Chapter 2 - Nine Days to Become Mrs. Ferraro
The Ferraro house stood behind iron gates on St. Charles Avenue, old enough to have survived hurricanes, funerals, federal investigations, and three generations of men who believed stone could make a family permanent.
Delphine arrived with two suitcases.
That was all.
Gideon stared at them when the driver lifted them from the trunk.
“Mrs. Ferraro, the rest of your things can be collected tomorrow.”
“There aren’t any more.”
He looked toward her.
Delphine smiled politely. “My family didn’t believe in clutter.”
Casius heard the answer from the ramp leading to the side entrance.
He heard the truth beneath it too.
A woman who had lived twenty-eight years inside one house should have owned more than two suitcases unless someone had spent years teaching her not to claim space.
He said nothing until they were inside.
Then he told the housekeeper, Rosa, “Give Mrs. Ferraro the west suite.”
Rosa hesitated. “The adjoining suite?”
“No.”
Delphine looked at him.
Casius continued, “Her own rooms. Her own key. No one enters without permission.”
The smallest change passed over her face.
Relief.
There and gone.
She remembered her promise at the Bowmont table.
A door that locked from her side.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me for a lock.”
“Then thank you for listening.”
That answer stayed with him.
The first week of marriage was uneventful if one ignored the men with guns outside the gates, the lawyers arriving every morning, and Salvatore Ruggiero calling twice to remind Casius that the marriage had solved only one political problem.
Ferraro captains were still watching him.
Some believed a man in a wheelchair could not lead.
Some had begun meeting with his cousin Matteo behind closed doors.
Some had stopped returning calls as quickly as they once had.
Casius spent his mornings in meetings and his afternoons pretending not to despise physical therapy.
Delphine spent her mornings somewhere else entirely.
On the third day, Casius asked Gideon, “Where does my wife go at seven?”
Gideon’s mouth twitched.
“You could ask your wife.”
“I’m asking you.”
“She takes a streetcar to Mercy Saint Anne.”
“The hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She works there.”
Casius went still.
“Doing what?”
“You could ask your wife.”
“Gideon.”
“Rehabilitation services. She’s a licensed physical therapist.”
Casius stared at him.
The callus.
The quiet shoes.
The way she moved like someone accustomed to hospital floors.
Sterling had said nothing.
Neither had Delphine.
That evening, she returned at six carrying a canvas tote and smelling faintly of antiseptic soap.
Casius was in the library.
“Sit,” he said.
She raised one eyebrow.
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was a badly phrased invitation.”
“Better.”
She sat across from him.
“You’re a physical therapist.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Six years.”
“Your father never mentioned it.”
“My father doesn’t mention many things that contradict his preferred version of me.”
“Why rehabilitation?”
Delphine looked toward the windows.
“Because bodies change. People around them become stupid.”
Casius waited.
She met his eyes again.
“When I was seventeen, after the fire, everyone spoke about my face as though I had left the room. Doctors discussed grafts over me. Relatives discussed whether I should finish school at home. My mother discussed lighting.”
The last word was dry enough to cut.
“One therapist asked me what I wanted my body to do again. Not what I wanted it to look like. Do. That question saved me.”
Casius’s fingers tightened once on the wheel rim.
“Do you work with spinal injuries?”
“Yes.”
He almost laughed.
“Convenient.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I am not your therapist.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are my husband, which is already professionally complicated enough.”
“You watched me transfer into the car this morning.”
“I have eyes.”
“And?”
“And your left quadriceps fired.”
Casius stopped breathing for a beat.
“No, it didn’t.”
“It did.”
“My neurologist says the pathways are incomplete.”
“Incomplete is not absent.”
He leaned back.
“What are you telling me?”
“Nothing you didn’t ask.”
“I’m asking now.”
Delphine set her tote on the floor.
“You have movement that is being dismissed because it is inconsistent. Your team treats every failed attempt as confirmation of prognosis instead of data. I think they stopped being curious.”
Rage came first.
Not at her.
At hope.
Hope had become the cruelest thing people offered him.
He had learned to hate sentences beginning with maybe.
“You have reviewed my records?”
“No.”
“Then don’t diagnose me from across a breakfast table.”
“I didn’t.”
His voice sharpened. “You just told me my medical team is wrong.”
“I told you what I saw.”
Silence spread between them.
Before the bombing, Casius could cross a room in three strides and make men nervous without saying a word.
Now movement itself had become a negotiation.
He hated that Delphine had noticed something his doctors had not.
He hated more that part of him wanted her to be right.
She stood.
“Good night, Casius.”
“Why did you agree to marry me?”
Her hand paused on the library door.
“That is a different question.”
“Answer it.”
She turned.
“The Bowmont house was a prison.”
“That’s one reason.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the other?”
For the first time since he met her, Delphine looked uncertain.
“Not yet.”
He gave a humorless smile.
“Everyone wants something.”
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I learned a long time ago that people who insist they want nothing usually want the most.”
Then she left.
Later, alone in his room, Casius tried to move his left foot.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Nothing.
On the seventh attempt, one toe shifted.
Less than a centimeter.
He stared at it until his vision blurred.
The next morning, he canceled his regular therapist.
At breakfast, Delphine poured coffee without looking at him.
“I need a name,” he said.
“For what?”
“A rehabilitation specialist who has not stopped being curious.”
She finally looked up.
“Not me.”
“I know.”
“Someone independent.”
“Yes.”
She considered him.
Then she wrote a name on a napkin.
Dr. Lena Cho.
Casius took it.
Delphine returned to her breakfast.
Neither of them smiled.
But something inside the house had changed.
Their marriage had begun as payment for an insult.
May you like
By the end of the first week, it had become a negotiation between two people who were each hiding more than the other had been told.
And both were beginning to understand that the other might be dangerous in exactly the right way.
