Chapter 6 - The Examination
The fire in the master suite had burned down to a bed of glowing red embers, casting a warm, flickering light across the high-ceilinged room. Eleanor sat on the edge of the velvet chaise lounge, her hands tightly clutching a heavy wool blanket that Gabriel had draped over her shoulders.
When the door opened, Dr. Vance—an aging, weary-looking man who had patched up gunshot wounds for the Moretti family for thirty years—stepped inside carrying a weathered leather medical bag. Gabriel followed close behind him, his face still carved from stone.
"Evening, Boss. Mrs. Moretti," Dr. Vance said quietly, setting his bag on the mahogany coffee table. He looked at Eleanor’s leg with practiced, clinical detachment. "Julian said there was an injury requiring attention."
"Check her left knee and calf," Gabriel ordered, standing near the foot of the chaise with his arms crossed over his chest.
Eleanor shrank back slightly, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. "I don't need a doctor. It’s just old scar tissue from... from when Nathan and I had a bad winter a few years ago. It flares up when the weather gets cold."
"Roll up the silk, Doctor," Gabriel said, ignoring her completely.
Dr. Vance looked from Gabriel’s cold, unyielding face to Eleanor’s frightened eyes, then slowly knelt down beside the chaise. With steady, gentle fingers, he gathered the heavy layers of the wedding dress and rolled the white fabric up past Eleanor’s left knee.
The room went dead silent.
Even Dr. Vance, who had seen every variety of human cruelty over four decades in the Chicago underworld, let out a sharp intake of breath.
Running from just above Eleanor’s ankle all the way up to her mid-thigh was a jagged, horrific network of thick, silver-white burn scars. The skin was puckered, tight, and severely damaged where tissue had melted together under extreme heat.
Gabriel stared down at the leg. The room seemed to tilt on its axis. All the anger he had felt toward Nathan, toward Detroit, toward Julian, suddenly crystallized into something dark, heavy, and absolute.
"How?" Gabriel’s voice was barely a whisper, thick with suppressed violence.
Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut, a single tear cutting a clean path down her dusty cheek. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, as if the fabric could hide the memory.
"Two years ago," Eleanor whispered, her voice trembling violently. "Nathan borrowed five thousand dollars from a local bookie connected to the West Side crew to pay off a poker debt. When he couldn't pay, they came to our apartment while I was working late. They tied me to a chair in the kitchen. They told Nathan they were going to teach him a lesson about responsibility."
She paused, her chest heaving as she fought to keep her voice steady.
"They poured boiling water and lye down my left leg to make sure Nathan understood what failure cost," she continued, her eyes fixed on the glowing embers in the hearth. "Nathan watched from the doorway. He didn't fight back. He just cried and promised to pay double the next week. The men left me on the kitchen floor for twelve hours before an ambulance was called."
Gabriel didn't move. He didn't blink. He looked like a statue carved out of black granite, but inside him, a furnace of pure vengeance was roaring to life.
"And your brother," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it felt like frost on glass. "He let you take that."
"He bought me painkillers from a street dealer for a week," Eleanor whispered, her voice breaking completely. "Then he went right back to the tables. And when his debts caught up with him again this month... he offered me to your organization like I was spare inventory."
Dr. Vance carefully smoothed the silk back down over the scarred leg, packed his instruments into his bag without a word, and stood up. He looked at Gabriel, giving a slow, grave shake of his head.
"The tissue damage is permanent, Boss," Dr. Vance said quietly. "Cold weather, stress, or long periods of standing will always trigger severe nerve pain. She shouldn't have been walking down that cathedral aisle on her own power today. Whoever let her do that... didn't care if she broke."
"Thank you, Doctor," Gabriel said, his eyes never leaving Eleanor’s face. "Julian will show you out."
When the door clicked shut behind the doctor, the master suite fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
Gabriel slowly walked closer to the chaise lounge. He knelt down on one knee in front of Eleanor, ignoring the expensive wool of his trousers brushing against the floor. He reached out, his large, calloused hand gently taking her small, trembling fingers away from her face.
"You walked down that aisle," Gabriel said, his voice raw with a emotion he rarely permitted himself to feel, "knowing every step would tear that tissue open."
"If I didn't walk," Eleanor whispered, looking into his dark eyes with quiet despair, "Nathan told me your men would throw him off a bridge. I didn't care about myself. I just wanted it to be over."
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Gabriel squeezed her hand gently, his thumb tracing the delicate bones of her wrist.
"It is over, Eleanor," Gabriel said, his voice ringing with absolute, terrifying finality. "Your brother is never coming near you again. And anyone who ever laid a hand on you... or allowed you to be treated like collateral... will answer to me."
