Darcy recovered first.
She grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me through the wet primer until my body stopped at Felix’s shoes. Splintered wood scraped my knees. My broken fingers struck the floor, and pain detonated all the way to my shoulder.
“Look what I did for you,” Darcy said, slightly breathless. “She was destroying your favorite mural. I had to teach her a lesson.”
Her friends lifted their phones again, encouraged by Felix’s silence.
The blonde laughed. “Careful, Mr. Palmer. She is staining your floor.”
I raised my head. Blood blurred the lower half of Felix’s face, but I could still read him. His expression was not shock. It was calculation.
He removed one black leather glove finger by finger.
Then he touched Darcy’s chin.
“You made a mess,” he said.
Darcy leaned into his hand. “Are you angry?”
A faint smile appeared. “No. Your instincts were useful.”
Something inside me went quiet.
Felix had once broken a man’s nose for brushing against one of his cars. I had watched him fire an architect for scratching a marble countertop. Yet my blood covered his studio, my fingers pointed in unnatural directions, and he looked almost entertained.
Darcy glanced down at me, triumphant. “You heard him.”
Felix’s gaze shifted to the three phones. “Give them to me.”
The women hesitated.
His voice did not rise. “Now.”
They hurried forward and placed their phones in his open palm. Felix handed them to the security chief who had appeared behind him.
“Delete every copy,” Felix said. “Cloud backups too. If any footage appears online, sue all three families and freeze every account connected to them.”
The blonde went pale. “We were only helping Darcy.”
“You were creating evidence.” Felix looked at her as if she were an insect on his sleeve. “Leave.”
They fled without retrieving my phone.
Darcy’s smile faltered. “You are not blaming me, are you?”
“I am protecting you from your own carelessness.”
He crouched beside me. For one impossible heartbeat, I remembered the man I had once believed he was—the man who had sat beside my hospital bed ten years ago and promised he could solve every problem if I trusted him.
Then his bare fingers closed around my broken hand.
I screamed.
Felix turned my wrist toward the light, clinically inspecting the swelling. He pressed his thumb against my ring finger until black spots swam across my vision.
“Three fractures,” he said. “Possibly four.”
“Stop touching her,” Darcy complained. “She is pretending it hurts more than it does.”
Felix pressed again, and my body jerked.
“No,” he said. “This is real.”
Darcy folded her arms. “Then she will finally stop painting.”
His eyes lifted to hers. “I did not authorize permanent damage.”
The room cooled.
Darcy’s confidence slipped for the first time. “You said you were tired of her defying us.”
“I said I wanted her obedient. A useless hand lowers the value of what I own.”
Not who. What.
Felix released me and stood. “Call Dr. Mercer. No police, no public emergency room, and no written report mentioning Darcy.”
The security chief nodded.
I tried to push myself upright with my left hand. “I want the police.”
Felix looked down at me. “You fell in your studio.”
“She cut my face.”
“You fell through a broken easel.”
“There are witnesses.”
“There are employees and guests on my property.” His tone remained conversational. “They will remember whatever I pay them to remember.”
Darcy bent to retrieve the utility knife. Felix caught her wrist before she reached it.
“Leave it,” he said.
“But my fingerprints—”
“Exactly.”
Two security men entered with a wheeled stretcher. One of them covered the knife with an evidence bag—not for the police, I realized, but for Felix’s private vault. He collected threats the way other men collected art.
When the guards lifted me, my broken hand shifted against my chest. I bit down on a cry.
Darcy followed us into the hall. “Where are you taking her?”
“To the Palmer surgical suite.”
“She does not deserve a private surgeon.”
Felix adjusted his cuff. “She needs enough function to finish the commission for next month.”
Darcy’s mouth curved again. “Then make sure the scar stays.”
Felix looked at my face for a long moment. “That depends on how well she behaves.”
They rolled me into the private elevator. Felix stepped inside with us. Darcy remained behind, irritated at being excluded but too cautious to challenge him again.
The doors closed.
I stared at the ceiling while blood slid into my hair. “You watched her do this.”
“I arrived after.”
“You praised her.”
“She needed reassurance.”
I laughed once, though it hurt my cheek. “And what do I need?”
Felix’s hand settled over the rail beside my head. “Perspective.”
The elevator descended toward the underground garage.
“My grandmother is still at East District Medical Center,” I said. “Her cardiac surgery is tomorrow. I need my phone.”
“I moved her.”
Cold spread through me more quickly than the blood loss. “Where?”
“To a private unit.”
“You had no right.”
“I paid the outstanding balance and acquired the hospital lien. The facility accepted my guarantee.” He leaned closer. “Her bed, her specialists, and the machine breathing for her are now billed through the Palmer Foundation.”
I tried to sit up. The straps across my body stopped me.
“What did you do?”
“I made certain you understand the cost of disobedience.”
The elevator doors opened to the garage, where an unmarked ambulance waited.
Felix bent until his mouth was near my ear. “Tomorrow, when you can speak without screaming, you will ask me properly to keep her alive.”
The paramedics rolled me away.
Inside the ambulance, one of them asked whether the injury had been reported. The second paramedic gave him a warning look and turned up the oxygen flow. A typed incident form lay clipped beside my head. Under cause of injury, someone had already entered accidental fall during private art installation.
I tried to reach for it with my left hand, but the paramedic moved the clipboard away.
“Mr. Palmer’s office completed the intake,” he murmured. “Please do not make this harder.”
Through the rear window, I saw Felix lift his phone.
“Flag the East District account,” he said to whoever answered. “No authorization without my direct approval.”
The ambulance doors closed before I could hear the response.
He had not rescued me from Darcy.
He had preserved his property, erased the evidence, and tightened the chain around the only person I still loved.
