Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN WHO REFUSED TO FEAR ME
No caretaker had survived more than three days with me after the accident, because I made damn sure they didn't. Then a broke young woman named Faith Willis walked into my mansion and refused to fear me. When my useless leg suddenly exploded with pain, she dropped to her knees, put both hands on me, and ordered Chicago’s most feared crime boss to breathe.
The terrifying part was that I listened.
Six months earlier, people in Chicago knew my name for very different reasons.
I was Dominic Carter.
Dock bosses returned my calls before the first ring finished. Men who owed me money never needed a second reminder, and powerful men watched my hands when I spoke because one gesture from me could change their lives.
Fear followed me into every room like another bodyguard.
Then came the attack.
When I woke up, my legs were useless.
My empire suddenly felt miles away, and the mansion I'd once ruled became my prison.
I couldn't stand the pity in people's eyes.
So I gave them something easier to feel.
Fear.
Caretakers came and went.
Some cried after I screamed at them.
Others quit after I shattered plates against the walls.
A few lasted until they realized the cold way I stared through them wasn't going to change.
Nobody made it past three days.
Then Faith Willis arrived.
She stood in my hallway soaked from the Chicago rain, wearing cheap boots and carrying an eviction notice folded inside her coat pocket.
Mrs. Gable pulled her aside.
“Nobody lasts more than three days.”
Faith glanced toward my room.
“I will.”
The first time she entered, I was sitting beside the window watching rain crawl down the glass.
She carried a tray toward me.
“I told them I'm not eating that.”
“Mrs. Gable said you need to eat.”
She placed it beside me.
“Get out.”
Instead, she poured my coffee.
That made me angrier than it should have.
Her hands didn't shake.
She didn't apologize.
She didn't lower her eyes.
And she didn't stare at my wheelchair.
I wheeled toward her too quickly and caught one wheel on the edge of the rug.
A tiny mistake.
But humiliation burned through me.
“Are you deaf?”
Faith finally looked directly at me.
Not at the scar above my eyebrow.
Not at my useless legs.
At me.
“I'll come back in an hour for the dishes,” she said. “If you throw them, I'll clean them. But they're still your food.”
Then she walked out.
Nobody spoke to me like that.
The next morning, I decided to break her.
She brought oatmeal.
“I don't eat oatmeal.”
“It's what the cook made.”
I swept the entire tray onto the floor.
Porcelain shattered.
Coffee hit the wall.
Oatmeal spread across a Persian rug worth more than Faith probably made in a year.
I watched her.
Waiting for anger.
Tears.
Fear.
Faith crouched down and started cleaning.
“Are you stupid?” I demanded. “I did that intentionally.”
“I know.”
“Then why aren't you complaining?”
She kept scrubbing.
Finally, I asked what had been bothering me since she arrived.
“Are you really that desperate for money?”
Faith stopped.
Then she sat back on her heels and looked at me.
“If I don't pay my landlord by Friday, I sleep in my car.”
Her expression hardened.
“You think spilled coffee scares me?”
Before I could answer, my right leg jerked.
Pain ripped through me.
I gasped and grabbed my thigh.
Another spasm hit.
Harder.
Pain exploded through nerves the doctors had told me shouldn't feel anything.
I nearly fell from the wheelchair.
Faith dropped the towel.
She rushed toward me and fell to her knees.
Then she put both hands against my leg.
I grabbed her wrist.
“Don't touch me!”
“Dominic.”
Nobody used my first name like that.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
Another spasm tore through my leg.
My vision blurred.
“Breathe,” Faith ordered.
I stared at her.
“Get your hands off me.”
“Deep breath.”
“Faith...”
“Breathe.”
And somehow\...
I did.
One breath.
Then another.
Thirty seconds later, the spasm began to loosen.
My grip on her wrist weakened.
Sweat ran down my face as I collapsed against the wheelchair.
Faith stayed there.
Her hands still against my leg.
I looked down at her.
There was no fear in her eyes.
But there was something even stranger.
No pity.
She wasn't looking at a crippled man.
She wasn't looking at a crime boss.
She was simply looking at someone in pain.
That frightened me more than fear ever had.
Finally, Faith stood.
“I'll get a sponge.”
She turned toward the doorway.
My eyes followed her.
Then I saw them.
Mrs. Gable.
Carmine.
Two armed guards.
All four were standing silently in the hallway.
Watching.
Carmine had worked for me for fifteen years.
I'd seen him stare down men holding guns.
I'd never seen him look at me the way he did then.
Because everyone in that hallway understood what had just happened.
For six months, nobody had touched me unless absolutely necessary.
Doctors asked permission.
Nurses approached carefully.
My own men kept their distance.
Faith Willis hadn't asked.
She had dropped to her knees, put her hands on me, told me what to do...
And I had obeyed her.
Faith returned with a sponge as if nothing unusual had happened.
She knelt beside the broken porcelain and started cleaning again.
I watched her for several seconds.
Then I asked, “How much do you owe your landlord?”
Her hand stopped.
Slowly, she looked up at me.
And for the first time since she'd entered my house, Faith Willis looked afraid.
Not of me.
May you like
Of the question.
That was when I realized the broke young woman who had walked into my mansion wasn't the only person in that room hiding something.
