Home Entertainment Game Technology Six months after a bullet left me paralyzed, my fiancée secretly ordered the staff to stop my afternoon therapy because she believed helping me was pointless, but the exhausted aide earning twenty-five dollars an hour refused to treat me like a lost cause. I had spent my life surrounded by men terrified of my name, yet it took one brutally honest woman washing my back to make me realize the person wearing my engagement ring had already abandoned me.352

“Ownership doesn't.”

“Leadership does.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

For the first time since we were boys, Dominic did not look away first.

“You need rest,” he said.

Then he left with the unsigned contract.

Tessa entered ten seconds later.

“You heard?”

“Enough.”

I looked toward the doorway.

“My entire life, I thought fear was loyalty.”

Tessa leaned against the dresser.

“Common mistake.”

“You say that like you've met a lot of men like me.”

Her eyes dropped.

“More than one.”

I noticed something in her face.

A door closing.

I would remember it later.

At the time, I let it go.

Three weeks passed.

Then the first miracle came.

Not walking.

Nothing so dramatic.

Dr. Patel had my left leg supported while I tried to move my hip.

I stared until my eyes hurt.

“Again,” he said.

I tried.

Nothing.

“Again.”

Nothing.

Tessa stood near the window.