She swallowed. A second spoonful followed, then a third. Within moments, the fragile veneer of polite restraint gave way to sheer, primal survival. She ate rapidly, desperately, her tears falling freely now, splashing into the bowl as she tried and failed to slow herself down. She didn’t look at Zo. She couldn’t. The sheer indignity of being watched while she devoured the meal made her heart hammer, yet her starving body refused to let her stop until the spoon scraped the bottom of the empty white bowl.
She set the spoon down, her chest heaving, her head hanging low. She felt filthy, exposed, and utterly ruined.
“Drink the juice,” Zo commanded softly.
She obeyed instantly, draining the glass in long, desperate gulps. When she set the glass down, a small, involuntary shiver ran through her as the nutrients hit her bloodstream, making her dizzy with sudden, unexpected energy.
Zo reached into his pocket, pulled out a monogrammed linen handkerchief, and set it on the table within her reach.
“Wipe your face,” he said.
Tessa took the cloth, its clean scent of cedar and expensive starch overwhelming her senses. She pressed it against her wet cheeks, taking a long, shuddering breath to compose herself.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice rough. “You don’t know what… you didn’t have to do that.”
“I did,” Zo said, his voice flat. “Because for sixty days, I walked past you in this house and convinced myself that paying a fair wage made me a decent man. I let my ego blind me to what was happening right under my roof.”
He walked back to his desk, where his personal smartphone had lit up on the blotter. He picked it up and tapped the screen. The encrypted text file from Carter Vance had just arrived.
Zo’s eyes scanned the illuminated screen, his jaw tightening with every line of text. Carter’s intelligence background meant the dossier was thorough, ruthless, and complete.
Tessa Lynn Cole. Age: 26.
Dependents: Toby Cole (age 10), Leo Cole (age 7).
Current residence: 1422 North Pulaski Road, Unit 3B. Humboldt Park.
Landlord: Arthur Finch / Finch Properties LLC.
Status: Eviction notice served six days ago. Outstanding arrears: $1,850. Scheduled lockout: Tomorrow, 9:00 AM.
Child Protective Services File #884-B: Case worker assigned: Linda Howard. Unannounced inspection scheduled for tomorrow, 11:00 AM. Ground for removal: imminent homelessness, lack of adequate nutrition, utility shut-off pending.
Secondary employment: Midnight sanitation crew at St. Jude Industrial Laundry, 11:30 PM to 4:30 AM (terminated last week due to budget cuts).
Zo’s fingers gripped the phone so hard the metal frame creaked.
Three hours of sleep a night. Two jobs. Raising two young boys alone in one of the roughest zip codes in the city, with a vulture landlord locking her out in twelve hours and a state caseworker arriving two hours after that to tear her family apart.
And through it all, she had carried home scraps of roasted meat and vegetables in an olive tote bag so her brothers wouldn’t hear their own stomachs growling in the dark.
Zo lowered the phone to the desk. The cold rage that had simmered in his gut since the foyer now burned with a white-hot, crystalline clarity. In the corporate world, Zo was known as a butcher of bad actors. He bought out corrupt competitors, liquidated predatory firms, and bankrupted men who traded on the misery of others. He had never considered himself a hero—only a predator who preferred to feed on worse predators.
Now, a target had presented itself right in front of him.
“Your landlord is Arthur Finch,” Zo said. It wasn’t a question.
Tessa flinched, looking up sharply. “How do you know that?”
“I know Finch,” Zo said, his tone devoid of warmth. “He owns seven dilapidated tenements between Humboldt Park and Garfield Park. He neglects the heat in the winter, refuses to fix the plumbing, and files predatory evictions the moment a single mother falls two weeks behind so he can pocket their security deposits and re-rent the units to the next desperate family.”
Tessa’s face went gray. “He… he came to the door yesterday. He said if I don’t have eighteen hundred dollars in cash by nine tomorrow morning, the city marshals will put all our belongings on the sidewalk. All the boys’ winter coats are inside. Their mother’s photo albums. Everything.”
“And Linda Howard?” Zo asked, watching her closely.
Tessa let out a small, wounded sound, burying her face in her hands. “God… you know about that too. Miss Howard told me… she told me if we lose the apartment, she has emergency placement orders already signed. Leo will go to a group home in Peoria. Toby will go to a foster family in Rockford. They’re only seven and ten, Mr. Rossi! Leo still wakes up crying for our mom! He can’t sleep without Toby in the room! If they take them away, they’ll never come back together. The system will swallow them!”
