Chapter 3 - The Poison in the Silver Spoon
The silence in the bedroom became absolute, suffocating every breath in my lungs.
Outside, lightning split the Chicago skyline, casting sharp, jagged shadows across the polished floorboards.
"Explain yourself," I said, my voice barely louder than the storm outside.
Faith picked up the small silver knife from the dinner tray with steady fingers.
She set one of the blue tablets on the wooden surface and sliced it cleanly in half.
A fine, chalky powder with a distinct yellowish core spilled out across the dark varnish.
"Standard Baclofen or Gabapentin for spinal trauma is pressed into uniform, white, water-soluble chalk," Faith explained, her medical background stripping away every hint of youth from her tone.
"This core contains a slow-release synthetic curare derivative."
"In tiny, controlled micro-doses, it doesn't stop your heart or paralyze your lungs."
"What it does is paralyze the peripheral synaptic receptors in your lower lumbar spine."
She brought the tip of the blade to her nose, sniffing the powdered chemical before looking up at me.
"It mimics the clinical symptoms of an irreversible complete spinal transection."
"Every time your spinal cord tries to re-establish neural pathways, this compound shuts down the electrical impulse before it reaches your thighs."
"It creates artificial muscle atrophy."
My heart slammed against my ribs like a battering ram against iron.
For six months, I had cursed my own shattered bones.
For six months, I had accepted the diagnosis that I was a broken husk doomed to watch my life slip away from the seat of a mechanized chair.
Dr. Mercer had come every Tuesday morning with his silver briefcase and his expensive smile.
He had patted my shoulder with practiced sympathy, telling me that science had limits and that I should accept my fate with dignity.
And Carmine Vance was the man who had brought Dr. Mercer to my bedside on the second day after the ambush.
"You're guessing," I said, fighting to keep my voice from cracking under the weight of the realization.
"You're a disgraced tech from an inner-city hospital trying to invent a miracle so I'll keep paying you."
"I don't need to invent anything, Mr. Carter," Faith answered coldly.
She dropped the knife, knelt directly beside my wheelchair, and grabbed my right foot.
"What are you doing?" I growled, reaching down to shove her away.
"Don't move," she ordered, gripping my ankle with an iron grip that brooked no argument.
She pulled off my woolen slipper and tossed it aside.
Then, taking the blunt handle of the butter knife, she drew a firm, rapid line across the sole of my bare foot, from the heel upward toward the base of the small toe.
It was the classic Babinski reflex test.
In a patient with a completely severed spinal cord, the big toe extends upward and the other toes fan outward into a permanent flaccid splay.
Instead, my toes curled violently inward, gripping the edge of her palm, and a sudden, sharp ache shot through my calf muscle.
I gasped, my hands locking onto the wheel rims.
"Did you feel that?" Faith asked, her eyes pinned to mine.
"It felt like someone jabbed a hot needle into my Achilles tendon," I admitted through clenched teeth.
"A severed spinal cord cannot transmit deep somatic nociception," she said, her voice trembling slightly with suppressed adrenaline.
"The electrical wire isn't cut, Dominic."
"It's bruised, swollen, and being chemically choked to death by sixty milligrams of poison every single morning."
The room seemed to spin on its axis.
The six months of despair, the drunken nights of staring at my handguns in the drawer, the humiliation of having my men look at me with pity—all of it had been manufactured.
Carmine hadn't just ambushed my car on Michigan Avenue.
When the bullets failed to kill me, he turned my own recovery into a slow-motion execution.
He needed me alive long enough to transfer the offshore holding accounts, the customs licenses, and the dock leases without causing a full-scale war with the New York syndicates.
And once the ink was dry on those papers in the library, Dr. Mercer would simply increase the blue pill dosage until my diaphragm stopped contracting in my sleep.
"Mrs. Gable," I called out, my voice vibrating with lethal clarity.
The bedroom door opened almost immediately, revealing the elderly housekeeper carrying clean linen.
She took one look at my face and the powder on the table, and her eyes widened in alarm.
"Sir? What is wrong?"
"Who handles my medication deliveries from Dr. Mercer’s clinic?" I asked.
Mrs. Gable swallowed hard, her fingers tightening on the sheets.
"Carmine's driver brings the sealed lockbox every Monday morning, sir."
"He said Dr. Mercer prepares the specialized compound at his private research facility in Evanston to avoid pharmacy leaks to the press."
"Do not put those pills anywhere near my food again," I commanded.
"From this moment on, Faith prepares every drop of water and every morsel of food that enters this room."
"Understood?"
"Yes, Mr. Carter," Mrs. Gable whispered, bowing her head before stepping back into the hallway.
Faith stood up, dusting the chalky residue off her fingers with a cloth.
"You can't just stop taking it cold turkey," she warned, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Your nervous system has adapted to chemical suppression."
"If you cut off the blocker abruptly, your motor nerves will fire into uncontrolled status epilepticus."
"You will have violent convulsions, your blood pressure will spike to stroke levels, and the pain will make this morning look like a warm bath."
"I don't care about the pain," I said, leaning toward her.
"Can you get me out of this chair?"
Faith studied me under the amber glow of the bedside lamp.
She looked at the broad shoulders that had once broken men's jaws in back alleys, the scarred hands that had built an empire, and the burning fire in my eyes that six months of confinement had failed to extinguish.
"I can build a physical therapy and chemical titration regimen that will flush the neuro-blockers out of your tissue over the next twenty-one days," she said with absolute certainty.
"I can force your leg muscles to rebuild before the atrophy becomes permanent."
"But it will be torture."
"You will scream, you will vomit from the nerve pain, and you will hate every second of my existence."
"I survived three bullets and a car crash that should have decapitated me," I replied, a cold, grim smile touching the corner of my lips for the first time in half a year.
"I can survive a twenty-four-year-old girl with a grudge against bad doctors."
"Good," Faith said.
"Then let's talk about my price."
"You want money? Name the number."
"I don't want a salary, Mr. Carter," she said, leaning in until her face was inches from mine.
"My younger brother, Leo, is eight years old."
"The loan sharks who hold my father’s gambling debt are backed by a street gang out of Cicero called the Vipers."
"They told me if I don't pay eighteen thousand dollars by Friday, they will take Leo from his school."
Her voice cracked for the first time, exposing the raw, bleeding terror beneath her tough exterior.
"I will make you walk again, Dominic."
"I will drag you through hell with my own two hands."
"But when you stand on your own two feet, I want the men who threatened my family wiped off the face of this earth."
I looked at her, seeing for the first time the same relentless, unyielding darkness that lived inside my own soul.
"Done," I said.
Before she could answer, the mansion's front security gates buzzed with an aggressive, continuous tone through the wall intercom.
A second later, the monitor on my desk flickered to life.
Parked in the middle of my driveway under the pouring rain was Carmine Vance’s black Mercedes, accompanied by two unmarked vans with tinted windows.
May you like
Carmine hadn't waited for the weekend.
He had come back to finish what he started.
