The manager cut her off. There was a special job today, a VIP client, a mansion on the Upper East Side. If she didn’t show up, she was fired. No exceptions.
Cassidy wanted to scream.
She wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but she couldn’t because if she lost her job, she wouldn’t have money for rent, no money for milk for Emma, no money for medicine. She and her daughter would be out on the streets in this brutal winter.
And Derek, her violent ex-husband who was hunting her across the city, would find her more easily than ever.
Cassidy looked at Emma, drifting in and out of sleep from exhaustion. She had no one to watch her child. She made the only decision she could.
Cassidy dressed Emma in extra layers, wrapped her in three blankets, and placed her in the rickety stroller she had bought from a thrift shop for $5.
She stuffed a bottle, diapers, and fever medicine borrowed from a neighbor into her bag. Then she pushed the stroller out of the dark room and stepped into the white storm.
The address in the message led her to the Upper East Side.
Cassidy had never set foot there before. She felt like a stain on a perfect painting. When she stopped in front of the listed address, her heart nearly stopped.
Before her stood a massive mansion, dark as night, with towering iron gates carved with snarling lion heads.
Cassidy stood before the iron gate for a long moment, not daring to step inside. Emma fussed in the stroller, her weak cries swallowed by the wind and snow.
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