“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.”

from my own body. The image was low-quality, ripped from a security camera mounted above a fluorescent-lit register. It showed a woman in a frayed gray winter coat, standing angled away from the lens. One of her hands rested protectively on the shoulder of a small girl. Around her stood two other children.

Her face was blurred, obscured by the pixelation continue reading …