The house was the only thing I got after my grandmother died. It was old, cracked, and forgotten, while my parents and sister walked away with money and property. My father even mocked it, saying it was all I “deserved.”

I still went there anyway, remembering how my grandmother and I once sat on its porch. She used to say the house remembered things people forgot. I thought it was just a sweet idea back then, until months later when a phone call changed everything.

At 10 p.m. on a rainy night, my contractor called and said they had found something inside the wall. By the time I arrived, police cars filled the driveway—and a hidden steel box with my initials was being pulled from inside the house.