By the time the breakfast rush hit Queens, the soundtrack of Ayah Reed’s life was the crack and clatter of cheap ceramic on a fake-wood countertop. Somewhere above the Starlight Diner, the elevated train shrieked past, rattling the neon sign in the gray New York morning. Inside, under humming fluorescent lights, Ayah moved through the aisles like a ghost in a blue apron.

To the people who rushed in and out—suits from Midtown, construction guys from the next block, kids in college hoodies—she wasn’t Ayah. She was “Miss,” or “Hey,” or a snapped pair of fingers. She refilled coffee, she wiped ketchup smears, she swallowed insults with lukewarm drip.

She was twenty-four and felt a hundred.

Her ponytail, once bright blonde and bouncy, drooped against the back of her neck. Her smile used to be real; now it was a thin, trained line employees wore when they needed tips more than dignity. The smell of burnt coffee and fryer oil clung to her skin like a second uniform.

“Reed! Table four needs their check. And table two is complaining about the hash again,” Sal shouted from the pass-through window. He was the owner and head cook, a man whose face was locked in a permanent sweaty scowl, the kind only thirty years behind a grill can carve.

“On it, Sal,” Ayah called, balancing three plates on one arm.

She wove between tables like she’d been born in that narrow aisle, dodging a swinging backpack, a jutting elbow. A businessman snapped his fingers without looking up from his phone. A group of college kids left a nest of crumpled napkins and a single dollar bill on a forty-dollar ticket.

“Thanks, guys. Have a good one,” Ayah said anyway, clearing plates, brushing crumbs into her hand.

Her only quiet in the chaos came at 10:00 a.m.

That was when Mrs. M appeared.

She came in every weekday like clockwork, shuffling through the door with a thin coat wrapped tight around her, as if the New York air might knock her over. She looked to be late seventies, small and birdlike, with watery blue eyes and hands that trembled ever so slightly when she held her coffee.

She always chose the same booth in the back, the one with the cracked red vinyl seat. She always ordered the same thing: one black coffee, one bowl of oatmeal, and a physical newspaper thick as a Bible.

Ayah never let anyone else take that order.

“Morning, Mrs. M,” Ayah said, setting down the chipped mug and the oatmeal. “Coffee’s fresh.”

“And you snuck me another muffin,” Mrs. M murmured, seeing the blueberry muffin Ayah had slipped onto the plate. Her voice was a dry whisper, like paper rubbing together. “You shouldn’t, dear. You need those tips more than I need another carb.”

“It’s just a muffin, Mrs. M,” Ayah said, topping off the coffee. “Everyone deserves something sweet once in a while.”

Mrs. M’s wrinkled hand reached for Ayah’s and gave it a papery squeeze. “You’re a good person, Ayah. That’s rare in this city.”

“Just a waitress, ma’am,” Ayah said, but this time the smile tugging at her mouth felt a little more genuine.

“Nonsense. You’re the ballast,” Mrs. M said. “You’re what keeps this place from sinking.”

Sweet words didn’t pay the rent.

The bills did not care that Ayah was kind or that she remembered how every regular took their coffee. At home, in her cramped one-bedroom walk-up three blocks away, a stack of envelopes leaned like a crooked tower on the kitchen table. Most were a terrifying shade of red. Past Due. Final Notice.

The worst ones came from the pediatric neurology department of a Manhattan hospital.

Her little brother, Leo, was ten. He was all sharp angles and big eyes and quiet jokes, the only piece of childhood she had left. And he was sick. A rare neurological disorder stole his breath in the middle of the night, sent his body into seizures. The experimental treatments were his only chance—and they were chewing her life savings to the bone.

Her mother had passed away from cancer. Her father had drowned himself in alcohol and grief. It was just Ayah and Leo now, holding on to each other in a city that did not care if they fell.

After a double shift that bled from morning into night, Ayah clocked out at 8:00 p.m. Her feet weren’t just sore; they were numb fire. She counted out her tips: sixty-eight dollars and seventy cents for twelve hours, a dozen fake smiles, and forty-two cups of coffee.

She stepped out into the cold Queens air, the diner’s neon sign flickering behind her. Her building loomed three blocks down, a tired brick rectangle that always smelled vaguely of boiled cabbage and damp carpet. The elevator had been dead for six months, so she climbed five flights of stairs, each step a little war.

She slid the last lock on the door behind her—three deadbolts between them and the world.

“Ayah?” a small voice called from the bedroom.

She dropped her bag and went straight to him.

Leo lay in his narrow bed, blankets pulled up to his chest. He was small for ten, with the same pale hair and wide hazel eyes as his sister. A clear oxygen cannula looped around his ears, the tiny tubes resting under his nose.

“Hey, buddy,” Ayah said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “How you feeling?”

“Okay,” he said. “Mrs. Petrovic from 3B brought soup. Again. Chicken noodle this time.”

“That’s kind of her,” Ayah said, brushing his hair off his forehead. “Did you… did you see the mail?”

Leo hesitated. “It’s in the door. I didn’t open it.”

Ayah’s stomach clenched. She’d seen the envelopes sticking out of the slot when she came in and had walked straight past them like they didn’t exist. Bills only count if you touch them, she sometimes told herself.

She went to the door and gathered the mail. One was the electric bill, stamped with a bright red SHUT-OFF NOTICE. One was from the hospital. FINAL DEMAND.

The last envelope was different. Thick, cream-colored paper. The kind that carried wedding invitations or very bad news.

Her fingers went numb as she tore it open.

EVICTION NOTICE.

Pursuant to the acquisition of this property by Wittman Enterprises, all tenancy agreements are hereby terminated. You have thirty (30) days to vacate the premises.

Thirty days.

Ayah slid down the hallway wall until she hit the floor, the letter shaking in her hand.

Wittman Enterprises. Of course. Everyone in New York knew that name. They were the sharks tearing through working-class neighborhoods to build glass towers for people who owned second homes in the sky. They weren’t just a company; they were a storm that rolled through and erased everything.

And now that storm had blown right through her front door.

Thirty days to find a new apartment in a city where even rats paid rent. Thirty days to somehow scrape together first month, last month, deposit—while drowning in medical debt. Thirty days to figure out a new school, new doctors, a new oxygen supplier for Leo.

For the first time in months, Ayah let herself fall apart. She pressed her forehead to her knees and cried. Not loud, theatrical sobs. Just quiet, shaking breaths that tasted like metal.

She gave herself five minutes. Ten.

Then she wiped her face on the heel of her palm, stood up, and went to see what she could turn a can of beans and half an onion into for dinner.

The war, she realized, had just escalated.

By morning, the whole block was buzzing. Eviction notices had slid under every door like a plague. In the diner, Sal was pacing behind the counter, a dish towel gripped tight in his fist.

“They’re taking the diner, Ayah,” he ranted to anyone who would listen. “Thirty years I’ve been here. Thirty years flipping eggs, and some faceless corporation wipes me off the map with a piece of paper.”

“I know, Sal,” Ayah said, running on three hours of sleep and pure adrenaline. She topped off coffee mugs with hands that barely shook. “It’s awful.”

“It’s the end,” Sal said, voice breaking. “You hear me? The end.”

It was a little before ten when the car pulled up outside.

Calling it a car felt wrong. It was a statement. A black Rolls-Royce Cullinan, gleaming so bright it mirrored the overcast sky. It glided into the fifteen-minute loading zone like it owned the street.

Through the window, the diners watched like it was a scene from a movie. The driver stepped out, a tall man in a crisp black suit. He moved around to the back door and opened it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for royalty.

The man who stepped out could have been on the cover of a magazine.

Late twenties, maybe early thirties. Tall, the kind of lean that came from a personal trainer and carefully counted calories. His dark hair was perfectly styled, not a strand out of place. His suit was midnight blue and obviously custom, hugging his frame like it knew his secrets. The watch on his wrist probably cost more than Ayah made in a year.

He stepped into the Starlight Diner and recoiled.

His upper lip fluttered, just once, like he’d caught a bad smell.

“Good God,” he muttered. It wasn’t soft. He said it like a commentary, like a review of a restaurant that had already failed the moment he walked in.

Sal, spotting the suit and the car, snapped into charm mode.

“Sir! Welcome! Table for you?” he asked, practically bowing. “Right this way, best seat in the house—”

“Just coffee,” the man said, not even glancing at him. He walked straight to the counter, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and used it to wipe down the surface before he sat.

Ayah felt her jaw tighten as she stepped up.

“What can I get you, sir?” she asked.

He held up one finger without looking at her, typing something on his phone. The silence stretched. Finally he hit send and flicked his gaze up, scanning her face, then her apron, with the bored disinterest of someone inspecting a stain.

“Black coffee,” he said. “And make sure the cup is clean. I don’t want to catch whatever thrives in here.”

Ayah’s fingers dug into the coffee pot handle. “One black coffee,” she said evenly.

She poured from the same pot she’d just used for everyone else, set the mug in front of him. He lifted it, sniffed, and made a face.

“Is this coffee or gutter sludge?” he asked.

“It’s our house blend, sir,” Ayah said. The words came out too tight.

“Charming,” he said.

He took the smallest possible sip, grimaced like it hurt him, and set the mug down like it had personally offended him.

The bell above the door jingled again. Mrs. M shuffled in, wrapped in her thin coat. She made her slow way toward her usual booth.

The man in the suit, eyes on his phone, stood abruptly. He pivoted to leave, never looking up.

He slammed straight into Mrs. M.

She cried out as she staggered. Her hand grabbed for the side of a booth to steady herself.

“Watch where you’re going, old woman,” he snapped, brushing at his sleeve like she’d smeared something on it.

The diner went quiet. Even the sizzle from the grill seemed to pause.

Ayah saw red.

“Sir,” she said. Her voice was sharp enough to cut steel. Every head turned toward her. “You just knocked her over. You should apologize.”

The man turned slowly. His expression shifted from annoyance to cold amusement, the kind of look a cat gives a bird.

“Excuse me?” he said. “What did you just say to me, sweetheart?”

“I said you should apologize,” Ayah replied. Her heart was pounding, but her voice did not shake. “She’s an elderly woman. She’s a regular here. You were rude.”

He laughed once, a short, ugly bark.

“Rude?” he repeated. “I’m standing in a dump that’s about to be demolished, and you want to lecture me on manners?”

He pulled out a thick monogrammed wallet, flipped it open with a practiced flick.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” he asked.

Ayah’s hand brushed the eviction notice in her apron pocket. She’d read the company name so many times it was practically burned into her eyes.

“I have an idea,” she said quietly. “You’re from Wittman Enterprises, aren’t you?”

He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“I am Wittman Enterprises,” he said. “My name is Gabriel Wittman, and this—” he gestured around the diner, at the cracked tiles and faded menus and people clutching mugs like life preservers “—is my new property. Or it will be, once I’ve power-washed the stench of failure out of it.”

He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and dropped it on the counter next to his untouched coffee.

“For the sludge,” he said. “Keep the change, sweetheart. Maybe buy yourself a personality.”

He turned back to Mrs. M, who was being helped into her booth by a shaken Sal.

“And as for you,” he added, voice dripping with disdain, “try to stay out of the way of your superiors.”

Then he walked out, slid into his Rolls-Royce, and let the door close with a soft, final click that sounded more cruel than any slam.

The silence he left behind was thick with humiliation and rage.

Ayah was shaking. She rushed to Mrs. M’s booth.

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” she asked.

Mrs. M was pale, but her eyes… her eyes were not frail. They were sharp and cold, chips of blue ice. She stared out the window, watching the black Cullinan pull away from the curb.

“That,” she said, voice perfectly steady, “was Gabriel.”

“Gabriel who?” Ayah asked automatically.

“Gabriel Wittman,” Mrs. M said. “My grandson.”

Ayah froze. The floor seemed to tilt.

“Your… your grandson?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Margaret said—because now, sitting straighter, she looked less like Mrs. M and more like someone else entirely. “You stood up for me, Ayah. You stood up to him knowing who he was.”

“I didn’t know he was your—”

“You knew he could ruin you,” she corrected gently. “And you still did it. That makes you very brave. And very foolish.”

“He’s evicting us,” Ayah said, the anger draining, replaced by raw panic. “All of us. My brother is sick. We have nowhere to go. I…” Her throat closed.

“Yes,” Margaret said. “He is.”

She patted Ayah’s hand. “Don’t you worry about that man. I will handle Gabriel.”

Ayah wanted to believe her. But Margaret was a frail old regular. Gabriel was a billionaire with a tower in Manhattan.

What could a grandmother do?

That evening, the diner closed early. Sal couldn’t keep working. The eviction notice sitting on his desk might as well have been a death certificate.

“Just lock up when you’re done, Ayah,” he said, voice hollow. “I’m going to… I don’t know, see a lawyer. It won’t matter. But I have to try.”

He left her alone in the quiet diner.

Ayah scrubbed the grill until the steel reflected her face back at her. She hardly recognized the girl in the metal. Tired. Defeated. Diner name tag pinned crooked over a heart that was breaking.

She was reaching for the light switch when someone knocked on the glass front door.

She flinched. It was late, and the block was half deserted. The knock came again, soft but insistent.

Ayah stepped closer and peered through the glass.

The Rolls-Royce was back.

But it wasn’t Gabriel on the sidewalk.

It was Mrs. M.

Except… it wasn’t.

She wasn’t wearing the thin coat, the scuffed shoes. She was wearing a perfectly tailored dark wool coat and a single line of pearls at her throat. Her white hair was styled, not flattened. She stood tall, straight as a ruler.

Her eyes, when she looked up, were crystal clear.

Ayah unlocked the door with shaking hands.

“Mrs. M? Is everything okay? It’s late,” Ayah said.

“Good evening, Ayah,” the woman said, stepping inside. Her voice was deeper, smoother than the whisper Ayah knew. “I believe we have some business to discuss.”

“Business?” Ayah echoed. “I don’t—”

“My name,” the woman said, “is Margaret Wittman. ‘Mrs. M’ is something my late husband used to call me. Please, walk with me.”

Ayah’s brain short-circuited. She untied her apron and dropped it on a chair, almost on autopilot. She followed Margaret out into the cold.

The driver—the same one who’d opened the door for Gabriel—stood by the back passenger door, posture rigid.

“After you, Ms. Reed,” Margaret said.

Ayah slid into the car. The door closed with a soft click, and the noise of the city disappeared. The interior smelled of leather and something subtle and expensive, like old money and new contracts. The seats were softer than her mattress. The ceiling lights glowed warm and low.

Margaret sat across from her, hands folded.

Ayah stared. “You’re… you’re really…?”

“I am,” Margaret said. “My husband and I built Wittman Enterprises from a single hardware store in Queens. I spent the last ten years in quiet retirement, watching my grandson twist that legacy into… this.”

She gestured vaguely, as if “this” meant evictions and Rolls-Royces and a boy who could barely breathe.

“I’ve been going to the Starlight Diner for six months, Ayah,” she continued. “In disguise. I wanted to see my grandson’s projects from the ground floor, not from a private helicopter. I watched you give your tips to the man on the corner with the veteran cap. I watched you sneak extra food to families who were obviously counting pennies. I watched you comfort Sal when his wife was in the hospital.

“And today,” she added, “I watched you stand between me and a man who could make sure you never worked in this city again.”

“It wasn’t…” Ayah swallowed. “I couldn’t just let him talk to you like that. Or anyone.”

“That,” Margaret said, “is exactly the problem. Gabriel believes he can talk to anyone however he likes. And the world has let him.”

She leaned forward, eyes locking on Ayah’s.

“I am a very wealthy woman, Ayah. Very wealthy. And I am very tired of being quiet. My grandson needs a lesson. And you, my dear,” she said, a small, dangerous smile touching her lips, “are going to be the teacher.”

Ayah blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“I am,” Margaret said, “in a manner of speaking, going to grant you three wishes.”

Ayah stared.

“Wishes,” she repeated. “Like… fairy godmother wishes?”

Margaret laughed, a dry, surprisingly powerful sound in the small cabin. “I’m not a fairy, child. I’m a billionaire. My power is more practical. And more terrifying.”

Ayah said nothing. She could hear her heart beating in her ears.

“You are in an impossible situation,” Margaret said. “I’m offering you an impossible solution. Ask me for three things. Anything. Within my power—which is considerable—I will make them happen.”

“Anything,” Ayah whispered.

“Do you want money?” Margaret asked. “I can make you a millionaire before midnight. Do you want a brownstone in Brooklyn? A car? Do you want your brother’s medical bills gone? Consider it done. Name it.”

Money. The word sparkled in Ayah’s mind like neon. A million dollars. She saw the stack of bills on the table, the red stamps, the closed-mouth apology of doctors talking about “costs.”

She saw Leo’s face, gray and exhausted, lit blue by the hospital machines.

One wish and all of that could vanish.

She could take Leo out of that cramped apartment, move him into a bright place with clean air and a doorman. She could pay for the very best doctors, the newest treatments. She could sleep for the first time in years.

But then she saw Gabriel’s face.

She saw him sneering at her, throwing that hundred-dollar bill like it was trash. She saw Sal crumpling the eviction notice. Mrs. Petrovic from 3B clutching her notice in the building lobby with shaking hands. Entire families shoving their lives into cardboard boxes.

Money would save her.

It would do nothing to stop him.

The problem wasn’t her bills. The problem was men like Gabriel who never had to feel the weight of consequences. Men who thought the world was disposable because nothing had ever made them break.

Ayah took a deep breath, steadying herself against the buttery leather seat. She looked straight into Margaret’s eyes.

“I don’t want your money,” she said.

“Call me Margaret,” the older woman said softly. “Then what do you want, Ayah? This is your first wish. Make it count.”

Ayah’s voice was quiet. But there was iron in it now.

“I want him to see,” she said. “I want him to really see what he’s doing. Not just to me, but to everyone. I don’t want him punished. I want him to understand.”

She swallowed.

“I want Gabriel Wittman,” she said slowly, “to live my life.”

Margaret’s eyebrows climbed. “Explain.”

“I want him to be me,” Ayah said, the idea growing wings even as it terrified her. “Just for one week. I want him to live in my apartment. On my budget. I want him taking care of Leo. I want him working my job at the diner. I want him counting tips to see if he can afford Leo’s medication. I want him to feel what it’s like to be two days from shut-off with a sick kid and no way out.”

The car fell silent.

Outside, New York rolled past—liquor stores, laundromats, a payday loan place with a buzzing “Open” sign. Inside, there was only the soft hum of the engine and Ayah’s own quick breath.

Then Margaret smiled.

It wasn’t a sweet grandmother smile. It was sharp and bright and dangerous.

“Ayah Reed,” she said. “That is the most creative, most brilliant, most gloriously vindictive wish I’ve heard in eighty years. I was going to offer you a check. You’ve demanded a complete psychological transformation. It’s beautiful.”

“Can you really… do that?” Ayah asked. “Actually make him…?”

“My dear,” Margaret said, “I still own fifty-one percent of Wittman Enterprises. I can have him fired, demoted, or on a plane to supervise snowplow contracts in Alaska by morning. I can freeze his accounts before he finishes his dessert. Yes. I can do that.”

She leaned back.

“Your first wish,” she said, “is granted.”

The next morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp, on the fiftieth floor of a glass tower in Midtown Manhattan, Gabriel Wittman was in his natural habitat.

He stood at the head of a polished white marble table that seemed to stretch forever. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the city like a trophy case—Central Park a distant streak of green, the Hudson River a silver stripe.

He was mid-pitch, pacing like a general across a war map.

“And by leveling the entire block,” he said, his laser pointer circling a digital map on the giant screen behind him, “we eliminate three underperforming, high-risk properties, including this…” he paused, fighting the urge to wrinkle his nose “…grease-stained diner. In its place, Wittman Apex rises as the tallest residential tower in the district. Pre-sales alone are already projected at half a billion.”

He flashed a smile at the board, a row of men and women in suits who owed their seats to him and never forgot it.

“It’s aggressive,” one older director said carefully. “The press around the evictions hasn’t been—”

“The press is irrelevant,” Gabriel cut in. “Progress has a cost. Now, if you’ll turn to page twelve of the prospectus—”

The double doors at the end of the room hissed open.

Gabriel didn’t look up. “I’m in a meeting,” he snapped. “Hold all calls, Helen—”

“It’s not Helen, Gabriel.”

The voice was a shard of ice sliding across glass. Every board member stiffened.

Gabriel turned.

Margaret Wittman stood in the doorway, framed by the skyline. She wasn’t in pearls and wool now. She wore a sharp crimson Chanel suit that said, in no uncertain terms, I am the one in charge.

On either side of her were two men in perfect gray suits carrying leather briefcases. Gabriel recognized them: Davis and Lee, senior partners at one of the most feared law firms in New York.

“Grandmother,” Gabriel said, recovering quickly, his smile snapping into place. “What a surprise. If I’d known you were coming in, I’d have— We’re just wrapping up here—”

“No, Gabriel,” Margaret said, heels clicking as she walked to the head of the table. “You are.”

She took his seat.

Gabriel was left standing.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Margaret said, her voice carrying to every corner of the glass box. “This meeting is adjourned. A new agenda item has been introduced by the majority shareholder.”

Gabriel’s smile faltered. “Grandmother, what is this?”

“This,” she said calmly, “is a leadership review. Specifically, yours.”

She nodded to Mr. Davis.

The lawyer stepped forward and placed a thick folder in front of Gabriel.

“Mr. Wittman,” Davis said, voice professional, expression unreadable. “By order of the chairwoman of the board, you are hereby placed on a mandatory sabbatical from your role as CEO, effective immediately.”

The room went dead quiet.

Gabriel stared at the folder, then at his grandmother. He laughed. It was an odd, stuttering sound that didn’t sound like him at all.

“This is a joke,” he said. “A very bad joke. I’m in the middle of the Apex launch. You can’t be serious. I’ll fight this. I’ll—”

“You’ll lose,” Margaret said coolly. “But this isn’t just a sabbatical, Gabriel. Think of it as… a work-study program. A corporate exchange.”

“A what?” he demanded.

“You’ve become disconnected,” Margaret said. “You’ve forgotten what this company was built on. So you’re going back to the front lines.”

She laced her fingers together.

“You will be trading places—and lives—with an employee from one of your recent acquisitions. A Ms. Ayah Reed.”

Gabriel felt the blood drain from his face.

“The waitress,” he said. “You cannot be serious. That woman is—”

“For one week,” Margaret went on, ignoring him, “you will live in her apartment. You will assume her financial responsibilities. You will work her job at the Starlight Diner, which will remain open for the duration. Your assets, accounts, and communications are frozen. You will be given a cash allowance of one hundred dollars. For the week.”

He stared at her. For the first time in his well-insulated life, the room felt like it was closing in.

“You will be Mr. Gabriel Reed,” Margaret continued. “Her cousin from out of town, helping her out. You will take care of her brother. You will do her job. You will live her life.”

Gabriel opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He tried again.

“You can’t,” he managed, barely a whisper. “You have no right. I’ll sue. I’ll—”

“Mr. Lee,” Margaret said evenly.

The second lawyer stepped forward with a second folder.

“This is an addendum,” Lee said, “to the family trust and to the corporate charter. Your inheritance, your board seat, and your future position with Wittman Enterprises are now contingent on successful completion of this program. If you refuse, if you quit early, or if you attempt to use outside resources, you will be removed from your roles. Permanently.”

Lee laid the document down. “In plain terms, Mr. Wittman: if you don’t do this, you are cut off. From everything.”

Gabriel looked around the table. At the directors who suddenly found their notes fascinating. At the lawyers. At the city outside his windows.

At his grandmother.

Her gaze did not waver.

“Two security officers are waiting outside,” she said, standing. “They will escort you to your new home. I suggest you change. Your work uniform is waiting.”

He looked at her with something beyond anger—beyond panic. Then the fight went out of him all at once.

He’d been toppled, not by a hostile takeover or a market crash, but by a waitress from Queens and an old woman in pearls.

While Gabriel’s world was collapsing, Ayah’s was being quietly rebuilt.

A different car picked her up from the diner that afternoon. Not the Rolls-Royce—that drew too much attention—but a discreet black sedan.

She was taken over the bridge into Manhattan, to the Four Seasons. The lobby was all marble and perfume and whispers. She half expected security to stop her and demand to know what a diner girl from Queens was doing there.

Instead, staff called her Ms. Reed and handed her a key card to a penthouse suite.

The room was bigger than her entire apartment building had any right to be. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city, the Empire State Building in the distance. There were fruit baskets on the table, fresh flowers by the bed, a bathroom that looked like it belonged in a movie.

“I can’t accept this,” Ayah said into the phone that night, pacing the soft carpet, staring at the enormous bed like it might bite.

“Nonsense,” Margaret said on the other end. “You’re my guest. Your only job for the next week is to rest. And consult.”

“Consult?” Ayah repeated.

“On Leo,” Margaret said. “A team of the best pediatric neurologists in the country is flying to New York. They’ll use a private suite at the best hospital in the city. I want you rested and ready to talk to them. That boy is our top priority. Let the show take care of itself.”

“The show,” Ayah repeated.

“Gabriel,” Margaret said. “Episode one airs tomorrow.”

The show started at ground level.

Two stone-faced security guards drove Gabriel—stripped of his phone, his watch, his wallet—in a nondescript sedan across the bridge, past the glittering skyline he used to look down on, and into the bruised streets of Queens.

They handed him a cheap burner phone, a folded packet of cash, and a key ring with a single brass key.

“Enjoy your week, Mr. Reed,” one of them said, just a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

The building smelled like boiled cabbage and wet plaster. The stairwell walls were scarred with graffiti and old tape. Five flights up, the paint peeled around doorways.

He found 5D. The key stuck in the lock. When he shoved the door open, the air inside was a mixture of laundry detergent and hospital.

The apartment was small, worn but tidy. Secondhand couch. TV on a battered stand. Apartment-sized fridge humming tiredly.

On the sofa, a boy with a thin face and an oxygen tube watched him like an animal watching a predator.

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

Gabriel stared, momentarily lost. He’d had talking points for the board. He had nothing for this.

A woman in scrubs stepped out of the tiny kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.

“You must be Mr. Reed,” she said, brisk and calm. “I’m Beth, Leo’s nurse.”

She crossed to the boy, adjusted his oxygen, gave his shoulder a pat.

“I’ve explained your sister is at a mandatory work training seminar for the week,” Beth told Leo. “And this is your cousin, Gabriel. He’s here to help out.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like Ayah’s family,” he muttered.

“Hi,” Gabriel said. It came out flat.

Beth handed him a thick folder. “This is Leo’s medication schedule. Oxygen settings. Dietary needs. Emergency contacts. Here’s a list of house rules. Your first shift at the diner starts at six a.m. I’m here nine to five; you’re on your own mornings and evenings.”

“Wait,” Gabriel said. “I—”

Beth grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Follow the schedule. Don’t let him eat junk food. Call 911 if he turns blue.”

And she was gone.

Gabriel stood in the center of the living room, a billionaire in a twenty-dollar sweatshirt, holding a folder that outweighed his sense of control.

The week that followed stripped away the rest.

The alarm shrieked at five a.m. He stumbled out of the couch bed, stepping on a Lego and swearing under his breath. He had to wake Leo, make his oatmeal, check his medication, fuss with the oxygen machine. Leo corrected him—more than once.

“Ayah puts cinnamon in it,” Leo said when Gabriel plunked down a bowl of plain oatmeal.

“There is no cinnamon,” Gabriel snapped, yanking open a cabinet.

“In the jar that says ‘cinnamon,’” Leo said, pointing.

Right.

By 5:40, Gabriel was hustling down the stairs and across three blocks of half-awake Queens. He arrived at the diner at 5:58, breath puffing in the cold.

Sal gave him one glance up and down in Ayah’s uniform—polyester shirt, apron, black pants that fit wrong—and snorted.

“You’re the cousin?” he asked. “You look soft. Dish pit. We don’t let rookies touch customers.”

The next eight hours were hell.

Gabriel had never really thought about dishes. They were just things that appeared clean and disappeared dirty. Now he learned every plate came with its own kind of punishment. The hot water scalded. The soap left his hands a red, raw mess. The industrial sterilizer had no mercy.

“Faster, pretty boy!” Sal yelled. “Lunch rush doesn’t care about your manicure!”

He burned his forearm. He dropped an entire stack of plates and the diner broke into mocking applause. At the end of the shift, he was soaked, sore, and standing in line to collect his share of the tips.

Thirty-two dollars.

He stared at the cash in his palm. In his old life, that was less than he’d spend on a cocktail. Now it was supposed to feed two people and buy bus fare.

He walked to the corner bodega, bought milk, bread, the cheapest pack of ground beef he could find. The clerk didn’t know who he was. Didn’t care. To them, he was just another guy counting singles.

At night he helped Leo with homework. Or tried.

“What are you doing?” Leo asked, frowning at the math problem Gabriel had just “helped” with.

“Solving it,” Gabriel said. “Obviously.”

“That’s not how we do it,” Leo said, then patiently walked him through the new method the school used. For the first time in a long time, Gabriel felt truly, deeply stupid.

Wednesday, Sal finally trusted him enough to move him up to bussing tables.

He was halfway through clearing a booth when a familiar voice cut through the diner.

“Wittman? No way.”

Gabriel’s spine snapped straight. He turned.

At a corner table, a group of guys in tailored suits and loosened ties had taken over a booth, their Wall Street energy too loud for the tiny space. One of them—Robert Henderson, a man Gabriel knew from a private club in Manhattan—was staring at him with delighted disbelief.

“Henderson,” Gabriel said, forcing a smile. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see me?” Henderson laughed. “Good to see you. What is this, some kind of judge-ordered community service? You finally get busted for something?”

He dug his phone out of his pocket.

“Boys at the club are never gonna believe this,” he said, raising it for a photo. “Smile, Gabe. The king of real estate, bussing tables in Queens.”

Flash.

Gabriel felt his face burn. The tray in his hands suddenly weighed twelve tons. As he fled back to the kitchen, Henderson’s laughter followed him, echoing off the greasy walls.

The breaking point came on Friday at three in the morning.

He woke to a sound he couldn’t place at first. A strangled, gasping gasp. He bolted upright on the couch, heart in his throat.

“Leo?” he called.

No answer. Just that awful, choking sound.

He ran to the bedroom.

Leo was sitting up, hands clutching at his throat, eyes wide, lips tinged blue. The oxygen machine beside the bed was hissing, but every breath seemed to bounce off his lungs.

“Leo!” Gabriel shouted. “Hey, hey, breathe—”

He fumbled with the machine, knocking the tubing loose. He grabbed an inhaler, tried to get Leo to use it. Nothing worked.

“Hospital,” Leo wheezed. “Need… hospital…”

Gabriel’s world narrowed to a tunnel.

He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a driver. He had a burner phone, a sick kid, and a terror he didn’t know what to do with.

He dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“My brother,” Gabriel said. “He can’t breathe. He’s got a neurological—he just can’t— We’re at 125 Rivington, apartment 5D in Queens. Please, just—”

“An ambulance is on its way,” the operator said. “Stay with him. Is he conscious?”

“Barely,” Gabriel said. “Please hurry.”

In his old life, when his father had a health scare, a private ambulance had shown up in under four minutes. Sirens screaming, lights blazing.

Here, fifteen minutes felt like hours.

Gabriel held Leo upright on the couch, counting seconds between wheezes, praying without realizing he was praying, his heart pounding against the boy’s bony back.

When the EMTs finally burst through the door, they moved in quick, efficient motions. Oxygen, vitals, a stretcher. They loaded Leo up and hustled him down the stairs.

Gabriel rode in the front of the ambulance, hands fisted in his borrowed coat, knuckles white.

The public hospital ER was a different universe from the private clinics Gabriel knew. It was loud, bright, and overflowing. People sat slumped in chairs, clutching ice packs, paper cups, each other.

A nurse at the front desk thrust a clipboard at him without looking up.

“Fill this out,” she said. “Insurance card?”

“He needs help now,” Gabriel said, voice rising. “He can’t breathe. He—”

“So does everyone in this room,” the nurse snapped, gesturing around. “Fill out the forms, sir.”

“I don’t have his card,” Gabriel said. “His name is Leo Reed. His sister—”

“Then I can’t process him,” she said. “You’ll have to wait until—”

“He can’t wait,” Gabriel exploded. “Do you know who I am? I’m Gabriel—”

He stopped himself. The name that had opened every door in his life landed flat here.

“Gabriel Reed,” he finished lamely.

The nurse looked up, unimpressed. “If you yell at me again, I’ll have security escort you out to wait in the parking lot,” she said. “Sit down. We’ll call you.”

So he sat. On a hard plastic chair under a flickering fluorescent light, surrounded by coughing and crying and the smell of disinfectant and fear.

It took two hours for them to take Leo back. Four more before anyone spoke to Gabriel.

A tired doctor finally came out, charts in hand.

“He’s stable,” she said. “The attack passed. We’re keeping him overnight for observation.”

Gabriel sagged in the chair, every muscle unclenching at once.

“But,” the doctor went on, “his levels are off. His medication. It looks like his last refill was partial.”

“Partial?” Gabriel repeated. “What does that mean?”

“It means he’s supposed to get a certain dose, and he hasn’t been,” the doctor said. “The medication is twelve hundred a month. His insurance covers about half. The records show he didn’t receive the full amount. I’m guessing his caregiver couldn’t afford the rest.”

She said it casually, like she’d seen this a hundred times.

Because she had.

Gabriel just stared at her.

He saw Ayah’s face. Dark circles under her eyes. The way she counted tips. The way she folded and unfolded the eviction notice like she could will it away.

She wasn’t just poor. She was rationing her brother’s life.

He thought about the hundred-dollar bill he’d tossed at her like trash. The joke about buying a personality. That money wouldn’t even cover a fifth of a month’s co-pay.

He sat in the plastic chair and put his head in his hands.

For the first time since he was a child, Gabriel Wittman cried. Not pretty tears, not the dramatic kind. Just hoarse, ugly sobs that shook his shoulders and left his throat raw.

He wept for Leo, for Ayah, for every person who had sat in that waiting room without a name that mattered. He wept for his own staggering ignorance.

He finally saw.

A black sedan picked him up the next afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to leave Leo’s side, but Beth had arrived and insisted he go.

“You’re no use to him if you pass out,” she said.

This time, they drove him back to Manhattan.

He expected to be taken to his penthouse. Instead, the elevator in Wittman Tower whisked him to the fiftieth floor boardroom.

Inside, the scene was set.

Margaret sat at the head of the table. On her right, in a simple navy dress, her hair clean and loose around her shoulders, sat Ayah.

She looked like she had slept. She looked like someone who belonged in that room for a reason other than cleaning it.

The lawyers were there. The board. The skyline.

Gabriel stood at the doorway for a long second, feeling like he’d stumbled onto the set of someone else’s life.

“Well, Gabriel,” Margaret said mildly. “How was your week?”

He didn’t look at her.

He looked at Ayah.

“How do you do it?” he asked hoarsely. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “Every day. How do you… choose between rent and medicine? Between food and… breath?”

“You don’t,” Ayah said quietly. “You just… find a way. You work doubles. You water down the soup. You hope the electric company gives you one more extension. You pray someone leaves a good tip.”

“The hospital,” Gabriel said, swallowing hard. “They made us wait. I told them who I was. Gabriel Reed. It meant nothing. I had no card. No account. I was just…” He trailed off.

“You were just like the rest of us,” Ayah said gently.

He nodded once, a short, broken jerk.

“Leo needed his medicine,” he whispered. “You couldn’t afford it. I… I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I just…” He met her eyes, and shame flared there, bright as fire. “Ayah, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t see. I just… didn’t see.”

A tear slid down Ayah’s cheek. She hadn’t meant to cry in front of these people, in this room. But there it was.

She nodded.

Margaret watched them both, something like satisfaction softening the edges of her face.

“It appears your first wish has been granted,” she said to Ayah. “He sees.”

She turned to her.

“You still have two wishes remaining,” Margaret said. “Choose carefully.”

Ayah sat a little straighter. The fear she’d felt walking into the tower had faded somewhere between the automatic doors downstairs and this room. She realized something startling: for the last week, she’d held more power over this man than he’d ever had over her.

“My second wish,” she said, voice clear, “is for Leo. I don’t just want his bills paid. I want him to have the best care in the world. The top doctors. Whatever procedure he needs. I want him healthy. Not just surviving. Living.”

“A mother’s wish from a sister,” Margaret said, eyes softening. “Done.”

She nodded to Mr. Lee.

“The Leo Reed case has been under review for several days,” Lee said, flipping open a file. “A pediatric neurology team from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has already evaluated his records. They believe he’s an excellent candidate for a new microsurgical procedure. A medical jet is standing by at Teterboro. Ms. Reed, you and your brother will depart this afternoon. The Wittman Foundation has created a permanent fund to cover his medical needs for life.”

Ayah let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Margaret said. “Thank yourself. It was your wish.”

She folded her hands.

“Now,” she said. “Your third. This one will be the last. You could ask for a penthouse. A trust fund. A driver. You could ask for Gabriel to be fired and sent to live in a cabin in Montana. Think.”

Ayah looked at Gabriel.

He looked back, braced for impact. If she asked for him to be ruined, he deserved it. He knew that now.

But Ayah’s gaze slid past him, to the blueprint pinned on the wall. The gleaming, angular monster labeled WITTMAN APEX. The tower that was supposed to rise from the ashes of her home.

“That,” she said, pointing.

“The project?” Margaret asked.

“The block,” Ayah said. “Everyone you evicted. Sal. Mrs. Petrovic. All of them.”

She took a breath.

“My third wish is for them,” she said. “I want the Starlight redevelopment project to be… redeveloped.”

Gabriel frowned despite himself. “We’d lose millions,” he muttered.

“Be quiet, Gabriel,” Margaret said, not unkindly. “Go on, Ayah.”

“I don’t want luxury condos there,” Ayah said. “I want that block rebuilt as safe, clean, affordable housing. For every tenant you pushed out. I want them to have their homes back—but better. And I want the Starlight Diner on the ground floor. Not as a tenant, at the mercy of another landlord. As a co-op. Owned by Sal and the staff. Free and clear.”

The room inhaled.

It wasn’t a small wish. It was huge, messy, expensive. It was a rewrite of an entire business plan.

Margaret’s smile spread slowly.

“A noble wish,” she said. “A business wish with a beating heart. Done. The Wittman Foundation will fund the Starlight Community Project in full.”

She paused.

“But,” she added, eyes sparkling, “I’d like to make a counteroffer. An amendment to your wish.”

Ayah blinked. “An… amendment?”

“The Starlight Community Project is a complex, multi-million-dollar development,” Margaret said. “It needs oversight. It needs someone who knows numbers and permits and contractors. Someone who knows how to read a balance sheet. It also needs someone who knows what drafty windows feel like. Someone who knows what it means to pick between rent and medicine.”

She turned to Gabriel.

“Gabriel, you are officially demoted from CEO of Wittman Enterprises,” she said. “Congratulations on your new position: Executive Vice President of the Wittman Foundation. Your first assignment is to oversee the Starlight Community Project. You will make sure it is built. On time. On budget. No shortcuts.”

Gabriel nodded, numb. It was more than he deserved and less than he would once have accepted. Now, it felt like grace.

“Of course,” he said. “Yes.”

“As an EVP,” Margaret continued, “you’ll need a boss.”

She faced Ayah.

“You, my dear,” she said, standing and extending her hand, “will be reporting to yourself.”

Ayah stared. “What?”

“Ayah Reed,” Margaret said, “welcome to the Wittman Foundation. You are now president of the Starlight Community Project. Your starting salary is five hundred thousand dollars a year. Comes with a penthouse in this building if you want it. You’ll need to trade your apron for a blazer, I’m afraid.”

Ayah opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

“Your first act as president will be to sign the travel budget for your brother’s treatment in Minnesota,” Margaret said. “Your second will be to review your EVP’s construction plans.”

Across the table, Gabriel slowly held out his hand. The palms were still red and blistered from scalding water and cheap dish soap.

“Congratulations, boss,” he said quietly. “Where do we start?”

The year that followed didn’t feel like a miraculous montage in a movie. It felt like work.

The first and most important change didn’t happen in New York at all. It happened in a bright, sterile operating room in Rochester, Minnesota.

Ayah spent her first week as the president of anything sitting in a hospital waiting room, watching snow swirl outside as surgeons worked on Leo’s brain.

Mayo Clinic was another world. The silence there was different from the silence in their Queens apartment. At home, silence meant worry. Here, silence meant competence.

Margaret sat with her for the first two hours, saying almost nothing. Just being there. When her private jet called her back to Manhattan, she squeezed Ayah’s hand.

“We’ve done everything we can,” she said. “The rest is up to them. And him.”

Eight hours later, the lead surgeon came out. A woman with calm eyes and careful hands.

“The procedure went very well,” she said. “The pressure on his brain has been relieved. His prognosis is excellent.”

Ayah nodded. Tears didn’t come. Not yet. She felt like she was exhaling a breath she’d been holding for a decade.

Three weeks later, in a small park in Rochester, the tears finally showed up.

Leo, cleared for light activity, saw a group of boys playing tag in the snow-dusted grass. He hesitated, looking back at Ayah.

“Go,” she whispered, throat tight. “Go play.”

He took one step. Then another.

Then he ran.

Clumsy and laughing, without an oxygen tube, without a tremor. Just a ten-year-old boy chasing other ten-year-olds under a pale winter sun.

Ayah sat on a bench and sobbed until her chest hurt.

Her second wish had been answered not with magic, but with money and skill and access. The result was the most magical thing she’d ever seen.

While Leo healed, Ayah learned.

Margaret wasn’t a gentle teacher. She was fair, demanding, and relentless.

“You have the heart,” she told Ayah on one of their daily calls. “That’s why I chose you. I will teach you the steel. People think business is math. It’s not. It’s ninety percent people, ten percent numbers. You already understand people.”

Ayah devoured everything she could get her hands on. Project management textbooks. Affordable housing case studies. Articles about zoning in New York City. She carried a laptop everywhere, taking notes between hospital visits.

Her first boardroom meeting as president of anything was terrifying.

The architect clicked through slides, rattling off square footage and cost per unit. Engineers hovered over structural diagrams. Gabriel sat at the far end of the table, laptop open, glasses on, looking like a different man.

“And to stay within the revised budget,” the lead architect said, “we’ve value-engineered the windows on the first five floors. Slightly lower grade double-pane, same look, less cost. We save nearly two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Value-engineered,” Ayah repeated.

“Yes, Ms. Reed,” the architect said, a touch patronizing. “It’s a very common—”

“No,” Ayah said.

The room went still.

“No?” the architect echoed.

“No,” Ayah said more firmly. “Mrs. Petrovic lives on the third floor. She’s seventy-eight. A lower grade window means a draft. A draft means higher heating bills. It means she’s cold. The entire point of this project is dignity. Not value. Every window is triple-pane. Top of the line. No exceptions. Find the two hundred thousand somewhere else.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Gabriel cleared his throat.

“We can cut it from the rooftop landscaping,” he said. “The irrigation system spec is overkill. We’ll save half a million without hurting quality. I’ll handle it.”

He glanced at Ayah.

“The president is right,” he said. “No compromises on the units.”

That was how they worked.

It wasn’t easy. They were not friends. Not yet. They were something more complicated—business partners bound together by guilt, gratitude, and a project bigger than both of them.

Gabriel was at the construction site every morning before the crew. He walked the floors with a hard hat, arguing with foremen about safety rails and deadlines. He sent Ayah spreadsheets at midnight, redlining any line item that looked like a shortcut.

When the time came to demolish the old building, the one that had housed Ayah’s entire past life, Gabriel swung the symbolic first blow. He sat in the excavator, hands on the controls, and slammed the wrecking ball into the wall where the Starlight Diner sign used to hang.

Ayah watched from the street. She didn’t feel triumph. Just a quiet, heavy sense of an ending.

In its place, something new rose.

The Starlight Community Building wasn’t shiny glass and chrome. It was warm brick and steel, with big windows and balconies full of potted plants. One hundred units of high-quality, rent-controlled housing. Solar panels on the roof. A community room on every other floor.

Every tenant who’d been displaced got first priority to move back. The foundation had paid for temporary housing in the meantime. Moving day felt like a block party.

Ayah handed Mrs. Petrovic her new keys personally.

“No drafts,” Ayah promised, walking her into the bright, sunlit living room.

Mrs. Petrovic opened the window and smiled. “Feels like a hotel,” she said, wiping away a tear.

On the ground floor, light spilled out onto the sidewalk from the new Starlight Diner. You could still smell coffee and bacon from down the block—but now the booths were plush, the countertops gleamed, and the kitchen looked like a TV set.

On opening night, the place was packed. Neighbors, construction workers, city officials, journalists sniffing around for an “unlikely feel-good story” in New York. Laughter bounced off the walls.

In the back booth—the one that had once been Mrs. M’s private kingdom in the old diner—three people sat side by side.

Sal marched over, wearing a new button-up shirt and an owner’s grin.

“Coffee for the bosses,” he boomed. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes shone. “On the house. Actually,” he corrected himself, “on our house. Literally.”

He poured three mugs.

Gabriel lifted his and inhaled the steam like it was perfume. He took a sip and closed his eyes.

“It’s good,” he said softly. “Really good.”

“Sal’s a happy man,” Ayah said. “He’s giving everyone an extra blueberry muffin tonight. Says he can afford it now.”

She glanced at Margaret, who was watching her over the rim of her mug.

“Full circle,” Ayah said. “From one free muffin to this.”

Margaret raised her cup.

“A toast,” she said. “To the Starlight Community Project. To the block that refused to die. And to its president.”

Ayah lifted her own cup, smiling.

“And to its EVP,” she added, looking at Gabriel.

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. He looked smaller in his off-the-rack blazer than he had in his tailored suits. But more solid somehow. Real.

“I, uh,” he started, then cleared his throat. “I actually got something in the mail today.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. Inside was a check so thick it almost creaked when he laid it on the table.

“From Henderson,” he said, flushing.

Ayah’s shoulders tensed. “The guy from the diner?”

“The same,” Gabriel said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “He saw the article in the business section about Starlight. He thinks it’s some kind of genius long-term branding play. ‘Repositioning in the social impact space,’ he called it.” His mouth twisted. “He wanted in on the ground floor.”

He slid the check toward Ayah and Margaret.

One million dollars.

“What will you do with it?” Margaret asked. Her tone was casual. Her eyes were razor sharp.

“I’ve already spoken to the hospital administrators,” Gabriel said. “Every cent is going to a new endowment. For the public hospital. The ER.”

He looked at Ayah. His voice dropped to a rough whisper.

“They’re going to build a pediatric wing,” he said. “More nurses. Better triage. Better chairs.” His throat worked. “No one should ever wait two hours for a breathing treatment because a form isn’t filled out. Not if I can help it.”

Ayah’s breath hitched.

He’d gone back to that hallway. To that plastic chair. And he’d decided to do something about it.

Before she could answer, a familiar blur raced toward the booth.

“Ayah! Ayah!” Leo skidded to a stop beside her, cheeks pink, hair sticking up from some game he’d been playing with the other kids. No oxygen tube. No wheezing. Just a boy in sneakers, vibrating with excitement.

“Sal gave me ice cream with sprinkles,” he said breathlessly. “And whipped cream. Can we go to the park after this? Can we? Please?”

“In a minute, buddy,” Ayah said, pulling him into a one-armed hug. Her heart felt too big for her chest. “Let me finish changing the world, okay?”

He rolled his eyes in exaggerated misery and dashed off again.

Ayah looked around the diner.

She saw Mrs. Petrovic laughing with her friends in a booth by the window, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee in a draft-free corner.

She saw Sal working the room like a mayor, proud and loud, a co-owner of something no one could snatch away with a piece of paper.

She saw Margaret, sipping her coffee, the empire she’d built finally bending toward something she could be proud of again.

She saw Gabriel, no longer a villain in a designer suit, but a man slowly, steadily paying off a debt that could never be fully cleared.

Ayah had been granted three wishes. Money. Housing. Power. She could have taken it all and run.

Instead, she’d asked for understanding, healing, and a different kind of home.

Margaret hadn’t just given her resources. She’d given her something rarer.

Choice.

In a city that chews people up and spits them out, a waitress from Queens had chosen to rebuild not just her life, but an entire block. Brick by brick, window by window, one wish at a time.

Some people think power is measured in dollars, or floors of a skyscraper, or the size of a corner office.

Ayah knew better now.

Real power, she’d learned, was in the moment you looked at someone like Gabriel and said: Live my life. Feel what I feel. And the world backed you up.

Her wishes didn’t just change her future. They changed the man who had tried to erase her.

Sometimes the most expensive thing you can give a person isn’t a million dollars.

It’s a week in someone else’s shoes.

What do you think her first wish was, in the end—justice, or mercy?