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

“I'll be back before dinner,” she said.

She picked up her handbag.

She did not kiss me.

She did not touch my shoulder.

She did not ask whether I needed anything before she left.

The door clicked shut.

Twenty minutes later, Tessa Hall walked in carrying a basin of warm water, clean towels, and the expression of a woman who had been awake too long.

Her brown hair was twisted into a messy knot that had started collapsing on one side.

Dark circles sat beneath her eyes.

Her navy uniform had been washed so many times the fabric had gone pale at the seams.

“Morning, Mr. Corvino.”

“You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

She set the basin down.

“Sleep?”

“Three hours.”

“You shouldn't be working.”

“Tell my landlord.”

That was Tessa.

Most people around me had spent years turning every sentence into something polite enough to survive.

Tessa had been in my house nine weeks and had never once bothered.