turn, she went back out the way she came, fumbling down the hallway until she found her way out.
At the sidewalk, something made her turn around and look at the building again, and the sale sign caught her attention.
The building, with its enormous kitchen, would make a great soup kitchen.
Daniela studied the building with fresh eyes. There were a lot of homeless downtown—you couldn't ask for a better location. She imagined a fully running kitchen, cooks bustling to serve the hungry.
She imagined baking for people who genuinely appreciated her baking. For people who cared more about the food than the cachet of having her cook for them.
It was a brilliant idea.
Feeling a rush of purpose for the first time in forever, she hurried to the street and hailed a cab. "Sacramento and Laurel," she told the driver as she climbed in. "Hurry."
Chapter Two
Nico Cruz stood in the living room window of his suite and gazed out at all of downtown San Francisco below him. He should have been listening to what his second-in-command, Jason Lethem, was saying about the deal they were closing, but instead he stared at the Christmas lights and decorations cluttering Union Square and the surrounding streets.
Bah humbug.
Of all the holidays, Christmas was his least favorite. It reminded him of everything he'd lost and underscored that, as much as he'd regained—as far up in the world as he'd come—some things were beyond his reach.
Like happiness.
As much as he acquired, as great as he grew his empire, it wasn't enough. He had anything he could possibly want. Fancy cars. Private jet. He lived in the Mandarin Oriental, for chrissakes.
He looked at his reflection in the glass. He was average height, broad in the shoulders, wearing a handmade suit that cost as much as most families made in a month. His expensive watch peeked out from his sleeve, and his hair was the kind of perfect that only a two-hundred dollar cut could buy.
It just wasn't enough. He was still unsatisfied and, to his own eyes, he still looked like the street thug he'd been as a teenager.
If he went to a shrink, he'd be told that he'd been so starved as a child that he overcompensated now. That he'd never be satisfied, because it'd never be enough. That he'd never be able to shake his gangland roots, because he wasn't ready to forgive himself.
The shrink would be right. There was no reason to waste the money to prove it.
"And I hired elves for the holiday season," Jason said loudly.
Frowning, Nico turned around. "Excuse me?"
Jason gave him the flat stare that intimidated other businessmen.
Tugging his sleeves down, he strode to the table where Jason had laid out all the contracts and sat down. "Did you think I wasn't paying attention?"
"It certainly looked that way," his right hand said in his crisp British voice.
When he'd first hired Jason twelve years before, Nico had been impressed with the man's business mind, but he'd hired him for his elegance. It softened his own rough edges to have someone so cultured in his corner.
Because underneath the silk shirts and hand-stitched shoes, he was still the street thug that he'd been as a kid. The edges may have smoothed out a little, but they hadn't been sanded away completely. Given the right circumstance, he could be just as ruthless as he’d been living on the street.
It made real estate the perfect milieu for him.
Jason set the papers aside and steepled his hands in front of him. "Nico, you've been more aloof than even you usually are. You've taken brooding to a whole new level."
"I'm not brooding."
"Aren't you?"
"No," he said, shutting that conversation down before Jason started psychoanalyzing him. Jason enjoyed dissecting Nico's "inner workings," as he called them.
"Is it a woman?" his right hand asked.
Nico couldn't fault Jason's relentlessness. That was one of the reasons he'd hired the man. But his personal life was personal—and nonexistent at the moment, except for the occasional casual date. He was too busy conquering the world. "Just finish what you were saying, Jason."
"Before you started to daydream about sugar plums, or your woman du jour"—Jason gave him an arched look—"I was saying Parsons was ready to close the deal. There's still a bit of negotiation, I think, but we're close."
"Good." He checked his watch. "Anything else?"
"Yes, since I have your attention now." He shuffled some papers until he found what he was looking for. Holding them out, he said, "The dilapidated building South of Market you've wanted forever