After four years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, I finally came home. But my key didn’t work. The woman who opened the door was a frail, terrified stranger. It turned out my fiancée had sold my house to her scumbag son, who then used it to dump his own mother after stealing her fortune. We were two abandoned souls, and we became a family. Then, on her deathbed, she gave me one final, mysterious mission…

Four years. That’s how long they gave me for doing the right thing. I saw a couple of rich pricks dragging a girl into an alley, and I intervened. They knew people, I didn’t. They walked, and I got sent away for assault. For four years, I held onto one thing: the thought of coming home to my house and my fiancée, Marina.

The day I got out, the first thing I did was take a bus to the edge of town, to the small house I’d inherited from my parents. I walked up the overgrown path, my heart pounding with a mix of hope and fear. I put my old key in the lock. It didn’t turn.

Confused, I knocked. The door creaked open, and the face that peered out wasn’t Marina’s. It was a frail old woman, her face a roadmap of wrinkles, her pale gray eyes wide with fear. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.