A single mother touched the paralyzed syndicate boss once and made Boston afraid of him again.

Victor drove her home in silence. The blindfold was back on, but Elena didn’t care about the route anymore. Her mind was racing.

She had actually done it. She had felt the exact moment the nerve pathway bypassed the scar tissue. It was the single greatest professional achievement of her life, and she had performed it on a man who ordered assassinations with his morning coffee.

When the car finally idled in the alley behind her apartment building, Victor removed the blindfold. He handed her a thick manila envelope.

"Fifteen thousand," Victor said, his tone devoid of inflection. "As promised."

Elena clutched the envelope to her chest. "He needs to hydrate. A lot of water. The toxins releasing from that tissue will make him sick if he doesn't."

Victor looked at her, his dead eyes studying her face in the dim glow of the streetlamp. "I have worked for Julian Rossi for fifteen years. I have seen men try to shoot him, stab him, and blow him up. I have never seen him look the way he looked when I walked back into that room."

"It was just a muscle twitch—"

"Don't lie to me, Ms. Vance," Victor interrupted softly. "You gave a dead man a pulse. We will see you on Monday."

Elena bolted up the stairs to her drafty apartment. The moment she locked the door, she rushed to Leo’s room. Her son was sleeping soundly, the cardiac monitor tracing a steady, fragile green mountain range across the screen. She sank to her knees beside his bed, pressing her forehead against the mattress, and finally let herself cry.

She cried from the terror of the evening, and she cried from the heavy, undeniable relief of the envelope in her coat pocket.

The next morning, Elena stood at the counter of Castor Pharmacy. The pharmacist, a weary older man named Greg who had looked at her with pity for two years, rang up the Amiodarone.

"That’s eight hundred and forty dollars, Elena," Greg said softly. "Are you sure you don't want me to call the state assistance office again? Maybe they—"

Elena pulled a crisp, banded stack of hundred-dollar bills from her purse and laid nine of them on the counter.

Greg stared at the money as if it were radioactive. "Elena... where did you get this?"

"I took on a private client," she said smoothly, keeping her chin up. "Keep the change, Greg. Just make sure you always have Leo’s supply in stock."

For the next two days, Elena lived in a state of suspended animation. She paid three months of back rent. She bought Leo a specialized air purifier and a winter coat that actually fit him. But every time she closed her eyes, she felt the rigid, ruined landscape of Julian Rossi’s back, and the terrifying, magnetic pull of his dark eyes.

On Monday night, a different black SUV waited in the alley.

This time, she wasn't blindfolded.

"Mr. Rossi has deemed the blindfold unnecessary," Victor said from the driver’s seat as they cruised onto the highway.

"Why?" Elena asked, gripping her medical bag.

"Because if you try to run, Ms. Vance, it won't matter if you know where the house is. We know where yours is."

When she entered the master suite, Julian was already on the bed, face down. He was shirtless. The air in the room was thick with tension.

Elena set her bag down and approached him. "How was the pain over the weekend?"

"Excruciating," Julian said into the pillow. "Like someone was pouring battery acid down my right thigh."

"Good," Elena said, pressing her hands into his lower back. "That means the nerve is firing. It’s waking up. It’s going to be angry for a while."

Julian turned his head to look at her. "Victor tells me you paid off your debts in cash yesterday. You bought your kid a coat."

Elena froze, her thumbs pressing into his spine. "You had me followed."

"I have everyone followed." Julian’s eyes were entirely black in the dim light. "You have a gift, Elena. A very dangerous gift. I have spent eighteen years building an empire on the assumption that I am physically broken. If word gets out that I am... repairing... the sharks will smell blood in the water. A recovering boss is a vulnerable boss."

"I haven't told anyone."

"You won't," Julian said softly. "Because as of tonight, you no longer work at that clinic in Dorchester. You are my exclusive employee. You will be paid twenty thousand dollars a week. Your son’s medical bills will be routed through a shell corporation and paid in full. You belong to me now."