Chapter 7
Winter hit Chicago like a hammer.
The wind coming off Lake Michigan rattled the heavy reinforced glass of the library windows. But inside, the temperature was strictly controlled.
Three months had passed since Dominic’s exile. The city’s underworld had held its breath, waiting for the Corvino family to tear itself apart. Instead, the family tightened its grip. Paulie and Frank, terrified by the reach of a boss who never left his house, fell in line with religious devotion.
The money flowed. The streets were quiet.
And Tessa was no longer just the maid. She was the gatekeeper.
Men who had spent their lives breaking kneecaps and intimidating witnesses now stood nervously in the foyer, waiting for a thirty-year-old woman in tailored slacks to grant them an audience. She managed Vincent’s schedule, his medical routines, and his communication. She was the first face they saw and the last voice they heard before entering his presence.
But the body is not a machine. And a severed spine is not a clean break. It is a chaotic, misfiring circuit board.
It happened on a Tuesday night.
The house was quiet. The security detail patrolled the perimeter in the snow. Vincent was at his desk, reviewing the week’s laundering receipts from a chain of Southside dry cleaners. Tessa was sitting on the leather sofa near the fireplace, reading a hardcover novel.
Without warning, Vincent’s right leg shot straight out.
His knee locked with a violent, sickening crack. His foot hit the underside of the heavy oak desk hard enough to rattle the monitors.
Vincent let out a sharp, breathless grunt. He grabbed the armrests of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white.
Tessa dropped her book. She crossed the room in three strides, dropping to her knees beside his chair.
“Spasm?” Her voice was tight, her hands already reaching for his locked leg.
“Yeah!” Vincent ground out through clenched teeth. Sweat was instantly beading on his forehead. “Bad one.”
He couldn’t feel the pain of the impact against the desk, but he could feel the terrifying phantom pressure in his hips. His brain was sending frantic signals to muscles that refused to listen, causing them to contract with bone-breaking force.
His left leg jerked, kicking out and hitting the desk again.
“Move back,” Tessa ordered.
Vincent unlocked the brakes and pushed the chair away from the desk, giving her room.
Tessa threw her weight over his thighs. She didn’t treat him like fragile glass. She knew better. She wrapped her arms around his shins, pressing his violently jerking legs down toward the floor, using her entire body weight to fight the severe spasticity.
“Breathe, Vince,” she commanded, her face inches from his knees. “Four seconds out. Force your heart rate down.”
His chest heaved. He stared down at her. She was struggling, her boots slipping on the Persian rug as his powerful, uncontrollable leg muscles fought against her hold.
The indignity of it clawed at his throat. He was the most powerful man in the city, and right now he was entirely at the mercy of his own broken nervous system.
“Let go!” Vincent gasped, his voice thick with sudden self-loathing. “Just let it snap. I don’t care.”
“Shut up.” Tessa snapped back. It wasn’t a request. It was an order.
She shifted her grip, pressing her forearm down on his quads.
“You’re not giving up in this room. Not on my watch. Breathe.”
For ten agonizing minutes, they fought a war in the middle of the library.
Vincent fought the panic in his chest. Tessa fought the raw, mechanical force of his dead limbs.
Slowly, the misfiring nerves exhausted themselves. The violent jerks faded into faint tremors, and finally his legs went heavy and slack against the footrests.
Tessa stayed kneeling for a long moment, breathing hard. Her hair had fallen out of its clip, hanging around her face in tangled strands. She didn’t move immediately. She kept her hands on his knees, steadying him, steadying herself.
Vincent looked down at her. His chest was still heaving, but the rage was gone. In its place was something he hadn’t felt in years.
Vulnerability.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words barely audible.
Tessa looked up. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright.
“For what?”
“For this.” He gestured vaguely at his body. “For making you fight my battles. For—”
“Stop.” She cut him off, her voice firm but not unkind. “You don’t apologize for things you can’t control.”
She stood up slowly, her knees popping. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him with those hazel eyes, flecked with green, completely devoid of fear.
“You fought back. That’s what matters.”
Vincent studied her. The cheap vanilla soap. The tired eyes. The hands that had just wrestled his own body into submission. The woman who had every reason to walk away and never look back.
“Why do you stay?” he asked. “The money?”
Tessa was quiet for a moment. She looked at the fireplace, the flames casting shadows across her face.
“At first? Yes.” She turned back to him. “But now?”
She walked over to the sideboard and picked up his glass of scotch. She brought it to him, placing it in his hand.
“Now I stay because I want to see what happens next.”
Vincent wrapped his fingers around the glass. He didn’t drink. He just held it, looking at her.
“Tessa.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to win this city back. All of it. And when I do—”
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“I know,” she said quietly. “I’ll be right here.”
The fire crackled. The wind howled outside. And for the first time in a year, Vincent Corvino allowed himself to believe that maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t alone.
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