As his return flight approached, Marco pictured his empty house waiting for him, the cat purring on the couch. He longed for silence, for the comfort of his own bed. What he wouldn’t imagine was the turn events would soon take.
In his absence, his uncle and aunt had been studying, marking, circling words in old deeds, their excitement sharpening with every page. “See here,” his uncle muttered, finger stabbing a clause. “This house always was family property.” His aunt nodded, emboldened by ink and an imagined inheritance.