Chapter 1 - The Girl Who Collapsed in the Dark
My hand hovered over the cold steel of the Sig Sauer hidden beneath my pillow. For two years, my instincts had been wired for betrayal and violence. When you run half the criminal enterprises in Chicago from a wheelchair, you expect assassins to come in the dead of night. You expect shadows to carry blades. You do not expect the scent of cheap lemon cleaner and sheer, bone-deep exhaustion.
I slowly turned my head, my grip loosening on the weapon.
Lying on the far edge of my massive, king-sized mattress, curled into a tight little ball on top of the heavy duvet, was Emma. She was still wearing her grey uniform, her cracked, chemical-burned hands tucked under her chin. A stack of folded, fresh linen towels rested on the floor beside the bed. She hadn't sneaked into my bed for seduction or espionage; she had simply sat down on the edge of the mattress to catch her breath while putting away laundry and had literally blacked out from sheer, insurmountable exhaustion.
I stared at her in the dim moonlight filtering through the bulletproof windows. This was a girl who worked a nine-hour shift at a greasy diner, took two public buses across a dangerous city, and then spent the night scrubbing the blood and grime off the floors of a mob boss’s fortress. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow, erratic rhythm. The dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises.
“Emma,” I said, my voice a low, gravelly whisper that usually made grown men tremble.
She didn't stir. She was completely unresponsive, dragged into a comatose sleep by a body that had absolutely nothing left to give.
For the first time since the sniper’s bullet had shattered my spine and stolen my legs, I felt something other than blind, raging fury. I felt a sudden, fierce surge of protective instinct. I looked at my useless legs, trapped beneath the sheets, and then at the girl who had defied me over a glass of water. Everyone else in this house looked at me and saw a broken monster. Emma had looked at me and seen a man who needed his medication and a meal.
I didn't yell for my guards. I didn't press the intercom to have her fired and thrown out into the rain. Instead, I carefully shifted my upper body, using the massive strength I had built in my arms and chest over the last two years. I reached across the expanse of the bed, grabbed the edge of a thick, cashmere throw blanket resting at the foot of the mattress, and gently pulled it over her shivering shoulders.
I lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to the steady sound of her breathing, acting as a silent, paralyzed guardian for a girl who had no one else in the world to protect her.
When the first rays of dawn broke through the windows, Emma suddenly gasped, her eyes flying open. The realization of where she was hit her with the force of a freight train. She scrambled backward, falling off the edge of the bed and hitting the hardwood floor with a loud thud.
“Mr. Romano!” she gasped, her face flushing crimson as she scrambled to her feet, clutching the cashmere blanket. “I… I am so sorry! I just sat down for a second, I swear! I must have passed out. Please don't fire me. I need this job. I’ll work the next three shifts for free, just please—”
“Emma,” I interrupted, my voice calm, completely lacking its usual venom. “Stop talking.”
She froze, terrified, bracing herself for the explosive rage I was famous for.
“You aren't fired,” I said, staring at her wide, panicked eyes. “But your shift is over. Go down to the kitchen, tell the chef to make you a hot breakfast, and have one of my drivers take you home. You don't ride the bus anymore. Understood?”
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She looked at me as if I had just spoken to her in a foreign language. “You’re… you’re letting me stay?”
“I’m telling you to go eat,” I replied, turning my face toward the window. “And Emma? Tomorrow night, just leave the towels on the chair.”
