Chapter 3 - Blood on the Parquet
Dr. Julian Evans arrived fifteen minutes later, his medical bag rattling as he was escorted into the private second-floor library. He was a man accustomed to discreet, high-stakes medical emergencies for the city’s underworld elite, having stitched up gunshot wounds in abandoned warehouses and set broken bones without filing state reports. But when he entered the room and saw Dominic Rossi standing beside a plush velvet sofa where a bruised, heavy-set maid lay with an ice pack pressed to her face, the doctor stopped dead in his tracks.
"Julian," Dominic said, stepping away from the fireplace with a glass of neat bourbon in his hand. "Examine her."
"Dominic... I was told there was an altercation involving Miss Moretti," Dr. Evans stammered, setting his leather case onto a polished mahogany side table.
"Miss Moretti is no longer a concern of this household," Dominic replied, his voice dead and flat. "The maid, however, is. The ring opened her cheek from the zygomatic arch down to the jawline. I want zero scarring. I want a full neurological check for a concussion. And I want it done with the same care you would give my mother."
Dr. Evans blinked, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, before quickly moving to the sofa.
Skylar tried to shrink back into the cushions. She had never been the center of this kind of attention. In her world, medical care was something you postponed until an infection turned red and angry; doctors were people who looked at her father’s Medicaid card with visible exhaustion before prescribing the cheapest generic pills available. To have a high-end private physician gently tilting her chin beneath a halogen lamp, inspecting her swollen skin with delicate, sanitized fingers, made her cheeks burn hotter than the injury itself.
"A deep laceration," Dr. Evans murmured, opening a sterile surgical tray. "The edge of the stone did the damage. It will require thirteen, perhaps fourteen sub-cuticular sutures to heal cleanly without a visible seam. Her jaw isn't fractured, thank God, but the soft tissue trauma is severe."
"Do what needs to be done," Dominic said, leaning against the edge of his massive desk, his dark eyes never leaving Skylar’s face.
"I can do it without local anesthetic if we're in a rush—"
"Give her the lidocaine, Julian," Dominic interrupted, his tone sharpening by a single, lethal degree. "She has felt enough pain tonight. Do not cause her any more."
Skylar closed her eyes as the needle pinched her flesh, the cold numbness spreading across her cheek like liquid frost. She focused on the steady, rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. She could hear the rain lashing the library’s tall leaded-glass windows, and beneath that, the quiet, steady breathing of the man watching her from the shadows.
Why was he doing this?
She was just Penny. The clumsy girl from Schenectady. The maid who had once dropped a whole tureen of lobster bisque on the dining room rug during a visit from the archbishop. She was the staff joke. Men like Dominic Rossi didn't carry maids up flights of stairs; they had their fixers slip an envelope of cash into their aprons and had security drop them at a county clinic with a non-disclosure agreement.
When the last stitch was tied and Dr. Evans packed his instruments, Carmela walked into the library, wrapped in a heavy lavender cashmere robe. Her hair was brushed, her face washed clean of tears, but her eyes were remarkably bright, completely clear of the fog that had plagued her earlier that evening.
"How is she, Julian?" Carmela asked softly, walking straight to the sofa and taking Skylar’s cold hand between both of hers.
"She’ll make a full recovery, Mrs. Rossi," the doctor said, bowing his head respectfully. "She needs bed rest for at least forty-eight hours, soft foods, and antibiotics to prevent infection."
Carmela nodded, turning to her son. "Dominic."
"Mother."
"This girl stays in the east guest suite. Not the staff quarters in the basement. The guest suite next to mine."
Dr. Evans’s eyebrows twitched, but he had the survival instincts of a veteran mob doctor; he kept his mouth firmly shut.
"She will have the suite, Mother," Dominic said, setting his bourbon glass down. "And she will not return to domestic duties."
Skylar shot up from the sofa, panic spiking through the numbness in her face. "Mr. Rossi, please! I need to work! My father’s treatments—if I lose my hours, the clinic in Albany won't release his medication! I can still clean with one side of my face swollen, I swear I can—"
Dominic crossed the room in three strides, stopping right in front of her. He looked down at her frantic, tear-stained face, his expression unreadable.
"Your father’s medical debts were settled twenty minutes ago, Skylar," Dominic said quietly. "All of them. The clinic, the private nursing service, the mortgage on his home."
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Skylar froze, her jaw dropping open. "What?"
"You stood between my mother and a blow meant to humiliate her," Dominic said, reaching out to gently touch the white sterile bandage taped across her cheek. "In my world, loyalty is the only currency that doesn't depreciate. You will never scrub another floor in this house, Skylar Gallagher. From this night forward, your only responsibility is to heal... and to let me take care of the people who protect mine."
