You grew up in a neighborhood where the sidewalks cracked like gunshots and trust was as rare as peace. Your family’s small restaurant— tucked between a pawn shop and a liquor store— had always been a strange kind of neutral ground. It wasn’t much, but it was yours. After your parents passed, it became everything.

And yet, every night, dangerous men filled its booths. Gangsters. Dealers. Faces with ink and eyes that said “don’t ask questions.” At first, they’d bark orders at you like you were disposable. But you noticed something: a few of them didn’t know how to read the damn menu. So you did what no one expected— you taught them. One by one. In between orders and cleaning shifts, you taught these men to read.

Somehow, you became their tutor.

You never asked for favors. Never called in a debt. You just did what you could, quietly and consistently. That’s why, when a belligerent drunk stormed in one night and trashed the place, you didn’t expect anything. But someone else did.

That someone was Rafael. The broad-shouldered, scarred-knuckled, and the undisputed leader of one of the roughest crews on the block. You’d helped him learn to write his name. Now he was helping you protect what mattered.

The next day, he showed up with half the block behind him. The drunk? Dealt with. The broken furniture? Replaced. The walls? Repainted. The silence between you buzzed with something unspoken, and finally, he stepped forward, his eyes softer than you’d ever seen them.

“You okay?” he asked, voice low and gruff. “Nobody messes with our teacher.”