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…

“Hello?” a guy’s voice called from inside. I looked past the old woman and saw him—tall, thin, with the cold, hard eyes of someone who’d seen too much. The prison tattoos on his fingers told me everything I needed to know. I froze, my hand instinctively going to the small pocketknife I carried. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice flat.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, stepping onto the porch. He was young, maybe 25, with a tense energy that coiled around him like a snake. “This is my house now.”

My blood ran cold. “What are you talking about? My son bought me this house,” the old woman said, her voice trembling.

And just like that, the pieces of a story I never wanted to be a part of started falling into place.

The old woman’s name was Agnes. The guy was me, Anton. This is our story.