Chapter 2 - One More Time
Ellie stood in the doorway carrying her stuffed rabbit by one ear.
Her eyes widened when she saw sweat soaking Julian’s shirt.
“Did you exercise?” she asked.
Julian stared at her, exhausted and irritated.
“No.”
Dr. Laura Bennett crossed her arms. “He absolutely did.”
Ellie looked from Laura to Julian, then walked farther into the room. She was wearing a pink raincoat despite being indoors, and one of her ponytails had started coming loose.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am tired.”
“Mommy says tired people can still do one more thing.”
Julian let out a humorless laugh. “Your mother says a lot of things.”
Ellie nodded seriously. “Because she’s smart.”
From the hallway, Claire’s voice came sharply.
“Ellie! I told you not to interrupt Mr. Moretti during his therapy.”
But Julian raised his hand before Claire could pull her daughter away.
“It’s fine.”
Claire paused in the doorway, a basket of folded towels balanced against her hip. Her eyes moved to Julian’s clenched jaw, the equipment around him, and Laura’s unreadable expression.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said quietly. “She doesn’t understand boundaries yet.”
“I understand,” Ellie argued. “He’s trying to get stronger.”
Julian looked at the child.
Then at the therapy bars in front of him.
His arms felt as though they had been torn apart. His hands trembled against the padded surface. There was nothing dignified about it. Nothing powerful.
For two years, he had hidden from every reminder of what his body had become.
But Ellie did not look disgusted.
She looked impressed.
“You did good,” she told him.
The words hit him harder than they should have.
Laura took advantage of the silence.
“One more set,” she said.
Julian glared at her.
Then he glanced at Ellie.
The little girl held up one tiny finger.
“One more.”
Against every instinct in him, Julian placed his hands on the bars again.
The next movement was slow. Painfully slow.
His shoulders shook as he lifted himself.
For three seconds, his body rose from the wheelchair.
Then five.
Then seven.
By the time Laura told him to sit back down, Julian’s breathing was ragged.
Ellie clapped both hands over her rabbit.
“I knew you could do it!”
Claire watched him carefully. Her expression was different now—not pity, not fear.
Respect.
Julian did not know what to do with that.
So he looked away.
“Arthur,” he called toward the door.
The house manager appeared almost instantly. “Yes, sir?”
“Get Miss Ellie some cookies.”
Ellie’s face lit up. “The good kind?”
Julian almost smiled.
“The good kind.”
---
Over the next several weeks, rehabilitation became part of the mansion’s new routine.
Julian hated it.
Every morning, Laura arrived at eight-thirty with the same infuriatingly calm smile and a new list of exercises designed to remind him how much he had lost.
Every afternoon, Ellie arrived with Claire.
And every afternoon, Ellie asked the same question.
“Did you do your exercises?”
If Julian said yes, she gave him a sticker from her backpack.
If he said no, she frowned at him with the disappointment of a tiny school principal.
At first, he accepted the stickers only to avoid arguing.
A purple star.
A smiling dinosaur.
A glittery gold heart.
By May, Arthur noticed that Julian had placed them in a neat row on the side of his therapy mirror.
The change spread quietly through Moretti estate.
Julian began eating breakfast in the sunroom instead of alone in his office. He allowed windows to be opened. He let the gardeners work closer to the house. He even agreed to have the old fountain restored after Ellie asked why the stone angels “looked so sad.”
Claire noticed the changes but did not comment on them.
She had learned that Julian Moretti disliked being observed too closely.
Still, she saw more than most.
She saw the way he listened when Ellie talked about preschool.
She saw the way his hard expression softened when her daughter fell asleep in the library with crayons scattered around her.
She saw the drawer in his office where he kept emergency snacks for Ellie—apple slices, cheese crackers, tiny fruit cups, and the expensive butter cookies she loved.
And she saw what others did not.
Julian was lonely.
Not ordinary lonely.
Not the kind that came from an empty room or a quiet evening.
He was lonely in the way people became lonely when they had spent too long believing they were dangerous to love.
One afternoon, Claire found him in the library, staring at a photograph in a silver frame.
It showed a younger Julian standing beside an older man with dark hair and an even darker expression. Both wore black suits. Both looked like they had never smiled in their lives.
“Your father?” Claire asked before she could stop herself.
Julian’s hand tightened around the frame.
“Yes.”
Claire expected him to tell her it was none of her business.
Instead, he said, “Antonio Moretti.”
There was something in his voice that made her sit down across from him.
“He built everything,” Julian continued. “The properties. The companies. The people who owed him favors.” He paused. “And the enemies.”
Claire looked at the photograph again.
“Was he a good man?”
Julian’s eyes went cold.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly to be rehearsed.
“He protected his family,” Julian said. “But he destroyed other families to do it.”
Claire did not know what to say.
Julian looked at the darkening window.
“The night I was shot, I was coming back from a meeting I didn’t even want to attend.” His voice lowered. “The car was forced off the road. My driver died at the scene. I woke up three days later unable to feel my legs.”
Claire’s breath caught.
“I’m sorry.”
“Everyone says that.”
“I know.” She looked down at her hands. “But I mean it.”
For a moment, Julian said nothing.
Then Ellie burst into the room wearing a paper crown Arthur had made for her.
“Mommy! Mr. Julian says I can be queen of the library.”
Julian looked startled. “I did not say that.”
“You said I can sit in the big chair.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is if you’re a queen.”
Claire laughed before she could stop herself.
Julian stared at her.
It was not the polite laugh of an employee trying to please her employer.
It was warm and genuine.
For the first time, Julian understood why people described laughter as contagious.
He found himself smiling.
But far beyond the estate gates, in a dark office above a closed Italian restaurant, another man watched surveillance photographs spread across a desk.
Julian in the garden.
Julian at therapy.
Julian beside a little girl in a pink raincoat.
The man tapped one photo with a scarred finger.
“Moretti is getting soft,” he said.
His name was Vincent Russo.
May you like
And he had waited two years for Julian Moretti to become vulnerable.
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