Zacząłem czuć, że coś jest nie tak w moim własnym domu, kiedy wprowadzili się mój syn i synowa. Szepty za zawsze zamkniętymi drzwiami i obcy ludzie wchodzący i wychodzący w środku nocy nie dawały mi spać. Nie mogąc dłużej czekać, postanowiłem sam się przekonać. Powiedziałem im, że jadę na wycieczkę, ale tak naprawdę po cichu wróciłem. Starszy sąsiad dotknął mojego ramienia i powiedział: „Poczekaj do północy. Zobaczysz wszystko”.

Ellen paused for a second before answering.

“Like drugging you so you appear confused in front of a doctor. Like creating situations where you seem unstable. Like fabricating evidence that you can’t take care of yourself. I’ve seen cases like this, Elellanena, and they are more common than people think.”

I hung up the phone with trembling hands.

Now I understood the magnitude of the danger. I wasn’t just being stolen from. I was being prepared for a fate worse than death—losing my autonomy, my home, my identity.

Being declared incompetent, being locked up in a nursing home while my son and daughter-in-law kept everything I had built. And all under the guise of legality, with documents signed by doctors and lawyers, with a judge who would never know the truth.

Friday arrived, the day Moses had marked as special.

From early on, I noticed a difference in the atmosphere in my house. Audrey was more active than usual. She cleaned the entire house, changed sheets in all the rooms, bought fresh flowers at Trader Joe’s, and put them in vases all over the living room. It was as if she were preparing for something important.

Robert arrived home from work earlier than other days. By six in the evening, he was already home helping Audrey with the final preparations.

At seven, the parade began.

It wasn’t one or two couples like the previous days. They were groups.

The first to arrive were four people, two young couples who seemed to be on vacation. They wore cameras around their necks and were speaking English with accents I couldn’t quite place—maybe from the Midwest, maybe from Europe.

Audrey received them with an impeccable professional smile. She showed them the rooms. She took the payment.

Thirty minutes later, another group arrived. Three middle-aged women with large suitcases. Then an older couple, maybe in their sixties. Then two single men who seemed to be on a business trip, still in shirts and slacks.

I counted mentally.

There were eleven people inside my house. Eleven strangers occupying every available corner.

The living room had become a common area. I watched through the windows as the guests mingled, talked, some preparing food in my kitchen as if it were an Airbnb they had rented legitimately online.

Audrey and Robert acted like hotel hosts, smiling, offering extra towels, recommending tourist spots in Los Angeles and day trips to Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevard.

My house had transformed into a completely functional hostel.

And I, the legal owner, was hidden, watching from the neighbor’s house like a refugee in my own neighborhood.

“I’ve never seen so many,” Moses murmured next to me. “This is different. It’s like a special night.”

He was right. Friday was the busiest day, probably because tourists arrived to spend the weekend. Audrey and Robert took full advantage.

I calculated quickly. If each person paid thirty dollars per night, they were earning over three hundred dollars just that night. In a full weekend, almost a thousand.

And they did this every week.

The hours passed slowly. I watched the guests eat dinner, talk. Some went out to walk around the neighborhood, then returned, laughing under the streetlights.

At ten at night, the lights began to turn off gradually. The guests retired to their rooms. Audrey and Robert cleaned the kitchen and the living room. Then they too went to sleep.

The house fell silent, but Moses had told me to wait until midnight. That at midnight I would discover everything.

So I waited, every nerve in my body tense, my heart beating so loudly I could hear it in my ears.

Moses’ wall clock marked the passing of time with a constant, almost hypnotic tick-tock.

Eleven-thirty. Eleven-forty. Eleven-fifty.

Every minute felt like an eternity.

Moses had fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted after days of vigil with me. But I was completely awake, my eyes fixed on my house, waiting, waiting for that something Moses had seen before, that something that would reveal the whole truth.

And then, when the clock struck twelve midnight, my breath stopped.

The side door of my house, the one that leads to the backyard and that we almost never use, opened slowly.

A figure came out.

It was Audrey.

But she wasn’t alone.

Behind her came out a man I didn’t know, a tall man about fifty years old, dressed in dark clothing. He was carrying a briefcase in his hand, the same type of briefcase Moses had described when he saw Audrey at the coffee shop.

My heart started racing.

What was happening? Why was Audrey meeting this man at midnight? Why were they leaving through the back door like thieves?

They walked toward the back of the yard where the old shed my husband used as a workshop stood, its silhouette dark against the faint glow of the city.

Audrey took out a key, opened the padlock, and both entered the shed.

The light turned on inside.

Through the shed’s small dirty window, I could see shadows moving. They were talking. They were gesturing. Audrey took something out of her purse. Papers, maybe.

The man checked them with a small flashlight. Then he took something out of his briefcase. More papers. A thick folder.

Audrey took them, reviewed them page by page. She nodded her head. They seemed to be reaching some kind of agreement.

The meeting lasted almost twenty minutes.

Finally, the man put everything back in his briefcase. Audrey turned off the shed light. They came out, but instead of returning to the house, they walked toward the back fence.

There’s a small door there that leads to the back alley. Audrey opened it. The man left through there and disappeared into the darkness.

Audrey closed the door, secured the padlock, and returned to the house through the side door.

Everything had lasted less than half an hour, silent, secret, invisible to anyone who wasn’t specifically watching.

I woke Moses up urgently.

“I saw him. I saw everything. Audrey met a man at midnight in the shed.”

Moses got up immediately, still half asleep but alert.

“The man with the briefcase?” he asked.

“Yes, it has to be the same one. They reviewed papers, documents. They are planning something, Moses. Something big.”

My neighbor rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch.

“It’s late—or early, depending on how you look at it. It’s twelve thirty. But now we know that there’s someone else involved. Someone who works in the dark, in secret. This is worse than we thought.”

I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I stayed sitting by the window, watching my house as if it were an enemy building.

At dawn on Saturday, the guests began to leave. Some left early, others stayed to enjoy the full weekend in the city.

Audrey prepared breakfast for those who remained, acting like the perfect hostess. Coffee, toast, fruit, everything served with smiles and kindness. No one would have imagined that hours earlier she had been in a clandestine night meeting with a stranger.

Robert left the house around nine in the morning. I saw him get into his car and drive away.

Audrey stayed alone with the remaining guests.

This was my opportunity.

I needed to get into that shed. I needed to see if they had left anything, any clue about what they were planning.

I told Moses my plan.

He tried to dissuade me.

“It’s too risky, Elellanena. If Audrey sees you—”

But I was determined.

“I have the key to the back fence. I can enter through the alley without anyone seeing me. Audrey is busy with the guests in the front of the house. She won’t see me.”

Moses finally agreed, but insisted on accompanying me to the alley to keep watch.

We left his house through the back door. We walked through the silent alley. It was Saturday morning and the neighborhood was quiet. Most people were still sleeping or eating breakfast in their homes. A dog barked in the distance. A garbage truck rumbled a few blocks away.

We reached the back door of my property. I took out my key with trembling hands. The padlock gave a soft click.

I entered my own backyard like an intruder, my heart pounding against my ribs.

The shed was about twenty yards from the door. I walked crouched low, hiding behind the bushes I myself had planted years ago—rosebushes my husband used to trim on Sunday mornings.

Every step seemed too loud, every breath too strong.

Finally, I reached the shed. The door had a simple padlock, one I knew well. It was the same padlock my husband had used for years.

I searched for the right key. My fingers clumsily tried three different keys before finding the correct one.

The padlock opened.

I entered the shed and closed the door behind me.

Sunlight filtered through the small, dirty window, creating dusty rays in the air. The place smelled of old wood and moisture.

Rusty tools hung from the walls, boxes were stacked in the corners. Everything looked normal, intact.

But then I saw something out of place on my husband’s old workbench.

There was a metal box. It wasn’t ours. I had never seen it before. It was gray, modern, with a digital lock.

I approached slowly. The box was closed, but not locked. Just a simple latch that opened by pressing two side buttons.

I tried it.

Click.

The box opened.

What I saw inside took my breath away.

There were stacks of cash, American dollars in denominations of twenty, fifty, and one hundred.

I counted quickly with my eyes.

There had to be at least ten thousand dollars there, maybe more.

All the money they had earned with their illegal business for months.

But that wasn’t the worst part.