Chapter 9 - The Walking Lessons
The interior of the San Juan house was quiet during the long afternoon hours, the sun casting long, golden bars of light across the pale oak floors. In the center of the wide living room stood a specialized set of parallel bars made of polished birch wood, surrounded by thick, blue physical therapy mats.
Dominic sat in his chair at the head of the bars, his leather gloves removed, his hands gripping the wood with a white-knuckled, desperate intensity. He was wearing a lightweight, robotic exoskeleton over his legs—a state-of-the-art neural-interface unit funded by his own foundation.
"Form first, Dominic," Elena said softly, kneeling beside his right knee, her hands hovering an inch away from his ankle to correct his alignment. "If you don't drop your heel first, the computer can't calculate the weight distribution properly. Do you want to walk like a penguin?"
"I am the former don of the Great Lakes, Elena," Dominic grunted, the sweat beaded along his forehead as he triggered the manual override on his armrest keypad. "I do not walk like a penguin."
"You walk like a man who tries to command his muscles instead of listening to them," she laughed, her dark eyes looking up into his with a fierce, loving stubbornness that had never left her since that first night in Chicago. "Try again. Shift the hip three degrees to the left."
Dominic breathed out once, his silver eyes locking onto hers. He didn't look at the spreadsheet on his monitors; he didn't look at the maps of the shipping terminals. He looked into the eyes of the woman who had found his money, saved his sons, and given him back his soul.
Slowly, deliberately, the mechanical joints of the exoskeleton hissed with a low, hydraulic rhythm. Dominic’s right foot lifted off the blue mat, moved forward six inches, and planted itself firmly—heel first—onto the floorboards. Then the left foot followed.
Two steps.
Without support.
"Look, Mommy! Daddy’s standing!"
The shout came from the open glass doors. Leo and Lucas were standing on the threshold, their small faces glowing with an absolute, unadulterated pride as they watched their father stand at his full height of six feet two inches for the first time in their lives. They didn't look at the metal braces or the wires tracking up his back; they looked at the man who was looking back at them with their own eyes.
Dominic didn't drop back into the chair. He held himself upright, his hands releasing their grip on the parallel bars for a single, terrifying second. He balanced his weight, his broad shoulders straight, his chest puffing out with a pride he hadn't felt since before the bullet.
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"Come here," Dominic whispered, his rough baritone cracking at the edges.
The twins didn't run. They walked forward with a slow, deliberate respect, their small hands reaching up to clasp Dominic’s large palms as he stood between them like an ancient, resurrected king guarding his princes.
