“Please mister, buy this painting so we can buy bread,” three dirty triplets begged. The billionaire mafia boss stared at the canvas, his heart stopping. The woman painted on it was the wife he mourned for years. With shaking hands, he pulled out a black card and whispered, “Take me to her.”

stirring a pot of chicken broth. I watched her from the doorway, utterly awestruck by her resilience.

“You need to take them out of Boston,” I said quietly. “Somewhere safe.”

She paused, the wooden spoon hovering. “And you?”

“I don’t know if I can dismantle the machine I built without getting crushed in the gears.”

“Maybe the trick is proving to the machine continue reading …