Chapter 3 - The Devil’s Retainer
Clare picked up the check with hands that shook so violently the paper fluttered like a dying moth.
"One hundred and fifty thousand," she whispered, her voice failing.
"The hospital needs thirty," Gabriel said, leaning back into his leather executive chair. "The rest is for private nursing, sterile transport, and top-tier pediatric specialists flown in from Johns Hopkins."
"I don't understand," Clare said, tears welling fresh in her red eyes. "You don't know who I am. You don't know my name."
"I know everything I need to know," Gabriel replied, interlacing his long fingers across his vest. "You have no criminal record, or Higgins’ security check would have flagged you at the service gate. You have no powerful family to protect you. And you are desperate enough to bleed through your shoes for three hundred dollars."
A sharp knock sounded at the double doors.
Before Gabriel could speak, the door swung open, and Thomas entered.
Behind the massive bodyguard walked Dr. Vance, a middle-aged man with silver-streaked hair, wearing a tailored charcoal suit and carrying a heavy medical kit.
Vance looked neither surprised nor alarmed to see a weeping caterer sitting on the boss's sofa.
In Gabriel’s inner circle, questions were a liability.
"Boss," Thomas said, offering a curt nod. "Sullivan is getting loud downstairs. He thinks you’re hiding from his shipping proposal."
"Let him drink until his liver rots," Gabriel dismissed without glancing at his guard. "Vance, attend to her feet. Clean the abrasions and administer a local antiseptic. She needs to walk without bleeding on my carpets."
The physician knelt before the sofa without hesitation, opening his leather kit with practiced precision.
Clare pulled her leg back instinctively. "No, please, you don't have to do that—"
"Sit still, little bird," Gabriel said, his tone leaving no room for defiance. "The doctor is paid five hundred thousand a year to keep my people functional. Consider this a preview of your employment benefits."
Clare winced as Vance gently cut away the blood-stiffened sock, applying a cool saline solution to the torn dermis of her heel.
"What employment?" Clare managed to ask through clenched teeth as the antiseptic stung. "I’m a waitress. What could an underworld kingpin possibly want with me?"
Gabriel leaned forward, his elbows resting on the polished walnut desk.
"Sullivan is trying to force an alliance," Gabriel explained, his voice chillingly analytical. "He wants to marry his degenerate son into my family to claim fifty percent of the Hudson River container terminals. To shut him down, I need to present an established engagement."
Clare froze.
Dr. Vance continued dressing her heel with sterile gauze, completely unfazed by the conversation.
"An engagement?" Clare echoed, her voice squeaking. "You want me to pretend to be your fiancée?"
"A woman from high society comes with strings, relatives, and political debts," Gabriel said coldly. "You come with none. You are an orphan. You owe me your sister’s heartbeat. If you betray me, I don't have to negotiate with a senator; I simply stop paying Mia’s medical trust."
The calculated cruelty of his logic hit Clare like a slap across the cheek.
He was not a savior.
He was not a knight in an Armani suit.
He was a predator who saw a dying animal and calculated its utility to his empire.
"You're buying me," Clare said, looking directly into his cold gray eyes.
"I am funding your survival," Gabriel corrected smoothly. "In exchange, you will wear whatever diamonds I put on your neck. You will stand by my side at every gala, every dinner, and every syndicate summit. You will look at me as if I am the only man on earth."
"And when Sullivan backs down?"
"Then you walk away with enough money to ensure your sister never has to work a single day in her life."
Clare looked down at the check in her trembling hand.
She thought of Mia lying in that sterile, fluorescent room, chest rattling with every breath, fighting a war she was destined to lose by morning.
She thought of her own empty bank account, the eviction notices pinned to her front door, the bone-grinding fatigue of twenty-hour workdays.
There was no real choice.
The world had never given Clare a choice.
"If I do this," Clare said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, steady register, "Mia gets transferred tonight. To the best room. With her own private pulmonologist."
Gabriel smiled for the first time.
It was not a warm smile; it was the razor-sharp grin of a wolf closing its jaws around a deal.
"Thomas," Gabriel said without looking away from Clare. "Take the black Suburban. Go to St. Jude’s. Clear the outstanding balance and have the child moved to the private penthouse suite on the sixth floor. If the administrator raises an eyebrow, remind him who owns the hospital's mortgage."
Thomas gave a single nod. "Understood, boss."
The bodyguard turned on his heel and disappeared into the hallway, pulling his radio from his pocket.
Dr. Vance finished wrapping Clare’s ankle with a snug elastic brace and stood up, packing his instruments away.
May you like
"She should stay off it for forty-eight hours, Gabriel," Vance advised quietly. "The tissue is severely inflamed."
"She has ten minutes," Gabriel said, rising from his chair and adjusting his diamond cufflinks. "My party is winding down, and I intend to introduce my future bride to the South Side."
