Chapter 3 - THE FIRST MOVEMENT
Three weeks later, Tessa was washing my back again when I felt something.
Not movement.
Not exactly.
Warmth.
I froze.
“Tessa.”
“What?”
“Touch my left hip.”
She stopped.
“That sentence requires context.”
“Medical context.”
“Better.”
She pressed two fingers against my skin.
“Feel that?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes lifted.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
She pressed lower.
“Here?”
Nothing.
Higher.
“Yes.”
Tessa immediately called my therapist.
I wanted celebration.
He gave caution.
Sensation could change without functional recovery.
Improvement was possible.
So was plateau.
Nobody promised walking.
Tessa was the only person who seemed satisfied with that answer.
“Then we work with what exists today.”
That became our rule.
Not tomorrow.
Not miracle.
Today.
I learned transfers.
Upper-body strengthening.
Wheelchair skills.
Skin checks.
I learned that independence did not have to look like my old life.
Some days I hated every second.
One afternoon I threw a resistance band across the room.
Tessa retrieved it.
“Done?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
She began packing.
That irritated me more.
“You're not going to tell me not to quit?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you're an adult.”
She moved toward the door.
“Your choices belong to you.”
That phrase stopped me.
My choices.
Arya had decided therapy was pointless.
Dominic had decided I was finished.
Everyone had been making decisions around me.
Tessa did the opposite.
She let me quit.
Which meant continuing had to be mine.
“Give me the band.”
She tossed it back.
“Thought so.”
I hated her.
Increasingly affectionately.
Meanwhile, Hector uncovered Dominic's scheme.
The harbor property was only one transaction.
For months after my shooting, Dominic had shifted contracts toward companies he secretly controlled.
He was building his own network inside mine.
And then Hector found something worse.
The night I was shot, Dominic had changed my route.
I remembered.
A meeting had been moved.
The driver took Pier Seven instead of the highway.
A shooter waited.
My blood turned cold.
“Are you saying Dominic ordered it?”
“We can't prove that.”
“Yet.”
“No.”
I looked toward the therapy room.
Tessa was helping my therapist adjust equipment.
Dominic had believed the bullet would kill me.
When it didn't, my paralysis became useful.
Arya’s guardianship petition would have finished what the gunman started without another bullet.
Then Hector placed another document on my desk.
A payment.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Sent three days before the shooting.
From one of Dominic's shell companies.
To a man named Caleb Ross.
I knew that name.
Everybody did.
Professional killer.
Missing for six months.
I looked at Hector.
“Find him.”
Before Hector could answer, Tessa screamed from downstairs.
I had never heard her scream before.
May you like
I turned my wheelchair so fast I struck the desk.
Then I smelled smoke.
