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.
“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.
