Chapter 5 - The Glass House
Margot didn't drop the paper. Slowly, deliberately, she stood up from the floor, holding the medical report in her right hand, her heart thumping against her ribs like a trapped hammer.
"Your uncle shot you," she said flatly.
Massimo did not flinch. "You are paid to rehabilitate my legs, Ms. Hale. You are not paid to read my personal correspondence."
"He shot you with a security sidearm registered to his own man," Margot continued, her clinical mind piecing together the terrifying puzzle of the last five weeks with horrifying speed. "The hit outside the warehouse wasn't a ambush by an outside gang. It was an internal execution. And you've known it since the day you woke up in the ICU."
Massimo stared at her for three agonizing seconds. Then, he reached out, pulled his chair forward two paces, and held out his hand.
"Give me the file," he commanded.
"Why haven't you arrested him?" Margot demanded, her voice rising slightly. "Why are you sitting in this house letting him walk through your doors, eating your food, managing your dock shipments, and standing over you while you train? He tried to kill you, Massimo!"
"Because this is not a courtroom, Margot!" Massimo suddenly snapped, his voice exploding into a harsh, resonant thunder that rattled the glass panes of the high study windows. "In my world, if you accuse a senior family member of treason without absolute control over the council, you don't get a trial! You get a civil war that destroys two hundred people!"
He slammed his hand against the leather armrest of his chair.
"My father built this empire on loyalty," Massimo said, his breathing heavy, his dark eyes burning into hers. "Leonardo has been quietly buying off the dock captains and precinct commanders for three years. When I was shot, he assumed I would die on the operating table. When I survived, he took control of the liquid distribution channels while I was in a coma. If I strike at him without holding the legal title to the overseas accounts, his men will burn every asset we own—including my sister."
Margot swallowed hard, looking down at the paper in her hand. "So you're pretending to be helpless."
"I am pretending to be a broken man who cares more about his physical recovery than his business," Massimo confessed, his tone dropping into a low, lethal murmur. "I let him believe I am distracted by physical therapy. I let him believe I am weak. Every day you come here, every hour you force me to work on those bars, I am building back the strength I need to wipe him out of this family forever."
Margot looked at him—really looked at him—and saw the true weight of the hell he had been living in. He wasn't just battling his bruised spinal cord; he was playing a high-stakes game of chess against a killer who lived under the same roof, holding his breath until his body was strong enough to deliver the final strike.
"He knows you're getting better," Margot realized softly, her eyes widening. "That's why he came to the gym last week. He wasn't checking on the dock files—he was checking to see if you could stand."
"Yes," Massimo admitted. "And if he realizes how much movement I have actually recovered in my right leg, he won't wait for another warehouse hit. He will put a bullet through my head in this very room."
Margot stepped forward and placed the file directly into his waiting palm.
"Then we need to accelerate your training," she said.
Massimo blinked, looking up at her in genuine shock. "What?"
"If he's watching you," Margot said, her voice steadying into an unbreakable steel resolve, "then we need to change our protocol. We do the visible exercises in the gym—the ones that look slow and painful. But we do the real strength work up here, behind locked doors."
Massimo stared at her, a strange, profound shift occurring in the depths of his dark eyes. A slow, dangerous, beautiful smile slowly transformed his features.
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"You really are insane, Margot Hale," he murmured.
"I have a dissertation to finish," she replied smoothly, pulling the foam wedge pillow from the cabinet. "And I can't collect my fifty thousand dollars if my patient gets murdered before March. Now get on the mat."
