Chapter 18: The Resignation

Dwight lived.

The paramedics got him onto a gurney in nine minutes.

A doctor in Toledo told Jonas he would need a stent and would live.

I did not go to the hospital that night.

I went back to Chicago with my mother's trunk and sat on the floor of the yellow room.

Biscuit chewed the corner of the apron until I let him.

By nine the next morning there was a photograph on the gossip site.

It showed Jonas on the Elm Street lawn with his arm around me and his face against my hair.

The headline read HEIRESS AND HER BODYGUARD.

Under it, someone had written that the Garrow girl was sleeping with the help.

I was reading it in the kitchen when Jonas came in.

He was wearing a clean shirt and a tie.

He carried his gun and his ID card in both hands.

"Where are you going?" I said.

"To your father's study."

"You've got your funeral face."

"Come with me," he said. "I want you to hear it."

Dominic sat behind his desk with his reading glasses on his forehead and a stack of contracts.

He looked up.

Jonas put the gun on the blotter.

He laid the ID card beside it.

"Sir," he said. "I'm resigning, effective now."

Dominic took off the glasses.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I can't guard her and love her. Not honestly. Every paper in this city is saying I'm on your payroll and in her bed, and they're half right."

"Jonas."

"I won't be your employee when I walk through your front door. I'll walk in as what I am."

"And what are you?"

"The man she picked."

Dominic stood so fast the chair rolled into the wall.

"You are leaving my daughter's detail the same week her family put a man in the hospital?"

"Yes."

"Six years, Soule. I gave you my house. I gave you the keys to my life. I put a gun in your hand and said keep her alive."

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