I made a wish, but Santa can’t save my mom, she whispered, not knowing a millionaire CEO heard her.
Snow drifted down through the strings of white lights, slow and unhurried, as if it had nowhere else to be. It was 4:00 on the Saturday before Christmas, and the holiday market, a block from Rockefeller Plaza, was packed shoulder to shoulder.
Wooden stalls sold wool hats and candied almonds. A brass band played somewhere behind the crowd. Children rode on their father’s shoulders, catching flakes on their tongues.
Miles Ror moved through all of it with his hands in his coat pockets and his phone switched off. He was 57, and he could count on one hand the times he had silenced that phone on purpose.
This was the one rule he kept that had nothing to do with business. Every December, his partner, Frankie Pel, had made him give up a single hour. No calls, no email, no trucks.
“The buildings will still be standing, Miles,” Frankie used to say. Frankie had been gone a year now. Miles kept the rule anyway. He wasn’t sure if it was loyalty or if he simply didn’t know how to stop.
