Chapter 1 - The Stranger on Wabash Avenue
Nia Carter lost her job at 8:17 on a freezing Tuesday morning because she refused to leave a bleeding stranger on the side of the road.
What she did not know was that the stranger sitting unsteadily in the hotel laundry room, wearing a torn gray coat and holding a paper cup of water between trembling hands, was the billionaire who owned the hotel.
And the woman firing Nia had spent the last year stealing from the very employees he had come to protect.
Twenty minutes earlier, Nia had been hurrying through downtown Chicago toward the employee entrance of the Lakeshore Grand, fighting icy wind off Lake Michigan and checking the time on her cracked phone.
7:43 a.m.
She was already cutting it close.
Her shift started at eight. Vanessa Mercer, the hotel’s general manager, had recently begun writing people up for being two minutes late.
Nia pulled her scarf tighter and crossed Wabash Avenue.
That was when she heard the brakes.
A black sedan swerved through the intersection.
Someone shouted.
A man stumbled backward near the curb and went down hard.
The sedan clipped a street barrier, paused for half a second, then accelerated away.
People stopped.
They stared.
A few lifted phones.
Nobody moved toward him.
Nia did.
“Sir?”
She dropped her canvas lunch bag and crouched beside him.
The man looked to be in his late thirties, maybe forty. Dark hair. Expensive shoes. No tie. His coat was ripped at the shoulder, and a thin line of blood ran from a cut near his temple.
“Can you hear me?”
His eyes opened.
Gray.
Focused, but only barely.
“I can hear you.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Chicago.”
“That’s a good start.”
Despite everything, he almost smiled.
Nia touched his sleeve, careful not to move him unnecessarily.
“Did the car hit you?”
“Side mirror caught me. I think I hit the pavement harder than the car hit me.”
“Any neck pain?”
“No.”
“Back?”
“No.”
“Can you move your fingers?”
He did.
“Toes?”
He moved his shoes.
“Okay. Don’t stand yet.”
“I’m going to make you late.”
“That’s not currently in my top five concerns.”
He laughed once, then winced.
Nia pulled out her phone.
Three percent battery.
She called 911.
The dispatcher said an ambulance had been delayed by a multi-vehicle collision several blocks north but someone was coming.
The man tried sitting up.
Nia put a hand against his shoulder.
“Easy.”
“I have to be somewhere.”
“So do I.”
“You should go.”
Nia stared at him.
“Would you tell your sister that?”
He blinked.
“What?”
“If your sister was lying on a freezing sidewalk with blood on her face, would you tell a stranger to leave because they had a meeting?”
The man looked at her differently then.
“No.”
“Then stop trying to make me feel better about abandoning you.”
A gust cut through the street.
He started shivering.
Nia looked toward the Lakeshore Grand.
The hotel was one block away.
Warm.
Safe.
And full of rules Vanessa Mercer treated like commandments.
“Can you walk if I help you?”
“I think so.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Great. At least you’re honest.”
She slipped his arm over her shoulders.
He was heavier than he looked.
They made it slowly down the block.
By the time Nia got him through the staff entrance, it was 8:09.
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Her coworker Evelyn Shaw nearly dropped a stack of folded towels.
“Nia, what happened?”
