The heat was thick and punishing, the kind that sticks to your skin and drains your patience. On the main boulevard, traffic snarled like a giant living thing, roaring with horns and engines in a nonstop chorus of city stress.
And there, stranded on the shoulder like a polished black beast run aground, sat Ethan’s spotless German sedan.
Ethan was not a man who waited. His life moved with the exactness of a forty-thousand-dollar Swiss watch. Every minute carried a price tag, every second a market value. But now, with the hood lifted, faint steam rising, and an investor meeting less than an hour away, Ethan was worth no more than the blistering asphalt beneath his Italian shoes.
“Damn it!” he snapped, slamming his hand against the roof. The sound came back flat and hollow.
He loosened his silk tie as sweat gathered on his brow. He had already called premium roadside service, of course, but the app promised a sixty-minute delay. Sixty minutes. In his world, that was absurd. Cars streamed by, faces hidden behind glass, pedestrians hurrying past with quick glances—some curious, some openly satisfied to see a wealthy man humbled. No one stopped. In this city, compassion was rarer than rain.