Six months after a bullet paralyzed me, my fiancée canceled my therapy, sneering, “Helping him is pointless now.” She spent our money on wedding dresses while demanding my signature on our harbor properties. But my $25-an-hour nurse refused to let me rot. She rebooked my session and secretly placed a folded document on my hospital bed: “Mr. Corvino… your fiancée doesn’t want you to walk again.” Reading Arya’s signature at the bottom, I realized the bullet wasn’t an accident—it was an inside job Kertati

“Dominic was arrested twenty minutes ago at his apartment,” Lucia said, closing her leather case. “The state police picked up the driver from Warehouse Twelve two hours ago. He rolled on Dominic before they even reached the precinct.”

I closed my eyes, letting the cold cloth rest against my burning temples.

The coup was broken. The company was secure. The traitors were in irons.

I was supposed to feel the old, intoxicating rush of victory—the fierce predator’s joy that had sustained me through a decade of waterfront warfare.

I felt nothing. Only the cold, mechanical reality of an empty house, a dead engagement, and legs that were still imprisoned in steel.

“Lucia,” I whispered.

“Yes, Vincent?”

“Send the agency thirty thousand dollars for Tessa’s contract buyout. She’s done here. I want an independent physical therapist hired from Boston on Monday.”

Tessa’s hands stopped moving against my arm.

She stepped back from the chair, her expression freezing into something dark, defensive, and fiercely wounded.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You’ve done your job, Tessa,” I said, not opening my eyes. “You saved my life. I don’t keep people around out of sentimentality. I’ll settle your sister’s hospital debts directly with the clinic tomorrow morning. Consider it a bonus.”