“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.”

restaurants,” I defended weakly.

“That doesn’t help you get the pretzels,” she deadpanned.

A startled laugh escaped my chest. “No. No, it does not.”

Lucia sighed—a deeply theatrical, exasperated sigh of a child forced to parent an incompetent adult. She swiped a crumpled dollar bill from her pocket, fed it into the slot, punched D-4, and caught the bag continue reading …