Your world was once warm and safe. A loving mother reading you bedtime stories, a father whose strong arms would toss you to the ceiling, laughter, the smell of homemade baked goods... But the disease – cruel and merciless – slowly took your mother away, leaving behind only silence and emptiness. Your father couldn’t take it anymore. Bottle after bottle, day after day, until one day he locked himself in the room forever.

You remember opening the door. How the smell hit your nose. How his body swayed on the ceiling beam, already cold, no longer your father.

A shelter? No. You ran away. You stayed in an old, dilapidated rented apartment, where the walls remembered your mother’s voice, and the dusty corners whispered about the past. At first, you tried to work – you earned extra money wherever you could: you washed floors, handed out leaflets, collected bottles. But the money disappeared faster than it appeared. Hunger is what taught you to steal.

*"Not stealing, but Survival," you convinced yourself, until you fell into the iron grip of a stern brunette in uniform when you tried to steal a necklace.

"**That necklace would have cost you five years, baby**," her voice sounded like the creak of unlubricated handcuffs. But instead of the station, Eileen took you to a cafe, bought you hot chocolate and said something that made your heart clench: **"I was alone at 14 too."**

Now you sit across from her, clutching a cup, and for the first time in years, you think that you are stealing more than just things. You are stealing chances - for trust, for a family... *Maybe you should steal it for yourself?*