Chapter 2 - The Terms of Surrender
The silence that settled over my bedroom after Faith walked out was heavy enough to suffocate a lesser man. Carmine didn’t move. His hand stayed clamped over the customized Kimber .45 holstered beneath his tailored charcoal suit jacket, his knuckles white. Beside him, Mrs. Gable clutched her ring of master keys so tightly the brass prongs bit into her palms.
"Dominic," Carmine murmured, his voice pitched low, carrying the raspy rasp of smoke and three decades of street warfare. "Who the hell is that girl?"
"She’s the help," I growled, though my voice cracked, betraying the exhaustion rattling my ribs.
My right leg was still trembling, the muscle twitching beneath the fabric of my trousers like a dying fish. For six months, neurologists with wall-mounted degrees from Harvard and Johns Hopkins had poked, prodded, and run electric currents through my lower spine, only to deliver the same sterile prognosis: *Irreversible spinal shock. Complete loss of motor and sensory function below the L1 vertebrae. Learn to adapt, Mr. Carter.*
Yet that destitute girl with chipped fingernails and rain-soaked hair had laid two bare hands on my thigh, pressed into the muscle, and broken a spasm that usually required twenty milligrams of intravenous Valium to subdue.
"Get out, Carmine," I said, wheeling myself back toward the floor-to-ceiling glass that overlooked Lake Michigan. The grey water was churning violently under a November squall, mirroring the acid boiling in my gut. "Take the muscle downstairs. You look like paranoiacs standing in my doorway."
Carmine didn't budge. He stepped inside, letting the heavy mahogany door swing shut behind him, cutting off Mrs. Gable and the two guards. The sound of the latch clicking sounded too much like a cell door locking.
"We have bigger problems than your domestic staff, boss," Carmine said, his tone shifting from wary shock to grim business. "Matteo Rossi was spotted having dinner at Gibsons last night with Alderman Vane and two union delegates from the South Side railyards. He’s telling everyone who will listen that the throne is vacant. He’s telling them Carter is a vegetable collecting dust in a lakeside tomb."
A cold, familiar fire flared in the center of my chest. Before the ambush at the warehouse—before twelve hollow-point rounds ripped through the armored door of my Escalade and shattered my spine—Matteo Rossi wouldn't have dared whisper my name in a public restaurant. He was a scavenger, a hygiene-challenged hyena who fed on the scraps my outfit left behind.
"Let him talk," I whispered, staring at my reflection in the dark glass. The scar cutting through my left eyebrow down to my cheekbone looked jagged under the chandelier light. "A dog only barks loud when he’s trying to convince himself he’s not terrified."
"He’s not just barking, Dominic. Three of our container shipments out of Port of Chicago were diverted to Gary yesterday morning. Customs held them up on anonymous safety tips. We’re bleeding two million dollars a week, and the capos are getting twitchy. They want to see you. They need to see you walk into the boardroom on Michigan Avenue."
"I can’t walk into the kitchen, Carmine!" I roared, slamming both fists onto the armrests of the chair. The metal frame shuddered. "Do you think I need a reminder of what I am? Do you think I need you standing there telling me my empire is slipping through my fingers while I sit here wrapped in a blanket like a senile grandfather?"
Carmine didn't flinch. He was one of the few who had survived my father’s era, and he’d buried more bodies for our family than the Cook County cemetery. "I’m telling you to stop breaking plates and start using your head again. You’re still Dominic Carter. But if you keep acting like a wounded beast waiting to die in a corner, Rossi will be more than happy to put the bullet in your neck."
He turned and left without waiting for a reply.
An hour later, the bedroom door opened again.
I didn't turn around. "I told you to leave me alone, Carmine."
"I’m not Carmine."
The voice was cool, clear, and utterly devoid of fear. I spun the chair around, the rubber wheels hissing against the hardwood floor.
Faith was standing there, holding a galvanized steel bucket, a mop, and a stack of clean rags. She had tied her thick, honey-brown hair back into a messy bun with an elastic band, revealing the sharp, delicate line of her jaw and a pale neck that looked entirely too fragile for the weight of this house. She had changed out of her damp sweater into a simple grey work shirt that hung loosely over her slim frame.
She wasn't looking at my legs. She was looking at the mess on the rug where I had hurled the breakfast tray.
"I told you I was coming back to clean it," she said evenly, setting the bucket down with a dull metallic clatter.
"I didn't give you permission to enter."
"You threw hot coffee and oatmeal on a five-thousand-dollar rug," she replied, dipping a scrub brush into the soapy water. "If I leave it there, it sets into the wool. Then Mrs. Gable docks my pay, and I end up short on my rent anyway. So yell if you want, Mr. Carter, but I’m scrubbing this floor."
She dropped to her knees without a hint of hesitation and began working on the stain, her shoulders moving in rhythmic, practiced strokes.
I watched her through narrowed eyes, my hands gripping the armrests. In Chicago, men who carried machine guns lowered their voices when I entered a room. Judges swallowed their pride when I offered an envelope. Yet here was a twenty-four-year-old girl with an eviction notice in her back pocket, treating me like an ill-tempered tenant who had made a mess in the hallway.
"Who taught you to do that?" I asked, my voice cutting through the sound of the bristles scraping against the fibers.
"Do what? Clean?"
"Don't play dumb," I said coldly. "The spasm. Where did you learn how to handle that?"
Faith didn't stop scrubbing. "My mother had multiple sclerosis. The last three years of her life, she couldn't move from the neck down. Her legs would cramp until the bones nearly snapped through the skin. The doctors gave us muscle relaxers, but when Medicaid cut off our coverage, I had to figure out how to release the trigger points with my thumbs."
She paused, wiping a strand of loose hair away from her forehead with the back of a soapy wrist. Her hazel eyes met mine, steady and clear.
"You fight the cramp, it fights back ten times harder," she said. "You’re an angry man, Mr. Carter. You fight everything. Even your own body."
"You don't know a damn thing about me."
"I know you broke an expensive bowl because you wanted to see if I’d cry," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, matter-of-fact cadence. "I’ve had men yell at me in dive bars, I’ve had landlords threaten to throw my clothes into the street, and I watched debt collectors take my mother’s hospital bed out of our living room while she was still breathing. A spoiled king throwing porridge doesn't register on my scale of bad days."
I leaned forward, the muscles in my neck cords of tension. "You think I’m just a spoiled king? Do you have any idea what I do for a living, Faith?"
"I know you own half the freight docks on the river. I know the police cars slow down when they drive past your gate, not to check on you, but to make sure you’re not angry with them. And I know you’re paying three times the market rate for a caretaker because nobody else can stand your company."
She stood up, picked up the bucket, and inspected the spot on the rug. The oatmeal was gone; only a damp patch remained.
"I need this job," she said, looking straight into my eyes without blinking. "I need thirty-two hundred dollars by the end of the month to pay off the arrears on my apartment and keep my younger brother in vocational school. You want to throw things? Throw them. You want to scream? Scream until your throat bleeds. But tomorrow morning, I’m bringing your breakfast at seven. And you’re going to drink the coffee."
She picked up the bucket, turned her back on me, and walked out the door.
May you like
For the first time in six months, I didn't break anything. I sat in the dimming afternoon light, listening to the rain beat against the glass, wondering how a girl with nothing to her name had managed to take away every shred of my leverage in under twenty-four hours.
***
