“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.”

”

“No,” Elena agreed softly. “But they are smart enough to recognize a dangerous man when he traps their mother in the rain.”

I stared blindly at the wooden door. “Did you teach my children to hate me?”

“No, Dante,” she wept. “I taught them how to survive.”

That sentence broke me. It shattered the last remaining pillar of my pride. I had expected screaming continue reading …