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.

Massimo’s security team tore the west wing apart, ripping up floorboards, analyzing digital devices, and questioning every servant, chef, and nurse on the payroll. Henderson had vanished completely, swallowed by the Boston underworld like he’d never existed.

Meanwhile, my role shifted from physical therapist to forensic medical detective.

Working late into the night in Massimo’s private study—with two armed guards stationed outside the door—I analyzed the household’s medical logs, delivery receipts, and pharmacy refills. Massimo sat across from me in his chair, watching quietly as I cross-referenced the dates of his synthetic muscle relaxant doses with the schedules of everyone who had access to his private quarters.

“It has to be someone with medical clearance,” I murmured, running a hand over my tired eyes. The clock on the wall read 3:15 AM. “Or someone who can bribe a pharmacist. That specific compound isn't something you can buy over-the-counter or steal from a standard hospital cart. It’s custom-compounded.”

Massimo poured himself a glass of whiskey with one hand, his fingers steady despite the chronic pain that still haunted his lower spine.

“My primary physician is Dr. Alistair,” Massimo said, his voice raspy from exhaustion. “He’s been with the family for twenty years. He patched up my father after a warehouse shootout in the nineties. He has no reason to betray me.”

“People don't need a reason when they have a price, Massimo,” I replied bluntly, looking up from a shipping manifest. “Henderson had a price. Someone offered him enough money to look the other way while they slipped a neurotoxin into your nightly routine.”

Before Massimo could respond, a soft knock echoed at the study door.

One of the guards opened it to reveal Camila standing in the hallway, looking pale and thoroughly terrified.

“Tessa,” Camila whispered, wringing her hands. “You need to see this. I checked the financial logs you asked me to pull from the medical supply company that services the estate. Look at the billing address for the auxiliary prescriptions.”

I stood up immediately, walking over to take the tablet from her hands.

My breath hitched.

The billing address for the custom-compounded paralyzing agent wasn't a pharmacy in Boston. It traced back to a shell company registered in Cambridge.

And the primary shareholder of that shell company was a familiar name: Pascale Shipping & Logistics.

Massimo wheeled himself closer, his ice-blue eyes fixing on the screen. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

“Pascale Shipping,” Massimo whispered, the words tasting like poison on his tongue. “That’s managed by my cousin, Julian.”

Julian Pascale.

The ambitious, silver-tongued vice president of the family empire who had stepped in to run day-to-day operations while Massimo recovered in his wheelchair. The cousin who had publicly shed tears at press conferences following the bridge accident, lamenting the tragic disabling of the family’s patriarch.

“Julian wants the throne,” I realized out loud, the pieces clicking together with terrifying clarity. “If you walk again, he goes back to being second-in-command. If you stay in that wheelchair, he eventually forces you out through a corporate coup under the guise of your ‘permanent medical incapacity.’”

Massimo didn't rage. He didn't smash a glass or yell.