Chapter 2
She moved to the side table and put the tray down without allowing the porcelain to make noise.
She looked worse than usual.
Her eyes were dark.
Her skin almost translucent.
And she was limping.
“What happened to your knee?”
Diamond continued facing the monitors.
His attention was entirely on her.
“Slipped on the ice outside the diner,” Caprice said.
“It’s fine.”
“You shouldn’t be walking on it.”
“I have to walk to clean.”
She brought the coffee to the desk and placed it precisely on a coaster.
Then she turned.
Her bad knee buckled.
Caprice caught herself against the desk with a sharp intake of breath.
Diamond moved instinctively.
His hand caught her wrist.
His grip was strong.
He felt the thin bones under her skin.
The frantic pulse beneath his fingers.
Caprice went completely still.
She did not pull away.
She simply looked at his hand.
“Sit,” Diamond ordered.
“Mr. Kelly—”
“I said sit.”
He released her and pointed toward the small sofa near the fireplace.
Caprice limped across the room and sank down.
Her eyes closed for a moment.
A long, shuddering breath escaped.
“I’ll rest it for a minute. Then I’ll finish the library.”
Diamond moved his chair toward the fireplace and activated the gas flame.
Warm light filled the room.
Then he turned to face her.
Caprice stared into the fire.
The warmth seemed to loosen something inside her.
Her shoulders dropped.
Her head rested against the sofa.
“Tell me about the debt,” Diamond said.
Caprice did not turn away from the flames.
“Medical bills. My mother had a stroke. No insurance. Then the memory problems started.”
Her voice sounded mechanical.
“The facility costs $5,000 a month. The rest is survival. Rent. Food. Interest.”
She said it like a list she had repeated until the details no longer felt attached to a human life.
Diamond watched the fire move across her face.
In his world, $30,000 or $40,000 was nothing.
A rounding error.
The cost of a watch.
For Caprice, it was a mountain pressing against her lungs.
“I could wipe it out.”
Diamond spoke quietly.
“1 phone call. Your mother’s facility paid for 10 years. Your debt gone.”
Caprice finally turned.
There was no hope in her face.
Only suspicion.
“Nothing is free, Mr. Kelly. I don’t have anything you want.”
Diamond thought about women from the life before the bullet.
Women in silk.
Diamonds.
Affection carefully calculated against his money.
Then he looked at Caprice.
Cheap canvas apron.
Hands damaged by bleach.
Face hollow from sacrifice.
“You underestimate your worth.”
Caprice shook her head.
“I’m tired. I don’t want games.”
“It’s not a game.”
“Then what is it?”
Her mouth twisted into a humorless expression.
“Pity?”
She shifted forward.
“I don’t want your pity. I want to do my job.”
Caprice put both hands on her thighs to stand.
But the fire was warm.
The room was quiet.
And the exhaustion finally won.
Her eyes closed.
She murmured something incoherent, a weak protest against her own body.
Then she fell backward into the cushions.
Within seconds, her breathing became slow and heavy.
Real sleep.
Diamond remained in his wheelchair.
He did not wake her.
He did not call anyone to move her.
He watched.
The fire moved softly.
Rain hammered against the glass.
Diamond rolled closer.
Sleep had softened Caprice’s face.
The lines of worry disappeared.
She looked younger.
At peace.
For 2 years, Diamond had lived inside rage.
He hated his body.
Hated the world for continuing while he remained attached to a chair.
He looked for reasons to punish everyone around him because he believed fate had punished him first.
But watching Caprice sleep because the world had finally taken everything she had available to give, the rage quieted.
She had never tried to fix him.
Never promised recovery.
Never told him things would improve.
She had handed him a pill and told him to stop screaming so she could work.
She treated him like a person.
A difficult person.
An irritating person.
Still a person.
Diamond slowly reached toward her.
His knuckles brushed the cheap fabric of the apron.
He did not touch her skin.
His hand simply remained close.
A strange sensation pulled at the edges of his mouth.
Rusty.
Almost forgotten.
Diamond Kelly, the paralyzed king of a decaying empire, looked at the exhausted maid asleep beside him.
And smiled.
Caprice woke to rain hitting glass.
For several terrifying seconds, she had no idea where she was.
The room smelled of leather and wood smoke rather than bleach and old grease.
She sat up quickly.
Her heart pounded.
Gray morning light came through the bulletproof windows of the study.
Caprice looked down at herself.
The canvas apron was wrinkled.
Her hands were still raw.
Then she looked across the room.
Diamond sat at his desk.
The monitors were dark.
An untouched cup of cold coffee rested beside his elbow.
The fireplace had burned down to embers.
He was simply watching her.
Caprice checked the plastic watch on her wrist.
6:00 a.m.
“I fell asleep.”
Her voice scraped against her throat.
She stood too quickly.
Pain shot through her injured knee.
She ignored it and reached for the rag lying near the coffee table.
“Mr. Kelly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
She began moving frantically.
“I’ll pack my things. You don’t have to pay me for the shift.”
She waited for the shouting.
The dismissal.
Everything Mrs. Higgins had warned her about.
“Sit down, Caprice.”
“I need to go. I have the diner shift in an hour. If I miss the bus—”
“I called the diner.”
Caprice stopped.
The rag fell from her hand.
“You what?”
“I had Levi call the manager.”
Diamond’s face revealed nothing.
“You resigned. Effective immediately.”
The blood left Caprice’s face.
A ringing filled her ears.
The diner was her anchor.
It paid almost nothing.
But it paid cash.
Cash kept electricity running when banks froze her accounts.
“You had no right,” she whispered.
Her hands closed into fists.
The numbness that normally protected her was gone.
“You sit inside this fortress and think you can play with people’s lives?”
Her voice rose.
“I needed that job. I need to eat. I need to pay for my mother’s care.”
“Your mother’s care is paid.”
Caprice went completely still.
“What?”
Diamond took a cream-colored envelope from his shirt and tossed it onto the desk.
It landed softly.
“The memory-care facility is paid in full for the next 5 years.”
He continued as though discussing ordinary business.
“The medical debt from the stroke has been cleared. The collection agencies were informed that any further attempt to contact you will be treated as a personal insult to me.”
Diamond’s gaze remained on her.
“They won’t call again.”
Caprice stared at the envelope.
It looked dangerous.
Nothing in her life had ever been free.
If Diamond Kelly paid someone’s debts, that person belonged to him.
“Why?”
Her voice trembled.
She did not approach the desk.
“I don’t have anything to give you. I won’t do illegal work. I won’t move drugs. I won’t hide guns.”
She swallowed.
“And I won’t sleep with you.”
Diamond laughed sharply.
There was no humor in it.
Only bitterness.
He gestured toward his legs.
“I’m a paraplegic, Caprice. I’m not looking for a bedmate.”
His expression hardened again.
“And I have hundreds of men for my business. I don’t need an exhausted maid moving guns.”
“Then why?”
She stepped closer.
“Why would you do this?”
Diamond looked into her frightened face.
He could not tell her the truth.
He could not tell her that watching her sleep had given him the 1st moment of peace he had felt in 2 years.
He could not admit that her life mirrored his own cage.
That fixing her problems was 1 of the only things left in the world that his power could still accomplish.
That kind of vulnerability could destroy him.
So Diamond lied.
He leaned back.
The cold criminal persona returned.
“Because your exhaustion is a liability.”
His tone turned harsh.
“You limp around my house. You drop things. You fall asleep on furniture. It annoys me.”
He met her eyes.
“I need my environment controlled. Quiet. You are loud with your misery.”
Caprice flinched.
The words hurt because they sounded believable.
Exactly like something a man like Diamond would say.
“I’m keeping you on staff,” he continued. “But you move to the day shift. You work only in this wing.”
He spoke without hesitation.
“You clean. Bring my meals. Manage the schedules of medical personnel I keep firing.”
Diamond paused.
“I’ll pay triple what the diner and agency were paying combined.”
Caprice looked at him.
Then at the envelope.
5 years.
Her mother was safe for 5 years.
No final notices.
No calls in the middle of the night.
No fear of eviction.
The pressure she had carried for 3 years disappeared so suddenly that she almost became dizzy.
She crossed the room.
Her hands shook as she opened the envelope.
Bank receipts.
PAID stamped across them.
Tears gathered immediately.
They fell silently.
No sobbing.
Caprice simply stood over the papers and cried.
Diamond’s jaw tightened.
He turned toward the window.
The sight of her tears awakened a dangerous desire to comfort her.
He hated it.
“Wipe your face,” he said gruffly.
“Shift starts at 8:00.”
The estate changed almost immediately.
Caprice was no longer a ghost working after midnight.
She became part of the east wing.
The canvas apron disappeared.
In its place came dark trousers and simple blouses.
With the debt gone and actual sleep returning to her nights, some of the gray exhaustion faded from her skin.
But working near Diamond meant entering his world.
Men in dark suits appeared at every hour.
Coats bulged over hidden weapons.
Arguments stopped when she entered rooms.
She learned how to pour coffee and disappear whenever words like shipment, territory, and retaliation appeared.
Levi watched her.
Suspicion remained.
One afternoon, while Diamond was on a secure telephone call, Levi found Caprice alone in the industrial kitchen preparing lunch.
Grilled chicken.
Black coffee.
No sugar.
“He doesn’t do charity,” Levi said.
He leaned against the steel counter with his arms folded.
“Dom doesn’t wipe out $50,000 in debt because someone looks tired.”
Caprice continued working.
“You should ask him.”
“I work here, Mr. Ward.”
“I did ask.”
Levi’s voice flattened.
“He told me to mind my business.”
His eyes remained on her.
“Which makes it my business.”
Caprice put a fork beside the plate.
“You’re a distraction. He’s making stupid decisions.”
Levi stepped closer.
“He let a rival crew take 2 blocks in the South End last week because he was too busy arguing with an architect about redesigning the ramps in the east wing.”
Caprice stopped.
“Ramps?”
She remembered Diamond struggling with the lip of the library doorway.
She had quietly used a heavy book to create a slope.
He had noticed.
“I clean rooms and bring food,” Caprice said.
She picked up the tray.
“I don’t control his territory. If he’s losing blocks, that’s your failure. Not mine.”
Levi stepped directly into her path.
The air chilled.
“Watch your mouth.”
His gaze sharpened.
“You think because he bought your debt, you’re untouchable?”
He leaned closer.
“You’re a pet, Caprice. A stray he pitied. The moment you become a liability, I’ll remove you myself.”
Caprice looked directly at him.
“I’ve been a liability to everyone I’ve ever met, Levi.”
She stepped around him.
“Take a number.”
Her heart was pounding.
Her back stayed straight.
The real change between Caprice and Diamond did not happen during daylight.
It happened during the nerve-pain attacks.
One Tuesday evening, a snowstorm buried the city.
The temperature dropped into single digits.
Caprice was organizing ledgers in the private library when something crashed inside the study.
She ran.
Diamond was on the floor.
His wheelchair lay on its side.
The wheels still turned slowly.
He had dragged himself halfway toward the desk.
His arms shook.
His face twisted with pain.
His motionless legs dragged behind him.
“Don’t touch me!”
Diamond swung an arm outward.
A bronze lamp flew from a side table and shattered against the wall.
His body had become a trap.
May you like
Nerves below the spinal injury were sending chaotic signals into the brain.
To Diamond, his dead legs felt as though they were being crushed.
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