Or maybe it wasn’t the temperature. Maybe it was the atmosphere.
Everything there felt designed to intimidate: polished beige marble floors that reflected like mirrors, towering granite columns, the faint scent of expensive wood and gourmet coffee, and a sepulchral silence that forced visitors to whisper.
In that temple of money, poverty did not belong. It was treated like a trespasser.
Adrian Cruz felt it the instant his worn sneakers—soles stained gray by the dust of Eastwood’s backstreets—touched the entrance carpet. He was only twelve, but that morning he carried himself like someone four times his age.
He wore his best shirt, a slightly oversized button-down his grandmother had ironed carefully at dawn, though the collar showed years of wear.
No one met his eyes as he walked in. Executives in tailored suits brushed past him, focused on their phones and watches. Women with handbags worth more than his family earned in a year instinctively pulled them closer, as if desperation could spread by touch.
Clutched against Adrian’s chest was a wrinkled manila envelope, damp from his nervous hands. Inside was everything: his grandfather’s past and his grandmother’s future.