Chapter 3 - The Broken King
Moving Emma into the suite adjacent to mine shifted the energy of the third floor entirely.
For two years, my quarters had felt like an isolation ward. The staff moved through the corridors with hushed, terrified steps, dropping off trays of bland food and retreating behind heavy oak doors. But Emma didn't know how to tread lightly.
By the second week of her new position, the third floor smelled like real food instead of hospital broth. She dragged open the thick velvet drapes that had blocked out the sunlight since my shooting, letting the cold winter glare flood the hardwood floors. She played old Motown records on the turntable in the sitting room while she organized my physical therapy equipment—equipment that had sat gathering dust in a corner since I fired the last specialist.
"Time to move," she announced one afternoon, entering my study holding a leather-bound logbook and a glass of water.
I didn't look up from my laptop. I was in the middle of reviewing surveillance footage from the West Loop docks. "Not now, Emma. I'm working."
"The doctor's manual says you need three hours of leg elevation and joint rotation every afternoon to prevent deep vein thrombosis," she said, marching over to my desk and placing the glass of water directly on top of my financial reports. "Wheelchair to the mat. Let's go."
"I said not now," I growled, my eyes flashing with heat. "Luke is coming up in twenty minutes with the precinct captain. I don't have time for your junior-nurse routine."
Emma didn't flinch. She simply walked around the desk, grabbed the handles of my wheelchair, and engaged the manual locks.
"Hey!" I bellowed, gripping the wheels. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Saving your life," she said calmly, reaching down to unbuckle my safety strap. "You can scream at me all you want, Mr. Vance, but as long as my mother's rent is paid by your check, I'm doing my job. Move your feet, or I'm moving them for you."
"If you lay a hand on me, I will have Luke throw you into the street!"
"Luke is outside," she replied, bending down to carefully lift my left foot off the footrest, placing it gently on the carpet. "And Luke secretly thanked me yesterday for making you eat a full steak instead of drinking whiskey for dinner. He's not throwing anyone out."
I glared at her, my blood boiling. But as she leaned down to lift my right leg, I saw the small, faint scar running along her left temple—a remnant, she had casually mentioned once, from an abusive ex-boyfriend who had tried to take her diner tip money three years ago. She had survived monsters far more chaotic than me. My wealth and my violent history didn't intimidate her because she knew what real, raw desperation felt like.
With a heavy, furious sigh, I grabbed the wooden transfer board lying beside my chair, planted my hands on the leather armrests, and hoisted my upper body over to the thick padded mat on the floor.
My upper body strength was formidable—I had spent two years doing pull-ups from a bar installed in my ceiling out of sheer, bitter frustration. But once my torso hit the mat, my lower half lay motionless, a useless dead weight attached to my hips.
Emma immediately knelt beside me. She took my right ankle in her hands, holding my calf with her other palm, and began slowly bending my knee toward my chest.
"Too hard?" she asked softly.
"I can't feel it, Emma," I said, staring up at the white plaster ceiling, my voice dropping into a flat, dead tone. "You could stick a butcher knife through my thigh right now and I wouldn't know until I saw the blood."
"You felt the nerve spasms Tuesday night," she pointed out gently, completing ten slow rotations of the joint before switching to the left leg.
"That's not feeling," I spat. "That's my brain glitching. It's like a broken wire sparking in the wall. It means nothing."
"It means the nerve isn't completely severed," she said. She lowered my leg, then sat back on her heels, looking down at me. "The physical therapist's notes from last year said your spinal cord suffered a severe contusion, not a complete transection. There was partial signal transmission six months ago."
"The physical therapist was lying to keep his fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year retainer," I said bitterly. "I am broken, Emma. I'm a head and shoulders attached to a corpse."
"Stop talking like that," she said sharply.
I turned my head, glaring at her. "Don't tell me how to talk in my own house!"
"Then stop acting like a coward!" she yelled back, her voice echoing off the high ceilings of the study. She stood up, her hands on her hips, her chest heaving. "You lost your legs! It's terrible! It's unfair! But you sit in this chair all day running a criminal empire, threatening police captains, and feeling sorry for yourself while forty people in this house jump every time you sneeze! You have millions of dollars! You have men willing to die for you! My mother doesn't even remember my name half the time, Mr. Vance! She looks at me like I'm a mugger when I walk into her room! Do you know what I'd give to have a father or a brother who could sit in a chair and talk to me, even if he couldn't walk?"
Her words hit me like a physical blow. The rage in my chest evaporated, replaced by a sudden, hollow shame that settled heavy in my gut.
She breathed heavily, wiping a stray tear from her cheek with the back of her wrist, clearly shocked by her own outburst. She looked down at the floor, stepping back toward the door.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking. "That was... unprofessional. I'll get your water."
"Emma," I called out.
She stopped, her hand on the brass doorknob, her back to me.
"Bend the left knee again," I said softly.
She stood still for a long moment. Then, slowly, she turned around, walked back to the mat, and knelt by my feet. Her hands were shaking as she took my ankle in her palms once more.
As she pushed my knee toward my chest, I closed my eyes, focusing every ounce of my will, every memory of strength I had left in my body, on the space behind my belly button.
Nothing happened. No movement. No sensation.
But when I opened my eyes, Emma was watching me with a quiet, fierce hope that made my heart ache.
May you like
"Again," I grunted.
She pushed the leg up again. And this time, deep within the numb, freezing darkness of my right quad, I felt a tiny, microscopic flicker—like the brush of a feather beneath ice.
