I accepted $50,000 to spend three months bathing, dressing, and teaching a wheelchair-bound Mafia boss to walk after three nurses fled his mansion in fear. Everyone warned me Massimo Pascale might destroy my career if I angered him, but when I made Boston’s most feared man laugh, I discovered something far more dangerous: someone inside his own house was secretly making sure he never stood again.

Before the sound had even faded, two of Massimo’s armed guards were already bolting down the corridor after Henderson. The heavy thud of combat boots against the hardwood floors shook the walls of the mansion.

Massimo didn't move. He sat in his custom wheelchair behind the mahogany desk, his knuckles white as he gripped the armrests so hard the leather creaked. The fury radiating from him was palpable—a suffocating, oppressive wave that made the air in the room feel thin and dangerous.

Slowly, deliberately, his ice-blue eyes shifted from the empty doorway back to me.

“What money, Tessa?” he repeated, his voice dangerously low, stripped of all human warmth. “Care to explain why one of my most trusted men just yelled about you taking money right before he tried to run for his life?”

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. My breath caught in my throat, cold and sharp.

“I don't know what he was talking about,” I said, forcing my voice to remain level despite the terror clawing at my throat. “I’m drowning in fifty thousand dollars of student debt, Massimo. The only money I’m getting is the fifty grand Camila negotiated for these three months of physical therapy. You saw my bank account statements when I applied for this job—or did your security team run a full background check on me before I walked through those gates?”

Massimo stared at me, his gaze boring into my soul as if he were trying to read every thought behind my eyes. For five long seconds, neither of us breathed.

Then the radio on the guard’s belt crackled to life.

“Boss. We lost him. He had a car waiting past the eastern gate. The perimeter fence was cut.”

Massimo closed his eyes. When he opened them, the fury had hardened into something much worse—calculated, icy vengeance.

“Lock down the estate,” Massimo commanded into the comms unit clipped to his collar. “Nobody leaves. Check every camera, every phone log, and every financial transaction linked to Henderson over the last six months. Find out who was paying him.”

He clicked the unit off and looked back at me.

“You’re staying,” he said, not as a request, but as an absolute decree.

“Excuse me?” I bristled, stepping back. “Someone in this house is poisoning you to keep you paralyzed, and one of your guards just implicated me in a conspiracy I know nothing about! I’m leaving right now.”

“Try walking out those gates without my permission, and see how far you get before my men put you in the trunk of a car,” Massimo growled, wheeling himself forward with sudden, violent velocity. He stopped inches from me, towering over me despite being seated. “Henderson didn't just panic. He knew about the drug, he knew about the dosage, and he knew your name. That means you’re either part of this, or you’ve just painted a massive target on your back because you found out what was in that bottle.”

The cold reality of his words hit me like a splash of freezing water.

He was right. If Henderson had mentioned money, whoever was orchestrating this poisoning—whoever wanted Massimo permanently trapped in that wheelchair—already knew I was poking around where I didn't belong. Leaving the safety of this heavily guarded fortress meant walking right into the crosshairs of whoever was paying Henderson off.

I swallowed hard, forcing my fear down into my stomach.

“Fine,” I whispered. “I stay. But we do this my way. Starting tonight, I audit every single medication, every meal, and every visitor that enters your wing.”