A Single Mother Brought Her Daughter to Work — She Never Expected the Mafia Boss to Make Her an Offer.
The Single Mom Took Her Daughter to Work — Didn’t Expect the Mafia Boss’s Proposal
A January night in New York was so cold that breath seemed to freeze the moment it left the lips.
Cassidy Moore was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing the restroom on the 12th floor of an office building when the phone in her pocket began to vibrate. She glanced at the clock — 5:00 in the morning. No one called at that hour unless something was wrong.
Her heart tightened when she saw the daycare number glowing on the screen.
The teacher’s voice on the other end was flat and distant, as if she were reading from a prepared notice. Emma had developed a high fever since midnight.
The baby wouldn’t stop coughing. The daycare couldn’t accept a child showing signs of illness. Cassidy needed to come pick her up immediately.
Before Cassidy could say a word, the call ended.
She sprang to her feet, her head spinning. Emma — her tiny eight-month-old daughter — was the only person she had left in this world.
Cassidy ran out of the building without telling anyone, throwing herself into the freezing darkness. Snow had begun to fall, white flakes whipping against her face like tiny needles.
She ran three city blocks because she didn’t have money for a taxi. By the time she reached the daycare, her lips had turned blue and her legs had gone numb.
Emma lay in the teacher’s arms, her face flushed with fever, her weak cries sounding like those of an abandoned kitten.
Cassidy pulled her daughter close, feeling the heat radiating from the small body through the thin layers of clothing. Her child was burning with fever.
She carried Emma back to the dilapidated rented room in a Brooklyn slum.
The room was barely ten square meters. The walls were stained with damp mold, and the window had been taped over because the glass had shattered long ago. The heater had been broken for two weeks.
Cassidy laid Emma on the bed, wrapped her in blankets, and then opened the medicine cabinet.
It was empty.
She had used the last of the fever medicine the week before and hadn’t had money to buy more.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she watched her daughter writhe in feverish pain.
The phone vibrated again.
This time it was the cleaning company.
Cassidy answered, and her manager’s voice came through sharp and angry.
Where was she? Why had she abandoned her shift?
Cassidy tried to explain about Emma, about the fever, about needing a day off.
The manager cut her off.
There was a special job today — a VIP client, a mansion on the Upper East Side. If she didn’t show up, she was fired.
No exceptions.
Cassidy wanted to scream.
She wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but she couldn’t, because if she lost her job, she wouldn’t have money for rent, no money for milk for Emma, and no money for medicine.
She and her daughter would be out on the streets in this brutal winter.
And Derek, her violent ex-husband who was hunting her across the city, would find her more easily than ever.
Cassidy looked at Emma, drifting in and out of sleep from exhaustion.
She had no one to watch her child.
She made the only decision she could.
Cassidy dressed Emma in extra layers, wrapped her in three blankets, and placed her in the rickety stroller she had bought from a thrift shop for five dollars.
She stuffed a bottle, diapers, and fever medicine borrowed from a neighbor into her bag.
Then she pushed the stroller out of the dark room and stepped into the white storm.
