Hundreds of people watched... but only one little girl had the courage to move.

Marcus Vance’s sleek, bulletproof SUV looked like an alien spaceship as it rolled into the most impoverished district of the city. The streets were lined with crumbling brick buildings, overflowing dumpsters, and broken streetlights. Marcus’s head of security, a hulking man named Thomas, looked nervous.

"Sir, this isn't a safe area. We should call an ambulance to fetch the woman," Thomas advised from the front seat.

"No," Marcus replied firmly. "This boy trusted us. We go in."

Leo led them up four flights of dark, rotting stairs in a dilapidated apartment complex. The air smelled of mildew and despair. When Leo pushed open the unlocked, splintered door to his apartment, Marcus braced himself. The room was practically empty. There was no furniture, save for a small folding chair and a mattress on the floor in the corner.

On that mattress lay a woman. She was dangerously thin, her skin pale and waxy, shivering beneath a thin, moth-eaten blanket. A violent coughing fit shook her frail body as they entered.

"Mom!" Leo cried, running to her side and grasping her hand. "Mom, I brought help. This man has doctors."

The woman weakly turned her head. Her sunken eyes struggled to focus on the tall man standing in her doorway. Marcus stepped closer, his heart breaking at the sight of such profound poverty. But as the dim light from the window caught the woman's face, Marcus stopped dead in his tracks. All the breath left his lungs.