I Crashed His Empire With a Marriage Certificate

I grew up fatherless, clawing my way through the Chicago underbelly with my mom.

She always said he loved us. That he just had to go far, far away.

Until she got terminally ill.

I dropped out of design school and rushed back, ready to drain our life savings to treat her.

But she put a pair of scissors to her own throat. She told me not to touch the cash. It was the only thing she had to leave me.

I pretended to agree. But the second I turned around, I took our fifty grand and ran to Mr. Sal, the neighborhood's back-alley doctor. I begged him to save her.