean she's manipulating you.”

“Then bring evidence. Not gossip.”

Victoria stood abruptly. “You'll regret trusting her.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I've already regretted trusting you.”

She left without touching the flowers she had sent.

Afterward I asked Carmine to confirm whether Fay had ever been formally accused of wrongdoing at the hospital. He returned with a public record: she had given a witness statement during an internal investigation. There was no allegation against her. Victoria had twisted a witness's cooperation into an accusation.

I found Fay in the conservatory watering the plants. She had a small cut on her finger and a streak of soil on her cheek. I told her Victoria had visited. Her shoulders stiffened.

“She knows I'm here?”

“Yes.”

“Then I should leave.”

“Why?”

“Because if she's connected to Ethan's disappearance, she'll use me to get to him.”

I watched her hands tremble around the watering can. This was the first time she had looked truly frightened in my presence. Not when I shouted. Not when my guards reached for their guns. Only now, when she believed her brother might suffer because of her.

“Fay, look at me.”

She did.

“You are not trapped here. If you want to leave, I won't stop you. If you stay, you'll have a secure room and the same right to call for help as anyone else. I will not ask you to trade your freedom for protection.”

Her eyes filled. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you did something for me when I didn't deserve it.”

“You were in pain.”

“I was cruel.”

“Both can be true.”

I nodded. “Both are true.”

For a moment we were silent, listening to rain tap the glass. Then she said, “I didn't come here to hurt you, Dominic.”

It was the first time she had used my name without the title. I found that I didn't want her to take it back.

“I believe you,” I said. “But I need to know who sent you.”

She reached into the pocket of her uniform and produced a small brass key attached to a paper tag. On the tag was a number: 19-B.

“Ethan mailed this to me the week he disappeared. I thought it was a storage locker. I tried every place I could find. None of them had that number.”

I recognized it immediately. Nineteen-B was the old records vault beneath Pier Nineteen, a room sealed after the shooting. Only a handful of people knew it existed.

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?” I whispered.

“Because I didn't know whether the key would open a door or a grave.”

I turned the brass key in my palm. The metal was warm from her hand.

At that moment my phone rang. Carmine's name appeared on the screen. I answered and heard gunfire in the background.

“Boss,” he said, breathing hard, “someone broke into the sealed records vault. We caught one man. He had a photograph of Fay.”

“Where are you?”

“Pier Nineteen. And Dominic—there's something else.”

I tightened my grip on the phone.

“The man says Ethan Willis isn't missing. He says Ethan's being kept alive because he knows who ordered the shot that put you in that chair.”

Fay saw my expression change. She reached for the edge of the table.

“Who?” I asked.

Carmine hesitated. Then he said a name I had not expected to hear again.