Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN WHO REFUSED TO BE AFRAID
No caretaker had lasted more than three days with me after the accident, and I made damn sure of it. Then a broke young woman named Faith Willis walked into my mansion, ignored every threat I threw at her, and when my useless leg suddenly exploded with pain, she dropped to her knees and did the one thing nobody had dared to do since I lost the ability to walk.
Six months earlier, people in Chicago knew my name for very different reasons. I was Dominic Carter, one of the most feared crime bosses in the city, and powerful men watched my hands when I spoke because they knew one gesture could change their lives.
Dock bosses returned my calls before the first ring finished. Men who owed me money never needed a second reminder, and 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 instead: fear.
Caretakers came and went. Some cried after I screamed at them, others quit after I shattered plates against the walls, and a few couldn't survive the cold way I stared through them.
Then Faith arrived.
She stood in my hallway soaked from the Chicago rain, wearing cheap boots and carrying an eviction notice in her pocket. Mrs. Gable warned her quietly, "Nobody lasts more than three days."
"I won't quit," Faith replied.
The first time she entered my room, I was sitting beside the window watching rain crawl down the glass. She carried a tray toward me, and before she could set it down, I snapped, "I told them I'm not eating that."
"Mrs. Gable said you need to eat," she answered, placing it beside my bed.
"Get out."
Instead, she poured my coffee.
My anger rose instantly because her hands didn't tremble. She didn't apologize, lower her eyes, or treat me like the monster everyone had warned her about.
I wheeled toward her too quickly and caught one wheel on the rug. It was a tiny mistake, but the humiliation burned hotter than any insult I'd ever endured.
"Are you deaf?"
Faith looked directly at me, not at the scar above my eyebrow and not at the wheelchair. "I'll come back in an hour for the dishes. 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, and when I told her I didn't eat oatmeal, she simply said, "It's what the cook made."
So I swept the entire tray onto the floor.
Porcelain shattered across the room, coffee splashed against the wall, and oatmeal smeared across an expensive Persian rug. I watched her carefully, waiting for tears, anger, or fear.
Faith quietly grabbed paper towels.
"Are you stupid?" I demanded. "I did that intentionally."
"I know."
"Then why aren't you complaining?"
She kept scrubbing until I finally asked the question that had been bothering me. "Are you really that desperate for money?"
Faith sat back on her heels and met my eyes. "If I don't pay my landlord by Friday, I sleep in my car."
Then her expression hardened.
"You think spilled coffee scares me?"
Before I could answer, my right leg jerked violently.
Pain ripped through nerves that weren't supposed to feel anything, and I grabbed my thigh as another spasm tore through me. Faith dropped everything and rushed toward my wheelchair.
She fell to her knees and pressed both hands against my leg.
"Breathe."
"Don't touch me!"
"Stop fighting it. Deep breath."
The pain intensified until sweat ran down my face, but somehow I obeyed her. Thirty seconds later, the spasm finally began to loosen its grip, and I collapsed against the wheelchair, shaking.
Faith remained kneeling there.
There was no fear in her eyes.
No pity either.
That frightened me more than anything.
She simply stood and said, "I'll get a sponge."
When she walked toward the doorway, my eyes followed her, and that was when I saw Mrs. Gable, Carmine, and two armed guards standing in the hall.
Nobody said a word.
They had witnessed everything.
For the first time since the accident, someone had touched me without fear.
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And I had let her.
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