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“You better ask your sister to borrow some of my money she’s got. Because you’re going to need it to pay my fees.”
CHAPTERTWO
JOJO
Yes.
He’d said yes.
My heart hammered as I hurried down Eighth Avenue. He never lost. My daughter would be okay.
But it wasn’t the fact I’d managed to convince him to take Penelope’s case.
It was Kane.
Time had not dampened the effect he had on me. He had the ability to infuriate me and excite me all at once.
The buzz I hadn’t felt in over twenty years had roared back to life. My cells moved in a frenzy beneath my skin.
You’re too old not to be able to contain your emotions.
But I couldn’t.
I still intensely disliked his smug attitude. That casual coolness. How he was devastatingly handsome. Even more so now than he had been when we were young.
He was my sister’s soon-to-be ex-husband.
Why she’d stayed with him all this time was beyond me. She hadn’t had a good word to say about Kane since they’d gotten married.
But I wasn’t lying when I told him I could make her give up her share of their assets.
Alma was a force to be reckoned with, but I had one way to make her fall in line. If it weren’t for my daughter, I wouldn’t even consider threatening to use it.
Penelope was my world.
So much so that I’d all but gone crawling on my knees to a man I hated for help.
I opened my purse and tucked a hundred-dollar bill in the jacket of a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk. He didn’t stir, and that was fine.
Charity wasn’t about the glory. It was about the results. And the privilege of being able to help. To give.
A car horn blared and slammed on its brakes, narrowly missing me as I crossed the street.
I pointed to the green walk sign. The driver threw his hands up, and I continued walking.
I’d grown up in this city. But I’d been gone longer than I’d ever lived here. This was the first time I’d set foot on these streets in so long. They were familiar yet different. They’d shaped me. Made me bold. Given me a backbone and the courage to fight for what I believed in.
And they’d nearly broken me.
“Mom.”
I jolted as Penelope pushed off the side of a building. “I thought you were at Grandmother’s.”
“That’s the first thing you say to me?” She tugged on my elbow. “Tell me everything. Did he say yes?”
I hesitated. “He did.”
She let out the shriek of a sixteen-year-old who’d just gotten the car of her dreams instead of a twenty-one-year-old law school graduate.
