Michael Harris woke up at exactly 6:00 a.m., as he did every morning, in a glass-walled penthouse overlooking downtown Chicago. The air smelled of fresh cleaning solution and old silence. Floor-to-ceiling windows let in a flawless morning—the city gleaming as if showing off.
He didn’t look.
He never did.
The espresso machine hummed—Italian, absurdly expensive. Michael pressed a button and walked away before the coffee finished. He opened his closet: dark suits, crisp shirts, ties aligned with surgical precision. He grabbed one at random. It didn’t matter. Looking perfect had long been a way to hide the hollow space underneath.
In his private office, the walls were bare. No photos. No art. Just white emptiness.
Except for one locked drawer.
He opened it the way someone opens an old wound.
Inside, protected by glass, lay half of a faded red ribbon—frayed, thin, barely holding together.
His most useless possession.
His only truth.
He brushed it with his fingertips, as if the fabric might still be warm.
“Where are you, Valerie?” he whispered, not realizing he’d spoken aloud.
His phone buzzed.
Assistant: “9 a.m. meeting confirmed. Twelve-million-dollar deal finalized.”
Michael typed back: “Good.”
Twelve million meant nothing.
Didn’t move his chest. His face. His soul.
But that ribbon did.
Because it was the last piece of the boy he used to be.
Twenty-two years earlier…
Michael wasn’t “Mr. Harris” or “the developer.” He was a skinny, blond ten-year-old with scraped knees and eyes that had already learned how to break.
His mother died in a rented room with a cough no one could cure and the smell of cheap medicine that never left his memory.
Then came the system.
Shelters. Waiting lists. “We’ll see.” “No space.”
After two weeks on the street—sleeping where he could, eating when luck allowed—hunger turned dizzy. The world tilted.
He followed laughter one day. And the smell of food.
That’s how he ended up outside Lincoln Elementary, on the South Side of Chicago, sitting by the fence during recess.
He didn’t beg.
He just watched.
Like watching might fill him.
A teacher noticed him and frowned.
“You can’t stay here. You’re scaring the kids.”
Michael tried to stand. His legs didn’t listen.