Part 4 — My Fiancée Canceled the Therapy by the Bed, but the Caregiver Quietly Told Me One Sentence and Her Face Immediately Changed

The captain held out the earpiece, but before I could put it on, the telephone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen.

Tessa looked at me.

“Do not answer if you do not want to.”

I picked it up anyway.

“Vincent Corvino speaking.”

On the other side, for several seconds, only breathing could be heard.

“You were not supposed to survive,” a man said.

“Who are you?”

“The person who knows why they chose you specifically.”

The line went dead.

The captain immediately checked the number, but the call had been made from a prepaid phone. We could not find out who had called me. However, three more calls came that night.

One was from the bank. All my accounts were temporarily frozen.

The second was from the hospital—Tessa’s sister, Mari, needed emergency surgery, and the cost of her treatment was suddenly covered in full from an unknown source.

The third was from Haley’s lawyer.

“Mr. Corvino,” he told me, “I am ending my representation of you.”

“Why?”

“Because my client hid documents from me, and the investigation is now examining my office as well. I no longer want to participate in this case.”

“For the first time you are saying something that sounds to your advantage.”

He laughed awkwardly.

“Perhaps it is already too late.”

“Not for me.”

I put down the phone.

The next day the investigators arrested Haley. He was carrying stamped statements from my accounts when he left the office. Three million dollars in six months. The money went to Dominic’s fictitious company, and from there to the accounts of Aria’s expensive house and hotel.

Aria denied everything.

“Dominic deceived me,” she repeated. “I only wanted to protect Vincent.”

But that same evening an investigator seated me in a small room where a sound recorder was attached to the walls.

Aria’s face appeared on the screen. It was the recording Tessa had found in my room and the captain had discovered on a memory card hidden behind the medical folder.

Aria stood before Dominic.

“If Vincent can never stand again, he will sign everything.”

Dominic asked:

“And if he does not sign?”

“Then we will tell everyone that the bullet damaged his mind too.”

“And if he survives?”

Aria sat down on a chair.

“Then I must sit beside him long enough for him to believe himself that he is worth nothing anymore.”

To hear your own voice from someone else’s mouth is the cruelest punishment. I realized that for her this was a plan. My despair was a weapon.

The recording continued.

“Tessa is a problem,” Dominic said.

“Tessa is only a caregiver,” Aria answered. “We will offer her money or frighten her.”

As she heard these words, Tessa stood in the corner of the room. She covered her eyes with her hand, but she did not cry.

“You are not only a caregiver,” I told her.

“I know,” she answered. “But for a long time others called me that.”

Three days later Aria was transferred to prison. Dominic was convicted of armed assault, financial fraud, and conspiracy. Haley confessed and requested a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperating with the investigation.

I did not go to court on the day the charges were officially brought. The doctor told me that I still could not sit for long. For the first time in my life, I did not need to be in every room for events to end in my favor.

The following week I emptied my old house.

Aria’s clothes were no longer in the wardrobe. Before the mirror only a dusty powder case remained. Beside the bed they found her ring box—empty, but inside its lid the little word I had written by hand could still be seen: “Forever.”

I tore out that word.

In my drawer lay my father’s copper compass. Its glass was still cracked, but the needle pointed north. For the first time I did not keep it because it reminded me of the past. I kept it because I could still find the way.

Tessa’s sister, Mari, came through the operation well. I went to her hospital room when Tessa was cutting an apple by the window.

“This is very expensive,” Tessa told me.

“My money has been used badly many times. Now I will at least do something good with it.”

“I do not owe you.”

“Nor am I asking you for a debt.”

Six weeks later I moved to a rehabilitation center. On the first day Leah stretched my legs again.

“It hurts,” I told her.

“That is good.”

“How can pain be good?”

“Because the body is telling you: something is still happening here.”

Every morning I moved my hands. Then my shoulders. Then I felt a small, almost imperceptible twitch in my right knee.

“Did you see?” I asked.

Leah nodded.

“I saw.”

That day Tessa entered the room with a small paper boat. Mari’s son had drawn it—a yellow sun, a red flag, and a strange square-shaped man who had very large hands.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“No, this is his idea of a strong man,” Tessa said.

“Then he turned out to be a better person than the real Vincent was.”

Tessa smiled at me.

“The real Vincent is still learning to write.”

Three months later I rented a small apartment near the sea. Not a mansion. No security. Fishing boats could be seen from the window in the morning, and the smell of coffee was always in the kitchen.

Four days a week I went to the rehabilitation center. On two days I spoke with the port workers and checked that my companies paid their wages on time. For the first time I signed contracts without fear of names.

Snow came on the first morning of winter.

I went by wheelchair from the bed to the window and watched for a long time as the street was covered with a white layer. On the edge of my desk stood the paper boat Tessa had given me. Beside it was Mari’s little boy’s drawing.

That evening I received a message.

It was Aria.

“I did not do all this to you. Dominic forced me. The lawyer told me that if you change your statement, everything will be different. Come just once. Please.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Before, I answered all her calls.

Now I wrote only one sentence:

“I am no longer going to save you from yourself.”

Then I deleted the number.

Tessa came to me that evening. In her hand she held a small wooden box.

“Is there something new?” I asked.

“No. It is old.”

I opened the box. Inside lay my father’s copper compass, except that its cracked glass had been replaced. The needle still pointed north.

“Where did you find the new glass?”

“In your old workshop. Mari’s husband repaired it.”

I attached the compass to my jacket. For the first time in six months I put on a jacket again, although now it had neither an expensive watch nor a security emblem on it. Only the small copper object shone.

Tessa opened the window. Cold sea air came in.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever you want.”

Snow was falling on the street below. I placed my hands on the wheels and pushed the wheelchair forward.

This time no one was waiting for me.

And for the first time, it felt like freedom.