Chapter 5 - The War for Riverstone
By the end of my first week at the Moretti estate, the physical and political geography of the household had shifted beneath an iron discipline.
Victoria had retreated to the guest lodge on the southern edge of the property, consulting frantically with her family’s corporate attorneys, while I completely overhauled Roman’s medical regimen.
The heavy sedatives and neuro-blockers were confiscated and flushed down the drain under Julian Hayes’s supervision. In their place, I instituted an aggressive, eight-hour daily protocol of manual neural fascial release, high-voltage neuromuscular electro-stimulation, and targeted hydrotherapy in the estate's Olympic-sized indoor pool.
The pain was excruciating. Roman was a man of steel, but there were afternoons when the electrical conduction through his dormant nerve sheaths was so violent that sweat poured from his brow in sheets, soaking through his workout clothes, his teeth clenched so hard that blood welled along his gums.
He never complained. He never asked to stop.
Every time I drove my thumbs into the fibrotic scar tissue surrounding his lower vertebrae, he simply gripped the parallel rehabilitation bars and pulled his torso forward, matching my clinical aggression with a savage, unrelenting will to live.
By Thursday afternoon, the first real miracle occurred.
We were in the private gym overlooking the lake. Roman was suspended in a body-weight support harness above a specialized rehabilitation treadmill, his feet resting flat on the moving rubber track.
"Engage the right hip flexor, Roman," I commanded, my hands resting firmly on his iliac crest, guiding the pelvic tilt. "Don't wait for the machine. Command the limb."
Roman’s jaw set into iron. His neck muscles bunched like thick cables beneath his skin.
The right foot dragged forward by an inch.
Then, with a sudden, sharp, deliberate contraction of his quadriceps, Roman lifted his right heel three inches off the belt and planted it firmly on the center line.
Unassisted.
A voluntary motor impulse had cleared the lumbar barrier.
Julian Hayes, watching from the medical telemetry station, dropped his tablet onto the rubber floor with a sharp clatter. "My God... the motor evoked potentials just jumped forty percent."
Roman stood suspended in the harness, his chest heaving, his gray eyes wide, staring down at his own foot with an expression of raw, unvarnished triumph that made my throat tighten with emotion.
He looked over his shoulder at me.
"You did that, Claire," he whispered, his voice rough and uneven.
"You did that, Roman," I smiled, stepping up beside him to wipe the sweat from his forehead with a clean towel. "Your nerves were just waiting for you to stop listening to the people who wanted you dead."
His large, calloused hand came up, wrapping gently around my wrist—not with the iron grip of a mob boss, but with a warmth and reverence that sent a shiver straight down to my boots.
Before either of us could speak, the heavy steel security doors of the gym hissed open.
Gideon Rossi—Roman’s second-in-command and the chief of his tactical transport fleet—walked inside, his face grim, holding an encrypted satellite phone.
"Boss," Gideon said, nodding respectfully to me before addressing Roman. "We have an emergency on the municipal front. The Parker Development Group just filed an expedited injunction with the City Planning Commission to revoke our harbor transport leases at Berth Nine."
Roman’s eyes narrowed instantly, the tender warmth in his expression evaporating into cold, corporate steel. "The Parkers? Daniel Parker’s firm?"
"Yes, Boss," Gideon said, stepping closer. "They’re using their political connections on the zoning board. They claim the Moretti transport fleet is non-compliant with the new environmental corridor regulations. If the board votes against us tomorrow morning... we lose forty percent of our container traffic to the Parker-Sterling joint venture."
My breath caught in my throat.
"Ethan Parker," I said aloud, the name slipping from my lips before I could stop it.
Roman turned his head sharply, his gray eyes fixing onto mine with surgical precision. "You know Ethan Parker, Claire?"
I hesitated, looking down at the rubber floor. "Ethan was my fiancé until five days ago."
Roman went completely, terrifyingly still. The harness straps creaked as his upper body shifted, his presence growing so dense that the entire gym seemed to contract around him.
"Your fiancé?" Roman asked, his voice dropping into that subterranean, lethal register.
"I broke our engagement on the night of his parents' anniversary dinner," I explained quietly, meeting his gaze. "His mother insulted my mother. He told me I was making a scene, and when I walked out, he threatened to use his family's political connections to revoke my clinical license. And now... he’s trying to steal your port concessions to cover the forty-million-dollar deficit his father generated on the Riverstone project."
Roman stared at me for five long seconds.
Then, slowly, deliberately, Roman unclipped the safety latches of his rehabilitation harness.
He grabbed the parallel steel bars with both hands, locked his elbows, engaged his core, and lowered himself onto his own two feet, taking sixty percent of his body weight on his own legs.
He stood tall, towering over me, his broad shoulders casting a massive, unyielding shadow across the gym.
"Gideon," Roman commanded, his voice shaking the glass walls overlooking the lake.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Call our legal team. Call the Chief of Police. Call the State Department of Transportation."
Roman looked down into my eyes, a lethal, sovereign fire burning behind his pupils.
"Tomorrow morning, we are attending the City Planning Commission meeting in person.
May you like
It’s time to teach the Parker family...
what happens when you threaten my doctor."
