Chapter 2 - The Contract in the Tower
The black Lincoln Continental was waiting outside my dilapidated apartment building at 7:45 AM.
I hadn't slept a single minute.
I had spent the night sitting on the floor of my tiny kitchen, watching the sunrise through dusty blinds, running my thumb over the raised gold lettering of the card Dominic DeLuca had handed me.
DeLuca Enterprises. 888 Michigan Avenue.
My mother’s hospital bills lay spread across the laminate counter like unpaid death warrants. Saint Catherine’s Medical Center had sent their final notice yesterday: Payment of $14,000 due by Friday, or patient transfer protocols will begin.
Transfer protocols meant moving my mother to a low-cost facility six miles away—a place where the machines were old and the nurses were too overworked to notice when oxygen levels dropped.
I put on my only decent clothes—a plain dark blue dress and a grey wool coat—and walked down the creaking wooden stairs.
The driver, a tall man named Frank with a quiet posture and a faint scar along his jaw, opened the rear door without a word.
"Is Don DeLuca going to have me arrested?" I asked, my voice trembling as the car merged into the morning traffic along Lakeshore Drive.
Frank looked at me through the rearview mirror. His expression remained neutral, but his eyes held a strange flicker of respect.
"Don DeLuca doesn't use the police to deal with people, Miss Miller," Frank said quietly. "If he wanted you destroyed, you wouldn't be sitting in a heated leather seat."
Twenty minutes later, I was ushered into the penthouse floor of the DeLuca Tower.
The floor was made of polished grey slate, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlooked the freezing grey waters of Lake Michigan. The furniture was minimalist, black leather and brushed steel, smelling of old paper and cedar.
Dominic DeLuca sat behind a massive desk of dark walnut.
He wasn't wearing his tuxedo today. He wore a dark charcoal wool sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing thick forearms crossed over a thick Manila folder.
Standing beside him was an elderly woman sitting in a high-backed leather chair.
Margaret DeLuca.
"Grace," Margaret called out, a warm, radiant smile transforming her aged face. "Come in, child. Sit down."
I hesitated, then walked slowly across the vast room, sitting in the sleek leather chair across from Dominic’s desk.
Dominic didn't smile. He sat back, resting his chin on his steepled fingers, watching me with that same intense, suffocating focus from the night before.
"I had my people look into you last night, Miss Miller," Dominic began flatly.
My hands tightened in my lap. "I figured you did."
"Grace Miller, twenty-six," Dominic read from a sheet of paper inside the folder. "Father died six years ago. Mother, Ellen Miller, critically ill at Saint Catherine's with chronic pulmonary fibrosis. Younger brother, Noah, seventeen, enrolled at St. Jude's High School on a partial athletic scholarship. You work sixty hours a week between The Bellamy and the Sunrise Diner. You owe $42,000 in medical debt."
He dropped the paper onto the desk.
"You are drowning," Dominic stated simple facts without pity or judgment.
"I am surviving," I corrected him, my chin rising slightly despite my fear. "And I don't need your charity, Mr. DeLuca. I did what I did last night because it was right. Not because I wanted a reward."
"I know," Dominic said quietly. "If you had done it for money, I would have handed you a check last night and never thought about you again."
He slid a bound leather document across the dark wood table toward me.
"What is this?" I asked, looking down at the thick document.
"A contract of employment," Dominic said.
"Employment as what? I’m a waitress."
"My mother suffered a severe panic attack four years ago after a traumatic incident on Lakeshore Drive," Dominic said, his dark eyes hardening slightly at the memory. "Since then, she has refused to leave our estate in Oak Brook. She refuses private nurses. She mistrusts personal guards. Last night was the first time in forty-eight months she agreed to attend a public event, and Vivian Whitmore almost destroyed four years of medical progress."
He leaned forward, placing his heavy hands flat on the desk.
"My mother wants you, Grace," Dominic said softly. "She wants you as her personal companion and household manager. You will live at the DeLuca estate. You will manage her daily schedule, accompany her on outings, and ensure her safety."
I stared at him, dumbfounded. "I don't have a degree in nursing—"
"I don't need a nurse. I have four doctors on retainer," Dominic interrupted. "I need someone with spine. Someone who doesn't look at my mother with pity, and someone who doesn't flinch when the world gets loud."
"And the pay?" I whispered.
Dominic opened the final page of the contract and pushed a gold pen toward me.
"A starting salary of two hundred thousand dollars a year," Dominic said flatly. "Paid bi-weekly. Full medical coverage for your entire family under DeLuca Corporate Health, effective immediately. And as of eight o'clock this morning, your mother’s entire $42,000 balance at Saint Catherine’s has been settled in full."
My breath seized in my throat. The room seemed to spin.
May you like
"You... you paid my mother's debt?" I choked out, tears burning behind my eyelids.
"I pay my debts, Miss Miller," Dominic growled softly, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my heart hammer against my ribs. "You protected my mother’s dignity when thirty millionaires turned their heads. A DeLuca never forgets an act of loyalty. Sign the contract, or walk out the door. The choice is yours."
