Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO THOUGHT THE WHEELCHAIR MADE ME WEAK
Tessa was unharmed.
That was the first thing I checked.
The second was the shooter.
Gone.
Dominic sent a message thirty seconds later.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED BROKEN.
I stared at it.
Then deleted it.
Tessa looked at me.
“That's it?”
“What?”
“No rage?”
“Oh, there's rage.”
“Good.”
“I thought therapy had ruined you.”
“Physical or psychological?”
“Both.”
I laughed.
But Dominic had made a mistake.
The bullet created evidence.
Trajectory.
Weapon characteristics.
Surveillance.
A getaway vehicle.
Investigators found Caleb Ross first.
He was alive.
Dominic had hidden him in Rhode Island.
Ross confessed.
Dominic ordered my shooting.
Not to kill me.
That was the final cruelty.
The instructions had been specific.
Spinal injury if possible.
Dominic wanted me alive and incapacitated.
A dead boss could become a martyr.
A paralyzed boss, he believed, would become an embarrassment.
I read the statement twice.
Then laughed.
Tessa frowned.
“What?”
“He thought the chair would humiliate me.”
“Does it?”
I looked down.
“No.”
Not anymore.
The chair was not my prison.
Other people's assumptions had been.
Dominic was arrested four days later.
No dramatic shootout.
No revenge execution.
Police pulled him from a hotel elevator in Providence.
He asked to speak with me.
I refused.
He had already taken enough of my time.
The trial lasted seven weeks.
Arya testified.
So did Ross.
Dominic was convicted.
When sentencing ended, reporters waited outside.
One shouted:
“Mr. Corvino, do you believe justice was served?”
I looked at Tessa.
Then at my wheelchair.
“Yes.”
Another reporter asked:
“Will you ever walk again?”
Six months earlier, that question would have destroyed me.
Now I answered:
“I don't know.”
Then smiled.
“But I've got places to be either way.”
May you like
Tessa squeezed my hand.
And we left.
