Chapter 3 - Fractures and Collateral
The orthopedic suite at Saint Jude's Medical Center was silent, smelling of antiseptic and cold paper.
The radiographic display mounted against the white wall illuminated the room with a pale, ghostly light.
Dominic stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his shoulder resting against the doorframe, watching the middle-aged doctor examine the film.
Grace sat on the edge of the examination table, her bare feet dangling, her right arm resting on a blue sanitary pad.
Her swollen hand looked grotesque under the bright clinical lights—the skin mottled with deep shades of black, purple, and sickly yellow.
Doctor Robert Evans, a veteran physician who had served on the regional athletic commission for twenty years, pushed his spectacles up his nose and sighed.
"It's a displaced spiral fracture of the third metacarpal," Evans said, tapping the dark crack running through the white bone on the monitor.
"Look here, Miss Carter," the doctor said, pointing to the jagged separation.
"The bone isn't just cracked; it has shifted two millimeters off its axis."
Grace stared at the screen, her chest tightening until she felt she couldn't pull air into her lungs.
"Can you cast it so I can move my fingers?" Grace asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
Doctor Evans turned around, looking at her as if she had lost her mind.
"If you hit anything with that fist, the bone will shatter completely through the soft tissue," Evans said sternly.
"You will sever the extensor tendons, and you will never hold a broom again, let alone a boxing glove."
He turned to his desk, pulling out a red-stamped medical form.
"I am filing an immediate ninety-day medical suspension with the state boxing commission," Evans said, his pen scratching loudly against the paper.
"You are legally prohibited from entering any sanctioned ring in this country until this bone has completely fused."
Grace closed her eyes.
A single, shuddering breath escaped her lips, but she did not cry.
She simply pressed her left hand over her face, her shoulders shaking once before she forced them back into rigid stillness.
"Thank you, Doctor," Dominic said, stepping forward.
"Put the hand in a hard cast, prescribe the necessary anti-inflammatories, and send the entire invoice to my office."
Grace lowered her left hand, glaring at Dominic through bloodshot eyes.
"I didn't ask you to pay for this," she hissed under her breath as the doctor left the room to prepare the plaster.
"I am not paying for it as a gift," Dominic replied without looking at her, his voice flat and businesslike.
"I am paying for it because my housekeeper is currently incapable of holding a silver tray, and I dislike inefficiency."
"You are infuriating," Grace said, turning her head away toward the blank wall.
"I am practical," Dominic countered.
Thirty minutes later, Grace walked out of the hospital with a heavy white fiberglass cast extending from her knuckles to the middle of her forearm.
The brisk autumn air hit them as they walked down the stone steps toward Dominic’s black sedan.
Dominic opened the passenger door for her, waiting until she slid inside before shutting it and walking around to the driver's side.
He started the engine, the low hum of the twelve-cylinder engine vibrating through the quiet cabin.
"Take me to the south side," Grace said quietly, staring out the tinted side window.
"To your father's apartment?" Dominic asked, steering the car into the flow of midday traffic.
"No," Grace said.
"To the industrial yard."
"I need to talk to Frank Dalton."
"Dalton already received the official commission notification through Croft's office," Dominic said.
"His contract is legally frozen under the injury clause."
"You don't know Frank," Grace said, her voice laced with exhaustion.
"He won't just wait ninety days."
"He will come to my father's house."
"He knows where Michael lives."
Dominic paused at a red light, his hands resting easily on the leather steering wheel.
"Your father cannot handle a promoter at his door?" Dominic asked.
Grace looked down at the fiberglass cast resting on her lap.
"My father doesn't even know Frank is my promoter," Grace whispered.
Dominic turned his head, his sharp eyes narrowing at her profile.
"What did you say?" Dominic asked.
Grace swallowed hard, the shame evident in the tightness of her throat.
"I told my father I was training at an amateur gym on the north side," she admitted.
"I told him the money I was bringing home was an advance from an athletic grant for promising prospects."
"If he knew I was fighting six-round club bouts in underground basements for Dalton, he would have crawled across the city to stop me."
Dominic stared at her for a long moment before pressing the accelerator as the light turned green.
"A web of noble lies," Dominic murmured.
"They always collapse under their own weight, Grace."
"I didn't have a choice!" Grace snapped, her composure cracking.
"My father spent thirty years working sixty hours a week until his spine gave out!"
"He never asked anyone for a dime!"
"And now the neurological institute wants twelve thousand dollars cash before Friday noon just to reserve the operating room!"
"Where was I supposed to get that kind of money?"
"Dusting your chandeliers?"
Dominic remained silent as he navigated the car through the downtown grid.
He did not reach into his pocket to write a personal check for twelve thousand dollars.
He had millions in offshore accounts, commercial real estate holdings, and private equities.
Writing a check for twelve thousand dollars would take him ten seconds.
But Dominic Vale understood men and women of pride.
If he handed Grace a personal check, she would tear it into pieces and throw it in the gutter.
She would see it as mafia charity—a collar placed around her neck by a man whose family history was steeped in violence and extortion.
Instead, Dominic pulled the car up to the curb outside the Saint James Hotel, a historic boutique property owned by the Vale holding company.
He shifted into park and looked directly at her.
"The head of housekeeping at this property and the sovereign hotel across town retired last month," Dominic said evenly.
Grace blinked, looking at the grand revolving brass doors of the hotel.
"What does that have to do with me?" she asked.
"The position pays twenty-eight hundred dollars a week, plus full administrative benefits," Dominic stated.
"It requires supervising forty maids, auditing supply inventories, and managing linen procurement."
"You don't need two hands to hold an inventory clipboard," he added.
Grace stared at him, her lips parting slightly in disbelief.
"I'm a cleaner, Mister Vale," she said.
"I don't have a hospitality management degree."
"You run my entire estate without uttering more than twenty words a week," Dominic countered.
"Every time Eleanor decides to reorganize the pantry or rearrange the furniture, you manage three temporary maids like a drill sergeant."
"I have seen you do it from my balcony."
"You are qualified because I say you are qualified."
Grace’s eyes hardened with suspicion.
"It sounds like charity wrapped in a job description," she said.
"If you fail to balance the linen audit by three percent, I will fire you without a severance package," Dominic replied coldly.
"Does that sound like charity to you?"
Grace looked down at her lap, her mind racing through the arithmetic.
Twenty-eight hundred dollars a week was an extraordinary sum, but it would take her a month to gather the twelve thousand dollars.
"Friday is three days away, Dominic," Grace said, using his first name for the first time without realizing it.
"Even with that salary, I won't have twelve thousand dollars by Friday noon."
Before Dominic could answer, Grace’s cell phone vibrated violently against the leather seat between them.
She picked up the cracked screen with her left hand.
The caller ID showed an unlisted number.
Grace answered, pressing the phone to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Your fancy lawyer sent me a very interesting piece of paper this morning, Grace," Frank Dalton’s voice came through the speaker, raspy and completely calm.
Grace went rigid.
"I am medically suspended, Frank," Grace said, her voice tightening.
"The commission doctor signed it."
"I know all about Doctor Evans," Dalton replied with a low, oily chuckle.
"A displaced spiral fracture."
"Very dramatic."
"Very expensive."
Grace frowned, her pulse beginning to hammer against her ribs.
"How do you know the diagnosis?" she asked.
"Doctor Evans only filed it forty minutes ago."
"I have friends in lots of offices, Grace," Dalton said smoothly.
"Now, listen to me very carefully."
"You need to come down to the gym right now."
"I'm not coming to your gym, Frank," Grace said.
"I am legally protected."
"You might be protected, kid," Dalton said, his voice dropping into a sinister, deliberate cadence.
"But your old man isn't."
Grace’s heart stopped.
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, her voice rising in sudden panic.
"Check your messages," Dalton said, and hung up the phone.
A second later, a digital notification chimed.
Grace opened the incoming message with trembling fingers.
It was a photograph.
Taken inside Frank Dalton’s private, smoke-filled office at the south side gym.
Sitting in the cracked leather armchair across from Dalton's desk was an older man with thin gray hair, hollow cheeks, and a faded flannel shirt.
Michael Carter.
He was sitting quietly, holding a white ceramic mug of coffee in his trembling hands, looking straight at the camera with tired, confused eyes.
Grace let out a strangled gasp, dropping the phone onto the leather floor mat.
Dominic reached down, picked up the phone, and looked at the screen.
His jaw tightened, a cold, lethal darkness settling into his eyes.
"Who is that?" Dominic asked, though he already knew the answer.
May you like
"My father," Grace whispered, the color draining entirely from her lips.
"He is at Frank's gym."
