I stepped out of the apartment building and took a deep breath of the damp, smoggy morning air. The city was loud, dirty, and beautifully alive. Yellow cabs blared their horns. A guy on the corner was selling bootleg DVDs out of a duffel bag. My sneakers splashed in a shallow puddle reflecting the neon sign of a corner pharmacy. I paused, looking at that flickering green pharmacy cross. A heavy, familiar knot tightened in my chest. In my past life, that pharmacy was where I spent my last dime trying to keep my mother alive. My parents were good people. Too good. My dad worked sixty hours a week at a logistics warehouse, and my mom was a kindergarten teacher. They played by the rules. They paid their taxes. And when my mom got sick, the corporate machine ground them into dust. A conglomerate called the Sterling Group bought out my dad’s warehouse, fired everyone with a pension, and canceled their health insurance overnight. My parents lost the house to pay for treatments. My mom d

Richard stared at me. The rain kept falling, pattering against his expensive umbrella, but the silence in the alley was deafening. For a second, I actually saw panic in his eyes. But guys like Richard Sterling were raised to believe that money was a magic wand. If there was a problem, you just threw a stack of cash at it until it went away. His panic melted back into that smug, punchable arrogance. He let out a dry, forced laugh and shook his head. "I get it," Richard chuckled, reaching inside his tailored jacket. "You’re a hustler. You did a little googling, found a rumor about my zoning permits, and now you want a piece of the pie."He pulled out a sleek leather checkbook and a gold-plated fountain pen. "Ten thousand dollars," Richard said, scribbling on the paper. "That’s more money than you’ve ever seen in your miserable life, kid. Take it, leave this neighborhood, and keep your mouth shut about my real estate deals. We never had this conversation."He ripped the check out and

I unlocked the heavy glass doors to the fourth floor of Sterling Plaza, pushed them open, and immediately coughed up a cloud of dust. The space was massive, easily ten thousand square feet of prime downtown commercial real estate. It also looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the Clinton administration. The carpet was a tragic shade of faded mustard, and dead fluorescent bulbs flickered overhead like a bad horror movie. Below our feet, a constant, low-frequency hum vibrated through the floorboards. "Ah," I said, flipping a light switch that did absolutely nothing. "Home sweet home."Gideon stepped into the room, holding the lapels of his new thrift-store suit tight against his chest. He looked around with deep, profound disgust. "Boss," Gideon said, wiping a thick layer of grime off a nearby reception desk with a single gloved finger. "This isn't an office. This is a tomb. And I know tombs. I’ve slept in nicer ones in Prague.""It’s one dollar a month, Gideon," I reminded him,

The Grand Atrium of the Astoria Hotel looked exactly how I remembered it from my past life. It was a cavernous, gilded room designed specifically to make poor people feel unwelcome. Massive crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceilings, casting a warm, expensive glow over ice sculptures and towers of imported champagne. The room was packed with the city’s elite. Men in five-thousand-dollar tuxedos and women in silk gowns milled about, discussing summer homes and offshore tax havens. And then, there was us. I was wearing a gray suit I had bought off the rack at a discount department store two hours ago. It fit decently enough, but next to the bespoke Italian wool surrounding me, I looked like I was going to a middle school prom. Gideon was still wearing his thrift-store special. It smelled faintly of mothballs. "Boss," Gideon muttered out of the corner of his mouth, his silver eyes darting around the room. "There’s a lot of open necks in here. It’s very distracting.""Eyes f