"Poor Waitress Threw Herself In Front Of Mafia Boss's Car — He Got Out: 'Why Did You Save Me?'"

The rain had soaked through Mira's secondhand sneakers two hours ago, turning her socks into cold, sodden weights that squelched with every step. She barely noticed anymore. The discomfort had become just another layer in the thick blanket of exhaustion that wrapped around her like a shroud, muffling the world into a distant, gray blur.
Her shift at the diner had ended at eleven, but she'd stayed an extra hour to help close because Sandra had called in sick again, and Mr. Kowalski couldn't afford to hire anyone else. The tips had been decent, at least. Forty-three dollars and sixty-two cents, which she'd counted twice in the staff bathroom before tucking the bills into the zippered pocket of her purse. Forty-three dollars closer to the impossible number that haunted her dreams and waking hours alike.
The hospital billing department had stopped being polite about three weeks ago. Now the calls came daily, sometimes twice daily, the voices on the other end shifting from sympathetic to coldly professional to barely concealed hostility. Twenty-two thousand, four hundred and eighteen dollars. That's what it cost for her father to die in a hospital bed instead of at home, for the doctors to try everything they could to save him from the cancer that had eaten through his body like acid.
Twenty-two thousand, four hundred and eighteen dollars that Mira didn't have and would never have, not even if she worked every hour of every day for the next five years.
The street was mostly empty at this hour, the rain having driven people indoors. Mira walked with her head down, her dark hair plastered to her skull, her thin jacket doing absolutely nothing to keep out the cold. She should catch the bus, she knew, but the fare was three dollars, and three dollars was three dollars. She could walk the forty-five minutes to her studio apartment in Washington Heights. She'd done it before.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn't need to check it to know what it was. Another automated reminder about the payment that was now sixty days overdue. Another threat of collections, of legal action, of consequences that felt both terrifying and meaningless at the same time.
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What did legal action even mean when you had nothing to take? They could sue her, could garnish wages she barely earned, could destroy the credit she'd never had in the first place. None of it mattered. Her father was still dead. The bills were still unpaid. And Mira was still drowning, one breath away from going under for the last time.
She'd stopped at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, waiting for the light to change even though no cars were coming. Habit, she supposed, or maybe just the last remnant of a self-preservation instinct that hadn't quite died yet. The rain fell harder, drumming against the pavement with a sound like static, like the white noise that filled her head most days now.
That's when she saw the headlights.
They appeared suddenly, cutting through the rain like knives, moving fast, too fast for the wet streets. A black car, sleek and expensive, the kind that cost more than most people made in a year. It was beautiful in an abstract way, all clean lines and predatory grace, and it was heading straight toward a figure Mira hadn't noticed before.
A man stood in the middle of the street, maybe twenty feet from where she waited. He was looking down at his phone, oblivious to the approaching vehicle, his attention completely absorbed by whatever was on the screen. He wore a dark suit that even from this distance looked expensive, and he stood with the casual confidence of someone who'd never had to worry about three-dollar bus fares or collection agencies.
The car's brakes squealed, a high-pitched shriek that cut through the rain's static. But Mira could see, even in that split second, that it wouldn't be enough. The wet pavement, the speed, the distance—the physics were simple and merciless. The car would hit him. He would die or be seriously injured. And he had no idea because he was staring at his goddamn phone like an idiot.
Mira's body moved before her conscious mind caught up.