Chapter 2 - Eleven Weeks of Pain
Vincent Hale had spent seventeen years protecting Dominic Vale.
He had seen ambushes coming from half a block away.
He had recognized surveillance cars from the wrong reflection in storefront glass.
He had once canceled an entire dinner because a waiter wore shoes too expensive for someone earning restaurant wages.
But a four-year-old girl had seen something he had missed every morning for three weeks.
That bothered him.
It bothered him enough that he stood in Dominic’s rehabilitation room twenty minutes later staring at every object as though it might confess.
Dominic sat on the edge of the therapy table.
Dr. Mercer had removed the brace completely.
Without it, Dominic’s left leg looked thinner than the right.
The scars from surgery were pale now, but swelling remained around the knee.
Mercer examined the skin beneath the lower strap.
“There.”
He pointed to an irritated line.
Vincent leaned closer.
“What am I looking at?”
“Pressure damage.”
“From the brace?”
“From incorrect tension.”
Mercer straightened.
“I want imaging today.”
Dominic’s voice remained flat.
“Could someone deliberately slow my recovery this way?”
Mercer hesitated.
“I can tell you what improper brace adjustment can do. I can’t tell you what someone intended.”
“Tell me the first part.”
“It could increase pain. Irritate the nerve. Restrict normal movement. Make weight-bearing more difficult. If repeated, it could absolutely interfere with rehabilitation.”
Dominic looked toward the rain.
“And nobody noticed.”
“I didn’t.”
Mercer did not defend himself.
That earned him something in Dominic’s eyes.
Across the room, Clare stood with Ellie.
She had asked twice whether she could return to work.
Dominic had refused twice.
Not because she was in trouble.
Because someone inside his house might have deliberately tampered with his medical equipment, and Clare’s daughter had become a witness without understanding what she had witnessed.
He was not letting them wander through the estate alone.
Ellie sat on a leather chair opening and closing her wooden latches.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The sound had become strangely reassuring.
Dominic watched her.
“How did she remember?”
Clare glanced down.
“She remembers how things fit.”
“That well?”
“She remembers everything that moves.”
Clare gave a nervous little smile.
“When she was two, she figured out the childproof cabinet locks before I did.”
Ellie looked up.
“You put them backward.”
For the first time that morning, Dominic almost smiled.
Clare sighed.
“Yes, sweetheart. Thank you.”
Vincent entered from the hallway carrying a tablet.
“We found Price.”
Dominic’s expression changed instantly.
“Where?”
“We didn’t physically find him. We found his car.”
“Where?”
“O’Hare.”
Clare’s hand tightened on Ellie’s shoulder.
Vincent continued.
“Parking structure. Level four. He took a flight.”
“Destination?”
“We’re checking.”
“And Arthur’s car?”
“Returned to the estate.”
Dominic looked toward him.
“Who drove it?”
“One of Arthur’s men.”
“Arthur?”
“Still locked in the conference room with everyone else.”
Dominic stood carefully.
Without the brace, he used both the table and his cane.
Pain moved through the knee, but it felt different.
Cleaner.
Not the burning electrical sensation he had accepted as part of recovery.
Mercer noticed.
“How does that feel?”
“Better.”
The doctor’s expression darkened.
That answer confirmed more than either man wanted.
Dominic walked slowly into the great room.
The conference room remained locked.
Six men sat around the table.
Arthur Voss stood at the window.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, immaculately dressed, and possessed the calm manners of a man who preferred other people to do ugly things for him.
When Vincent unlocked the door, Arthur turned.
“There you are.”
Dominic entered.
No brace.
Only the cane.
Arthur’s eyes dropped immediately to his leg.
Dominic noticed.
“What happened?” Arthur asked.
“Meeting changed.”
Arthur smiled faintly.
“How?”
“We’re not discussing whether I should surrender authority.”
Dominic lowered himself into the chair at the head of the table.
“We’re discussing why someone wanted me to.”
Nobody moved.
Arthur slowly sat.
“Is this another delay?”
“No.”
Dominic placed the reversed metal retaining clip on the table.
It made almost no sound.
Yet every man looked at it.
“What is that?” asked Michael Serrano.
“A reason.”
“For what?”
“For my recovery getting worse.”
Arthur leaned back.
“Dominic, if this is about your medical treatment, perhaps we should postpone—”
“No.”
Dominic looked directly at him.
“We’re finally discussing exactly what this meeting was always about.”
Arthur’s smile disappeared.
Vincent placed photographs on the table.
Brace.
Strap.
Skin irritation.
Security stills.
Then a gate record showing Daniel Price leaving in a vehicle registered to one of Arthur’s companies.
Arthur looked at it.
“That proves nothing.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You’re implying something.”
“I’m asking questions.”
“Then ask.”
Dominic leaned back.
“Why did my physical therapist leave my property in your car fourteen minutes before a four-year-old discovered someone had altered my brace?”
Arthur stared at him.
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It happens to be the truth.”
Dominic looked toward the other men.
Nobody spoke.
Arthur’s voice hardened.
“You’re turning a medical problem into a conspiracy because you don’t like what this council was prepared to decide.”
“Prepared?”
Dominic repeated the word.
Arthur realized the mistake.
Dominic glanced at the unsigned documents.
“You told me this was a discussion.”
“It is.”
“You just said the council was prepared to decide.”
Silence.
Dominic pushed the papers aside.
Then Vincent’s phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Dominic asked.
“O’Hare security found Price on camera.”
“And?”
“He didn’t board a flight.”
Arthur’s fingers stopped moving.
Vincent enlarged the image.
Daniel Price was visible entering the parking garage.
Then another image.
Daniel getting into a dark SUV.
A third.
The SUV leaving the airport.
“Plate?” Dominic asked.
“Obscured.”
“Where did it go?”
“West.”
Arthur gave a quiet laugh.
“Chicago has millions of cars traveling west.”
Dominic looked at him.
“True.”
Vincent’s phone vibrated again.
This time he read the message twice.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We checked Price’s employment records.”
“And?”
“The rehabilitation company that recommended him?”
Dominic waited.
“It was acquired four months ago.”
“By whom?”
Vincent turned the tablet.
The holding company name appeared on the screen.
Northstar Medical Logistics LLC.
Dominic had never heard of it.
But Vincent had already traced the ownership.
A second company.
Then a third.
Then a family trust.
At the bottom of the chain was one name.
Arthur Voss.
Nobody in the room breathed.
Arthur stared at the screen.
Then at Dominic.
“You need to be very careful what you accuse me of.”
Dominic’s expression remained calm.
“I haven’t accused you of anything.”
He picked up the tiny metal clip.
“I’m giving you the opportunity to explain why the man responsible for putting this on my leg worked for a company you secretly owned.”
Arthur stood.
“This meeting is over.”
Dominic looked toward the locked doors.
“No.”
Arthur turned.
Dominic’s voice followed him.
“It just started.”
And in the hallway, unseen by everyone except Ellie, another man quietly stepped backward from the doorway and disappeared toward the servants’ stairs.
Ellie stopped clicking her toy.
She pointed.
“Mommy.”
Clare looked down.
“What?”
Ellie whispered:
May you like
“That man was there too.”
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