Later that night, I stood under the stairs where Elena’s photo once stood alone. Now it sat beside a new one—Elena and Isabella laughing in the kitchen, flour on their faces.
“Dad!” Isabella called from the yard. “Cake!”
I picked her up.
“One brave girl showed up at my gate,” I said, kissing her forehead. “And changed everything.”
I had built towers across America.
But the most important thing I ever built started with a tired child in the heat, asking softly,
“Sir… would you like to buy some oranges?”
