“My mother is sick,” she whispered. “She was coughing all night. I stayed awake to take care of her. I still had to come to work today. It’s the end of the month. I need my pay to buy her medicine.”
Richard felt a tight pain in his chest.
“And your father?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed hard.
“He died,” she said. “Robbers shot him when I was fourteen. Since then, it’s just been me and my mother.”
The room went silent again.
“I was the best student in my school,” Lena continued, crying now. “I wanted to become a doctor. But there was no money. No help. So I became a maid. It’s the only way I can keep my mother alive.”
Richard stood up slowly.
He took out his phone.
“Call the driver,” he said firmly. “Tell him to bring the car.”
Lena looked up, shocked. “Sir?”
Richard met her eyes.
“You’re taking me to your mother,” he said. “I want to see her.”
Lena could not speak. She just stared at him, tears falling, not from fear this time—but from hope.
The car moved quietly through the early morning streets. Lena sat in the back seat, her hands folded in her lap. She kept stealing small glances at Richard, afraid to speak.
They left the rich part of the city and entered narrow roads filled with dust and noise. Small shops opened slowly. Children walked barefoot. Richard looked out the window and felt something tighten in his chest. He had built companies, owned buildings, but he had never truly seen places like this.
“Here,” Lena said softly.
The car stopped in front of a small house with cracked walls and a broken door. The roof leaned slightly to one side. Richard stepped out and followed her inside.
The air smelled of sickness.
On a thin mattress on the floor lay Mary, Lena’s mother. Her body shook with every cough. Her eyes were half open, her lips dry and pale.
“Mom,” Lena whispered, kneeling beside her. “I brought help.”
Mary tried to smile but couldn’t.
Richard stood still, shocked. This woman was dying slowly, quietly—while her daughter cleaned floors in his mansion.
He knelt down beside the mattress.
“Call an ambulance,” he said firmly into his phone.
Within minutes, the small room filled with movement and sound. Neighbors gathered. Sirens echoed. Mary was lifted onto a stretcher.
Lena cried as she held her mother’s hand. “Please don’t die,” she whispered again and again.
Richard stayed close.