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…

She told me about a small, rickety shed on the edge of her old property. Hidden under a floorboard was a small wooden box. “He sold the house,” she said, a single tear tracing a path through her wrinkles, “but he was too lazy and stupid to look in the shed. Please, bring it to me.”

The next day, I took a bus back to the city. Her old neighborhood was a world away from my life, full of sprawling mansions and manicured lawns. I found the shed, exactly where she said it would be. Just as I pulled the heavy, locked box from its hiding place, a man’s voice startled me.

“Can I help you?”

He was middle-aged, with kind eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses. He held a phone in his hand, his thumb hovering over the call button. He was the new owner, Dr. Gregory Howell.

“I know how this looks,” I said, raising my hands. “But I’m not stealing. The former owner, Agnes, sent me.”