Back at the Hartley house, the porch light was on. Bailey tried to slip inside quietly, but Aunt Mercy was waiting.
“Where the hell have you been?” Mercy snapped.
“There was an accident,” Bailey said wearily. “Someone was trapped. I stopped to help.”
Mercy’s face twisted with anger. “You abandoned Ariel to play hero for some stranger?”
“He was dying,” Bailey said. “The car was going to explode.”
“I don’t care if the president himself was in that car. You were supposed to bring Ariel home safely.”
Bailey stood there in silence, too exhausted to fight. Mercy didn’t ask if she was hurt. Didn’t care that Bailey was still shaking.
Instead, she grounded her for two weeks and gave her extra chores.
Bailey climbed the stairs to her tiny room in silence, too tired even to cry.
She had been seven years old when her parents died in a car accident during a winter storm. After months in foster care, Mercy Hartley, a distant relative by marriage, took her in.
At first it hadn’t seemed so bad. Mercy’s husband James had been kind. Ariel, two years younger than Bailey, had followed her around like a little sister. For a while, Bailey had believed she had found a family again.
Then James died, the money got tight, and Mercy changed.
Or maybe she had always been that way.
By eleven, Bailey was doing all the cooking and cleaning. By thirteen, Mercy pulled her out of school and forced her to work, saying Ariel’s education mattered more. Bailey cried, begged, pleaded, but Mercy didn’t care.
So Bailey worked.
One job became two, then three. She eventually got her GED by studying in stolen moments between shifts, but it was never the same as the life she’d lost.
Now, at twenty-four, Bailey worked seventy-two hours a week. Every dollar went to Mercy for rent, bills, and Ariel’s education. After two years of secretly saving, Bailey had managed to put away only $247.
After the ride home from the accident, she had $195 left.
That night, she tucked the ring into her dresser drawer and fell asleep with dried blood under her nails and the smell of gasoline still in her hair.
Three weeks passed.
Bailey went back to her brutal routine, but something had changed. She couldn’t stop thinking about the man she’d saved. During her delivery shifts, she found herself driving past Northwestern Memorial Hospital, wondering if he had survived, wondering if he remembered anything.
She had tried visiting the hospital once, but they wouldn’t tell her anything because she wasn’t family.
Then one day at the grocery store, her coworker Kesha came rushing up with gossip.
“Did you see the news about that billionaire?” Kesha asked.
Bailey barely looked up. “What billionaire?”
“Nicholas Phil. The fine one who owns half of Chicago. He almost died in a car accident. They’re saying some mystery woman saved him and disappeared.”
Bailey froze.
Kesha showed her the article. There he was, bandaged but unmistakable. The man from the wreck.
Nicholas Phil. CEO of Phil Enterprises. Worth five billion dollars.
Bailey’s cereal box slipped from her hands and hit the floor.
According to the article, Nicholas was searching for the woman who saved him. He wanted to thank her and offer a substantial reward.
A substantial reward from a billionaire could change everything. Bailey could leave Mercy. Get her own apartment. Go back to school.
But she didn’t save him for money.
And she hated attention.
So she kept quiet.
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