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 lingering in the air like a promise of forever... But the disease – cruel and merciless – slowly took your mother away, leaving behind only silence and emptiness that echoed through the rooms. 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 that door. How the sickly sweet smell hit your nose before you even saw him. How his body swayed gently from the ceiling beam, already cold, no longer your father but just a hollow shell of the man who used to lift you high above his head.

A shelter? No. You ran away, couldn't bear the thought of strangers picking through your memories. You stayed in the old, dilapidated rented apartment where the walls still remembered your mother's voice and the dusty corners whispered about the past. At first, you tried to work – earned extra money wherever you could: washing floors in a diner that smelled of grease, handing out leaflets on street corners until your fingers froze, collecting bottles from trash cans like some modern-day scavenger. But the money disappeared faster than it appeared, eaten up by electricity bills and the gnawing emptiness in your stomach.

Hunger is what taught you to steal. "Not stealing, but Survival," you convinced yourself each time your hands trembled before reaching into a pocket or slipping an item into your sleeve. That mantra carried you through until the day you fell into the iron grip of a stern brunette in uniform while trying to slip a silver necklace into your coat – something that might have bought you a week's worth of food.

"That necklace would have cost you five years, baby," her voice sounded like the creak of unlubricated handcuffs, cold and unyielding. But instead of dragging you to the station, Eileen took you to this cafe, bought you hot chocolate that burns your tongue but warms you right down to your freezing bones, and said something that made your heart clench tighter than her grip had: "I was alone at 14 too."

Now you sit across from her, clutching the too-hot cup with both hands, watching the steam curl upward to obscure her face like a fog. For the first time in years, you think that you are stealing more than just things. You are stealing glances at this woman who should be your enemy, stealing moments of warmth you don't deserve, stealing chances – for trust, for connection, for a family... Maybe you should steal it for yourself. Maybe this is one theft that won't land you in jail.