Chapter 2 - The Taste of Copper and Cheaper Lies
The heavy silence hanging in the hallway stretched until the ticking of the grandfather clock sounded like hammer blows against an anvil.
Carmine Vance stepped over the threshold, his polished leather shoes crunching lightly on a splinter of shattered porcelain.
He was forty-two, sharply dressed in a bespoke charcoal overcoat, and wore the easy, predatory smile of a man who spent his life measuring coffins for his closest friends.
"You're making quite a racket for an invalid, boss," Carmine said, his voice smooth and dripping with mock deference.
Faith did not flinch as Carmine brushed past her shoulder; she simply held the dirty bucket steady against her hip.
"Carmine," I rasped, straightening my back against the wheelchair cushion to mask the lingering tremor in my spine.
"I don't recall Mrs. Gable buzzing the intercom to announce your arrival."
"The docks on Calumet Harbor had an incident this morning," Carmine replied, pulling a heavy silver lighter from his pocket and clicking the flame open and shut.
"Two shipments from Rotterdam were flagged by federal agents."
"The local team wanted instructions, but since you’ve been refusing all encrypted phone lines, I had to come in person."
His dark eyes flicked down to Faith, lingering on the damp patches on her jeans and the dirt under her fingernails.
"Who is the stray?" Carmine asked, his tone shifting into the dismissive cadence he reserved for street informants.
"She's the new live-in caretaker," Mrs. Gable chimed in from the doorway, her voice tight with anxiety.
"She was hired through the standard private registry, Mr. Vance."
"A caretaker," Carmine repeated, taking a step toward Faith until he towered over her by nearly a foot.
"The last three caretakers were registered nurses with twenty years of clinical experience in military hospitals."
"This one smells like cheap diner grease and laundry detergent."
Carmine reached out a gloved finger to tilt the collar of her jacket, but Faith took half a step backward, avoiding his touch cleanly.
"I work for Mr. Carter," Faith said, her tone level and void of emotion.
"Not for his visitors."
One of the armed capos standing behind Carmine shifted his weight, his hand dropping toward the pocket of his tailored coat.
"Easy, boys," Carmine chuckled, though the smile never reached his hooded eyes.
"She’s got teeth."
"I like people with teeth, Dominic."
"They make such satisfying sounds when they finally crack."
"Get out of my bedroom, Carmine," I said, my voice dropping an octave into the register that used to command hundred-man crews.
"Wait for me in the downstairs library."
"If you touch a single person under this roof without my permission, you won't live to see the sunset over Lake Michigan."
Carmine studied my face for three long heartbeats, searching for the weakness my sudden spasm had exposed.
Finally, he dipped his chin in an exaggerated nod.
"Whatever you say, boss."
"Don't take too long."
"The docks won't wait for your legs to wake up."
He turned on his heel and strode down the hall, his two bodyguards falling into step behind him like twin shadows.
Mrs. Gable quickly closed the bedroom doors, shutting the violent outside world out of the room once more.
Faith did not ask a single question about the men with firearms or the mention of federal agents.
She simply walked to the corner of the room, set down her bucket, and knelt beside the remaining stain on the rug.
"Where did you learn how to release a femoral nerve lock?" I demanded, wheeling the chair two feet closer to her.
"You're twenty-four years old at most."
"A broke girl looking for rent money doesn't know how to unlock spastic contractions with her bare hands unless she’s had training."
"I spent four years as an orthopedic rehabilitation technician at Cook County Memorial," she replied without looking up from the carpet fibers.
"Then why the hell are you scrubbing carpets in an assassin's mansion for eight hundred dollars?"
Faith squeezed dirty water from her sponge into the metal bucket with a dull splash.
"Because Cook County Memorial is run by people who care more about political donations than human spines."
She looked up, her gray eyes clear and defiant.
"Eight months ago, the chief of surgery botched an arterial shunt on a seventeen-year-old kid from the south side."
"He tried to write it off as an unforeseen complication."
"I refused to falsify the surgical prep log."
"By the following Friday, my license was suspended under an ethics review, my recommendations were shredded, and no private clinic within fifty miles would let me through their doors."
A dark, bitter laugh escaped my chest before I could suppress it.
"You traded a medical career to become a whistleblower for a kid who didn't even know your name?"
"I traded a career so I wouldn't have to look in the mirror and see a coward," she countered sharply.
"Not everyone measures the value of their skin by how many terrified people bow when they walk into a room."
The insult hung between us, stark and unvarnished.
Any soldier in my outfit would have been buried in the Indiana dunes for speaking half of that sentence to my face.
Yet, sitting across from this stubborn girl with bleeding knuckles, I felt a strange, foreign sensation stir in my chest: respect.
"Finish cleaning," I ordered quietly.
"Then go to the kitchen."
"Tell Mrs. Gable to give you the keys to the guest suite in the west wing."
"You stay."
Faith picked up her bucket and stood.
"I need half of my first week’s pay in cash by tomorrow noon, Mr. Carter."
"My brother needs insulin, and the landlord doesn't accept promises."
"The cash will be on your nightstand by ten in the morning," I answered.
She nodded once, professional and distant, and slipped out into the corridor.
Ten minutes later, after transferring myself into the electric lift and descending to the ground floor, I wheeled into the dimly lit mahogany library.
Carmine sat behind my antique desk, his leather-clad boots propped brazenly upon the polished cherrywood surface.
A crystal tumbler of my twenty-five-year-old scotch sat half-empty near my balance ledgers.
"Take your feet off my desk, Carmine," I said calmly.
Carmine didn't move immediately; he took a slow sip from the glass before letting his heels drop to the floorboards with a heavy thud.
"You're losing your grip, Dominic," Carmine stated, leaning his elbows on the desk.
"The Moretti syndicate moved two heroin shipments through the south rail yard yesterday."
"They didn't pay our gate fee."
"They know you haven't left this house since June."
"They know you can't stand."
"And now the boys on the street are hearing rumors that the great Dominic Carter needs a twenty-dollar maid to wipe his chin and hold his hand when he gets leg cramps."
I felt the familiar, cold rage coil tightly behind my ribs.
"Is that what you came here to tell me, Carmine?"
"I came to offer you a graceful retirement," Carmine said, pulling a leather folder from his briefcase and sliding it across the desk toward me.
"Sign over the customs distribution rights and the offshore holding accounts to my name."
"You keep the mansion."
"You keep the private doctors, the maids, and your little lake view."
"I take over the street operations, and we tell the families in New York that you stepped aside as chairman."
"And if I refuse?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.
Carmine stood up, buttoning his coat with slow, deliberate precision.
"The streets are violent, Dominic."
"A man who can't run is just a target waiting for the right caliber of bullet."
"Think about it before the weekend ends."
He didn't wait for my response.
He walked out of the room, leaving the faint smell of expensive tobacco and impending betrayal hanging in the still air.
I sat alone in the dark library for an hour, staring at the unsigned papers on the desk.
When I finally returned to the master bedroom, the rain had worsened into a torrential downpour, rattling the glass panes like machine-gun fire.
Beside my bed sat the new silver dinner tray Mrs. Gable had prepared.
Next to the covered plate was the daily medicine dispenser laid out by Dr. Mercer, the personal neuro-specialist Carmine had hired for me following my hospital discharge.
Three yellow capsules and two blue tablets.
I reached for the water glass, ready to swallow the poison that dulled my senses every night.
"Don't swallow those," a voice said from the shadowy threshold of the bathroom.
I turned sharply.
Faith stood there, wearing dry grey sweatpants and an oversized woolen sweater.
She walked straight toward the nightstand, picked up the plastic dispenser, and held the blue tablets up against the lamplight.
"What game are you playing now, Faith?" I snapped.
"These aren't standard antispasmodics," she said, her voice dropping into a harsh whisper.
She pointed to the faint imprint stamped onto the blue coating.
"This is an industrial-grade neuromuscular blocking agent."
"It's used in veterinary sedation and end-stage paralytic maintenance."
She looked down at me, her eyes burning with terrifying clarity.
May you like
"Whoever is prescribing this isn't trying to ease your pain, Dominic."
"They are actively keeping your spinal nerves from regenerating."
