She sat in a metal wheelchair that looked like it had seen some years.

The handles of the wheelchair were wrapped in tape, and the cushion was somewhat sunken. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Margaret held a freshly filled cup of hot coffee, trying to turn the wheels and get out of the corner.

But in front of her, there was a threshold.

It was a wooden strip connecting the lounge area and the main hall, only about an inch or so high.

For an able-bodied person, it was nothing—a simple step over.

But for Margaret in her wheelchair, it was an insurmountable mountain.

She pushed hard on the handrims. The front wheels hit the threshold and bounced back. Some coffee spilled, scalding the back of her hand.

She frowned but didn’t cry out. She just gritted her teeth, adjusted her angle, and prepared for a second attempt.

Frank had clearly seen it too. He strode over, wanting to help give her a push.

"Don’t touch me!"

Margaret yelled stubbornly, her voice sharp.

"I can do it myself! I’m not so useless that I can’t even get over a threshold!"

Frank’s hand froze in mid-air. He sighed helplessly and stepped aside.

The scene was like a red-hot needle stabbing straight into Leo’s eyes.

He felt a sharp pain.

He remembered that night.

The night filled with chaos and screams.

The scene of conflict, deliberately manufactured to push Carter Wright into a corner.

He had been standing behind his desk, watching the police charge into the crowd.

He watched as Margaret, trying to protect the campaign headquarters, was violently shoved to the ground by a riot police shield.

The doctors said it was a comminuted hip fracture.

For a seventy-year-old woman, that meant she might never be able to stand again.

That was the turning point in his victorious campaign.

That was the beginning of Carter Wright’s moral bankruptcy.

That was his red carpet to the mayor’s seat.

But this red carpet was paved with her legs.

The words of that old bastard Moretti echoed in his ears.

"You’re a street racer, Leo. All you do is slam the pedal to the floor, drive as fast as you can, and listen to the wind and the cheers."

’Yes, he drove fast.’

’He crossed the finish line. He won the championship.’

’But he’d hit someone in the process.’

Leo felt a lump in his throat.

He pushed through the crowd gathered around him and strode to the corner.

He knelt down,

dropping to one knee beside the dilapidated wheelchair.

This way, his gaze was a little lower than Margaret’s.

"I’m sorry."

Leo’s voice choked with emotion, a weakness he had never shown during the campaign.

"I’m sorry, Margaret."

"I failed to protect you."

Margaret stopped her struggle with the threshold.

She lowered her head and looked at the young mayor.

She looked at this young man, who was always so full of vigor on television, now kneeling at her feet like a child who had done something wrong.

She reached out her hand.

It was withered and covered in age spots.

She touched Leo’s face.

Her palm was coarse, but warm.

"Silly child."

Margaret smiled, the wrinkles on her face smoothing out.

"What does this have to do with you? Were you the one who pushed me?"

"It was that bad police chief, that bad mayor. They were the ones who gave the order."

"But... if I hadn’t insisted on doing that live stream, if it wasn’t for me..." Leo tried to explain, to confess.

"Hush now."

Margaret interrupted him softly.

She patted her own legs.

"This isn’t a scar, Leo."

The old woman lifted her head, her eyes showing a pride harder than steel.

"This is my medal."

"Just like the burn on Frank’s arm, just like the dust in George’s lungs."

"This is the price we paid to protect this home of ours."

"As long as you could win, as long as you could drive those Vampires out of City Hall, as long as you could make sure the children in this community have books to read and food to eat."

"What do my legs matter?"

"I’ve been standing long enough in my life. It’s nice to sit down and rest for a while."

Leo grasped her hand and buried his face in her palm.

He felt his eyes well up.

He had prepared a bellyful of political rhetoric, a whole grand theory on urban revitalization.

But in that moment, in the face of an old woman’s forgiveness, all of it seemed so frivolous.

"However, Mr. Mayor."

Margaret pulled her hand back and pointed at the threshold under her wheelchair that had stopped her.

Her tone shifted to that of someone ordering around a clumsy grandson.

"If you really feel guilty, if you really want to do something to help me."

"Could you get someone to fix this damn threshold?"

"Every time I have to get over it, I feel like I’m crossing the Alps."

Leo froze for a moment.

He looked down at the threshold.

It was just an ordinary oak strip, warped at one corner from age and neglect, rising only an inch or two.

He thought of the grand blueprints he had planned in City Hall.

The Inland Port expansion, hundreds of millions of US Dollars.

Phase two of the revitalization plan, twenty million US Dollars.

The numbers were huge, dazzling.

But they were a world away from this threshold.

Moretti could block his budget, he could scrutinize his twenty million, he could stop him from rolling out his grand plans city-wide.

But Moretti couldn’t block this.

"Leo."

Roosevelt’s voice echoed in his mind.

"You see."

"Politics isn’t just about budget proposals worth tens of millions of dollars, nor is it just about battling the speaker in his office, and it’s certainly not just about the cheers on election night."

"Sometimes, politics is this threshold."