Chapter 1 - The Man Who Stopped Showing Up|
The first thing Camille Whitmore did after Vincent Bellori lost the use of his legs was move her wedding dress out of his bedroom.
The second thing she did was stop touching him.
The third was worse.
She began speaking about him as if he were already dead.
“He’s resting,” she told visitors.
“He can’t handle business right now.”
“The doctors don’t want him upset.”
Vincent heard every word.
From the second floor of his stone mansion outside Chicago, he listened while the woman who had once promised to stand beside him built a new life downstairs using his name, his money, and the fear he had spent twenty years creating.
The bullet had missed his heart.
Sometimes Vincent thought that was the cruel part.
It had entered near his lower spine during an ambush outside a restaurant eight months earlier. The surgeons saved his life, but they could not save the nerves that controlled his legs.
He had gone into the hospital as Vincent Bellori, a man whose phone calls could empty a nightclub, settle a labor dispute, or make a debtor disappear from the city before sunrise.
He came home in a wheelchair.
To Camille, that made him someone else.
On a freezing November morning, Vincent sat beside the bedroom windows while sleet tapped against the glass.
Camille stood in front of the mirror fastening diamond earrings.
“You’re going out again,” he said.
It was not a question.
She glanced at his reflection rather than at him.
“Lunch.”
“With Marcus?”
Her fingers stopped.
Only for a second.
Then she smiled.
“Marcus is helping hold things together.”
Marcus Dane had been Vincent’s underboss for eleven years.
Vincent had taught him how to negotiate, how to read a room, how to know when a man was lying before the lie finished leaving his mouth.
Now Marcus had begun holding meetings without him.
“Tell Marcus to come upstairs,” Vincent said.
Camille sighed.
“He’s busy.”
“I’m his boss.”
“Vincent.”
She finally turned around.
There was irritation in her face.
Not grief.
Not concern.
Irritation.
“You have physical therapy at eleven. The nurse said you need to conserve your energy.”
“My physical therapist doesn’t run my organization.”
“No, but apparently neither do you anymore.”
Silence filled the room.
Camille seemed to realize she had gone too far, but she did not apologize.
Vincent’s hands tightened around the wheelchair rims.
She looked at them.
Then she looked at his legs.
That glance lasted less than a second.
It cut deeper than the bullet.
Camille picked up her purse.
“I’ll be home for dinner.”
“Don’t bother.”
She paused at the door.
“Don’t start this again.”
“Start what?”
“Making me feel guilty because I still have a life.”
Vincent stared at her.
For years men had feared that stare.
Camille merely adjusted the strap of her purse.
“You think this is easy for me?” she said. “I was supposed to marry a man who walked into rooms and owned them.”
“I still own them.”
Her expression softened into pity.
Vincent would have preferred hatred.
“No,” she whispered. “You own a house you barely leave.”
Then she walked out.
The door closed quietly.
Vincent sat alone.
For several minutes, nothing moved except the sleet outside.
Then a voice came from behind him.
“She’s cruel.”
Vincent turned sharply.
A woman stood in the doorway holding fresh towels.
She wore a simple gray housekeeping uniform, white sneakers, and her brown hair was twisted into a loose knot.
Nora Bennett.
Thirty-one years old.
She had been working in the house for six weeks.
Vincent had spoken perhaps twenty sentences to her.
“You listen at doors?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then how did you hear?”
“She said it loud enough for the dead to hear.”
Vincent almost smiled.
Almost.
“You’re brave today.”
“I’m tired today. Sometimes they look the same.”
Nora entered and placed the towels on a chair.
Unlike nearly everyone else in the mansion, she never stared at his wheelchair.
She also never avoided it.
If it blocked her path, she asked him to move.
If his foot slipped from the support, she fixed it without making a ceremony of the act.
If he dropped something, she handed it back rather than pretending she had not noticed.
It infuriated him.
It also made her the only person in the house he could tolerate.
“You’re not paid to comment on my fiancée,” Vincent said.
“No. I’m paid to clean twelve bathrooms that nobody needs.”
“You could quit.”
“The electric company doesn’t accept pride as payment.”
That time, a sound escaped him.
A short, rusty laugh.
Nora looked surprised.
“So you can do that.”
“Do what?”
“Sound human.”
“Careful.”
“There he is.”
She picked up a laundry basket.
Vincent watched her.
“Why do you work here?”
“You pay better than the hotel.”
“That’s it?”
“My younger brother is in a rehabilitation facility after a construction accident. Insurance pays enough to keep him alive, not enough to help him live. So yes, Mr. Bellori. Money.”
No flattery.
No declaration that she believed in him.
Just truth.
Vincent respected truth because he encountered it so rarely.
“Is he paralyzed?”
Nora’s face changed.
“Partial spinal injury.”
“Will he walk?”
“Maybe.”
The word carried exhaustion.
Vincent looked away.
“Maybe is a cruel word.”
“Yes.”
She said it so quietly that he knew she understood.
Before leaving, Nora stopped beside him.
“Your therapy starts in twenty minutes.”
“I’m not going.”
“You canceled Monday.”
“I know.”
“And Friday.”
“I own a calendar.”
“You also own two legs you can’t feel. They still need care.”
His jaw tightened.
“Get out.”
“Sure.”
She reached the doorway.
Then she turned.
“For what it’s worth, Mr. Bellori, I don’t think you stopped owning rooms because you stopped walking into them.”
Vincent looked at her.
Nora shrugged.
“I think you stopped owning them because you stopped showing up.”
Then she left.
The words stayed.
By evening, the mansion filled with voices.
Cars arrived one after another.
Vincent heard them from upstairs.
Marcus.
Eddie Cole.
Samuel Pike.
Six captains.
Maybe seven.
Men who supposedly could not visit because Vincent needed rest had apparently found plenty of energy for bourbon in his dining room.
He rolled to the bedroom door.
His hand touched the handle.
Stopped.
What was he going to do?
Wheel himself into the room while Marcus stood over him?
Let them watch a caregiver adjust his position?
Let them see the tremors that sometimes hit his hands when his damaged nervous system rebelled?
Before the shooting, Vincent had been six-foot-two and brutally physical. He had built his reputation on intelligence, yes, but fear had a body.
Broad shoulders.
Heavy footsteps.
A man rising slowly from a chair.
Now the chair rolled with him.
He released the handle.
Behind him, Nora was replacing flowers in a vase.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“What?”
“Deciding how everyone will react before giving them the chance.”
Vincent turned.
“You think those men are interested in giving me dignity?”
“No.”
“At least you’re learning.”
“I think they’re interested in taking whatever you surrender.”
Vincent stared at her.
Downstairs, laughter exploded.
Marcus’s laughter.
Coming from Vincent’s dining room.
Something dark moved behind Vincent’s eyes.
Nora noticed.
“Do you have a suit?”
“What?”
“A good suit.”
“I have forty.”
“Pick one.”
Vincent’s voice became dangerous.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re going downstairs to terrify people, sweatpants send the wrong message.”
For five seconds, Vincent said nothing.
Then he pointed toward the dressing room.
“Black.”
Nora went inside.
“The Brioni?”
May you like
Vincent looked at her.
“You know suits?”
