Chapter 20
She was tougher than many men on his payroll. “I’m sorry,” Zo said. Tessa paused. She looked up. Their faces were inches apart. She could see the exhaustion beneath his eyes. He could see old grief in hers. “Don’t be,” she whispered. Her gaze dropped again. “It’s the world.” “It’s my world,” Zo corrected. His voice lowered. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this.” Tessa tied the final stitch. “You paid a $40,000 debt for a maid you barely knew.” She clipped the thread. “You put my daughter in a bedroom that looks like a palace, and you feed her.” She covered the stitched wound with sterile dressing. “I can sew a cut.” She removed the bloody gloves and placed them in the trash. Then she cleaned the blood from the marble counter. When she finished, she looked at him.
Zo was watching her with an intensity that made the small room feel different. The barrier between employer and employee had thinned. For that moment, there was only a wounded man in the dark and the woman who had found him. “You need water,” Tessa said. “And antibiotics. You can’t get an infection.” She turned. “Tessa.” Zo caught her wrist. His grip was weak, but his skin felt hot against hers. She stopped. She looked at his face. “Thank you.” Tessa gave a small, abrupt nod. Then she gently freed her wrist. “Good night, Mr. Rossi.” She left the bathroom. The faint rustle of her cotton nightgown disappeared along the hallway. Zo remained alone. For the first time, he understood that the fortress he had built to keep the world outside had allowed something real to enter. 4 days later, tension across the estate had reached a breaking point. The Moretti crew had not backed down. The knife wound in Zo’s side had become a declaration of war, and the streets of Chicago were paying the price. Zo spent his days behind the locked doors of his study, directing the systematic and brutal dismantling of Moretti infrastructure.
