THE SECOND SLAP

I heard the slap before I saw Nico on the floor.

The piano stopped in the middle of a song. When I reached the ballroom doorway, his wheelchair lay on its side beside the console table, and Camille Ashcroft already had her hand raised again.

Thirty people were watching. Some had known him since he was a boy. Two carried guns beneath their suit jackets.

Not one of them moved.

Eight months earlier, a crash had left the thirty-four-year-old heir to Chicago's most feared crime family unable to walk. The men who'd once hurried to obey him now waited to see who else would speak first.

I dropped my medication tray onto the console and caught her wrist before the second slap could land.

"You will not hit him again."

Camille looked at my hand, then at my blue scrubs, as if she were trying to identify the mistake that had allowed an employee to touch her.

"Let go of me."

"Put your hand down."

Behind me, I could hear Nico breathing. He sat on the marble with one palm braced against the floor and his other hand gripping the base of the console. There was a red mark on his cheek. What frightened me was the effort it took him to keep his body upright.

"Adeline."

I didn't turn.

"I'm listening."

"You can let her go. She's heard you."

I released her slowly. Camille stepped back and smoothed her silver gown.

"He made a scene in front of my guests."

"Your guests?" Nico asked.

"You couldn't smile for ten seconds? It was a video, for God's sake."

A phone lay near the front wheel. From the corridor, I'd heard the beginning of their argument. Camille wanted to film a message about their wedding, seventeen days away. Nico had said he'd posed for enough pictures and tried to leave. Now a broken glass and a long crease in the rug marked the chair's path.

"You grabbed my arm while I was turning," he said. "I told you to let go."

"You were fighting me."

I wanted to scream. Instead, I turned to the nearest guard.

"Get the chair upright. Now."

He looked at Camille.

Nico saw it, too.

"Paul. Look at me."

Only then did the man obey.

I knelt beside Nico without blocking his view of the room.

"Did you hit your head?"

"No."

"Any pain that isn't normal for you?"

"My pride's in terrible shape. Do you have anything for that?"

The joke came out strained. His jaw was trembling.

"Privacy might help. Would you like me to clear the room?"

His dark eyes met mine. Then he glanced at the guests still pretending they couldn't hear us.

"First, I'd like to get off the floor."

With the chair secured and Paul helping, we used the transfer method Nico knew. I supported him without hauling him up by his arms or issuing instructions over his head. When he was seated, his white sleeve had ridden up, exposing the tattoo that ran down his arm.

Camille folded her arms.

"Are you finished with the performance?"

I stood slowly.

"He needs to be examined."

"And you need to remember who pays you. You're fired."

My first thought wasn't the rent. It was the cardiac clinic's envelope in my bedroom drawer. Wes's appointment, finally confirmed after two dates had fallen through.

Camille saw me hesitate.

"The assistance arrangement for your brother ends, too. You should think about him before inserting yourself into things that don't concern you."

The room seemed to recede. I needed this job. I needed it so badly that my empty hand began to shake.

"She isn't fired," Nico said.

Camille gave a disbelieving laugh.

"You're going to undermine me over a nurse?"

"I'm going to stop you from threatening a child because you lost an argument with me."

"We discuss these things in private."

He touched his reddened cheek.

"You chose to do this here."

For the first time, she seemed to notice her audience. A man near the door lowered his eyes. A woman clutched her purse against her chest.

"Nico, I was upset."

"Then go home."

"This is my home, too."

"No. You will no longer choose my staff, receive my medical reports, or speak for me. And there won't be a wedding."

She went still. The diamond flashed as her hand curled into a fist.

"You can't end everything over a disagreement."

"I can end an engagement because you hit me. I just did."

I knew that voice. In the three months I'd worked for him, I'd heard it on the phone whenever someone confused his absence from meetings with an inability to understand what happened in them.

Camille stepped toward me.

"Do you think you've won something?"

"Get away from her," Nico said.

She caught my wrist for a moment, pressing her nails into the same place I'd held hers. I didn't retreat, although I wanted to.

Nico looked at Paul.

"Escort Miss Ashcroft out. Then ask the guests to leave. The party is over."

Paul hesitated again. This time, Nico didn't repeat himself.

The guard opened a path. Camille left without looking back, but she stopped near the staircase to make a call.

I was fairly sure I knew whom she was calling.

"I need to check your shoulder," I said as the first guests began to file out.

"I know."

"And your hip. You may need to go to the hospital."

"I know that, too."

I moved around his chair. He caught my hand carefully, avoiding the marks her nails had left.

"You should have told me she could interfere with Wes's arrangement."

"Until a minute ago, I didn't know she thought she could."

He studied my face. I tried to remember when I'd last eaten and couldn't.

"Is there anything else you're afraid to tell me?"

My phone pressed against my thigh through the pocket of my scrubs. It held photographs of records changed after they'd been signed. There was a message from his physician telling me to stop creating problems. Upstairs, in a sealed envelope, I had two tablets that shouldn't have been in the bottle where I'd found them.

I glanced at the staircase. Camille was still on the phone.

"Yes," I said. "Someone has been giving you medication that isn't on your prescription."