-Roxy Delgado:
When Sloane closed the door behind her and the click of the latch echoed down the corridor, I felt something in me rearrange.
It wasn’t the same stupid flutter I used to get when a bartender winked at me. It was colder, cleaner, a knife sliding into place. She’d refused. Nobody says no to me.
My brothers filed in like they always did: loud, heavy, taking up space the way we were taught to do in the world. My mother hovered at the edge of the bed with that careful, brittle smile she kept when she wanted to seem calm. My father’s face was closed off, that old man gravity settling around him—he’d tried his best to smooth things out with polite words, but even his diplomacy had limits.
Kyle sat down hard in the chair, the air around him charged. "Mom said the doctor said no," he said, like it was a confession he kept needing to make to himself. He kept looking at me like maybe I’d change my mind if he looked hard enough.
I didn’t. Not for any of them.
"great," I said. My voice was a low thing I barely heard. "Then she needs to sit down and reconsider."
Mateo snapped his head around at the word. "You can’t do that, Rox. You can’t—" His hands made the universal gesture for ’this is crazy’ and I watched the muscles in his neck jump.
"You’re telling me how to do this?" I swung my legs over the bed and planted my feet, testing the ache like a live wire. It hummed, but the pain was background noise, nothing compared to the pulse in my veins. "Don’t be ridiculous."
My mother pressed a hand to her mouth. "Roxy, please. You’ve just come out of surgery. You need rest. You need physical therapy with licensed professionals—"
"I know what I need," I told her, and the room went quiet because my tone had teeth. "I need Sloane."
Kyle rubbed his jaw, eyes narrowing. "You want me to go beg some hospital admin to pull a favor? You want me to go twist someone’s arm?" His voice held the same weary frustration he’d carried since we were kids and I used the world like a playground. "This is not how this works."
"I want you to ask," I said. "Not beg. Ask."
There’s a difference. He knows the difference. He also knows how to ask in a way that makes people wish they’d never answered the phone.
He laughed, a short, harsh sound. "You’re asking me to go threaten the owner. You’re serious? You want me to walk into Administration and say, ’My sister wants her neurosurgeon to be her PT’?"
I shrugged, palms flat against my thighs. "Say it however you want. Make it sound formal, make it sound like a threat, make it sound like a favor. You’re good at words when you want to be. You can be velvet for five minutes."
Mateo snorted. "Velvet? Since when?"
"Since now," I said. "Because I want Sloane to be in my house every day, and I don’t have time for anyone’s moral quandaries."
My father’s hand found my own and squeezed, the old protective pressure that meant he’d weighed the landslide and chosen to stand on it anyway. "Roxanne," he said softly, using my full name like he used it when he meant business, "we will do what we can."
That small concession was the opening I needed. "Good. Then Kyle—" I pointed at him, decisive, "you go see the owner. Bribe or threaten him I don’t care. Ask about the payroll. See what she makes. Bring me a number. Ask for whatever you want to promise that’ll make this worth her while." I let the words hang. Money smoothed things. Money made people do things they’d never do for free.
Kyle bristled but didn’t refuse. He knows me; he remembers every time I’ve ever leaned on him and watched him become the muscle for my whims. He hates and loves being the anchor. Mostly the hate was performative; he’d move for me.
I watched them trade looks. My family’s small conference murmured to life—quiet, efficient. I let them argue. They always needed the performative show of disapproval, and I let them have that. It made the final agreement feel earned when they capitulated.
I could hear the hospital breathing around us—the distant calls, the shuffle of nurses, the mundane machinery of lives being kept going. I let that rhythm soothe me while the plan sharpened at the edges of my mind.
I pictured Sloane again. Calm, collected, glasses sliding up her nose like a reflex. Green that held winter in it. The way she had said my name—Roxy—like she’d thought I meant nothing and everything at once.
My brothers’ voices lowered into the serious register they used when they wanted to be taken seriously. Kyle stood and stretched, the chair scraping the tile. He pulled his phone out then stopped, looking at me. "Who do I talk to?" he asked. "Do you want me to go to the owner himself or the director?"
"Owner," I said. No hesitation. The owner pulls strings. Directors scurry. The owner could move mountains if he wanted to be bribed, persuaded, whatever the hell he needed to be to make this my reality.
He nodded once. "I’ll go now."
The look he gave me as he walked out—half exasperated, half fond—was the look of a man used to cleaning up after me. I watched the door shut and my chest filled with a kind of ruthless excitement. This wasn’t simply about getting a therapist. It was about making Sloane know how heavy I could be when I wanted someone.
Imagining Sloane’s face at the dinner—half annoyed, half curious—made heat crawl up my neck. God, the thought of her asking me to stop and me not stopping at all—that would be such a delicious electricity in this plan.
Footsteps returned. Not Kyle—someone lighter on her feet, Mateo, who’d been hovering near the door to the nurses’ station like a shadow. Mateo’s eyes carried something indulgent and mock-solemn. He came in with a paper cup of coffee and set it down without asking. "How are we thinking?" he asked, his voice soft.
I smiled wolfish. "Kyle’s on his way to talk with the owner. Mateo—when he gets back, call in some favors. I want the payroll for the neurosurgery department. I want to know what Sloane’s on the books for. I want bonuses, side gigs, whatever. If there’s a number, I need it."
Mateo gave a quick nod. "Got it. I’ll have someone pull it."
"And," I added, eyes sharpening, "start the paperwork. Not legal yet, just preliminary. We’ll need a shell contract. Make it look like a consultancy. Make it look legit."
"Rox, you’re doing the thing where you start sounding like a CFO," he teased, but there was no malice. My mother left the room to call one of her friends in the city council—small, soft power to grease doors. My father made a few calls that sounded like old debts being repaid.
I watched them work, the small rituals of the Delgado machine, each move practiced and efficient. It’s always the same with my family: we argue at the edges, but when I say a word, even if it’s stupid, they find a way. They always have.
Later that afternoon, Kyle returned with his brow creased, his suit stiff from the hospital’s air. He had the owner’s secretary on his phone for five minutes, then hung up and told me what I needed to know, but not the whole truth. "He’s in," Kyle said, dropping into the chair near the foot of the bed. "He wants a meeting. Tonight. At his office."
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. "Good," I said. "Tell him I’ll be there."
"You?" Kyle blinked. "You can’t—"
"Of course I can." I lifted my chin. "We’ll make it clean. We’ll pay him enough that he can pretend it’s nothing. He’ll pretend, and the board will pretend, and Sloane will be boxed into a corner where she has to choose between a tidy life and a fight she’ll lose." My plan was not cruel. It was effective.
"We could just try the softer route," Maddox suggested, though the idea made his voice waver. "Maybe we can see if she softens—invite her for soup or something. Don’t show our whole hand."
"Soup is fine," I said. "But the hand’s out. Money or prestige will make it easy for her to rationalize. If she’s a moral woman, sweetheart, money has a way of making morals a flexible concept. Not that I only use money. I use a lot of things. Money makes things legal. Charm makes things irregular. And force? That’s only when needed."
He scowled and crossed his arms. The room filled with that familiar low-grade annoyance that only relatives can bring when you’re about to do something reckless and possibly brilliant.