The house was nothing out of the ordinary—just a regular suburban home with the hum of a refrigerator in the background and the distant sound of traffic outside. The walls were bare except for a few posters of bands he used to like and a couple of framed pictures that felt like remnants of a life he hadn’t quite figured out. At eighteen, he was still trying to find his footing, still getting lost in moments like this. He sat on the edge of the couch, a half-empty bottle of beer in his hand, eyes fixed on the door to the small room where she was. He could hear her breathing, shaky and uneven. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. His mind kept circling back to the faces of people he knew, the ones who had put him in this position—who had asked him to do this, told him it was just a job. But now that he was here, in this ordinary house, with the weight of what he had done pressing down on him, it didn’t feel like something he could walk away from. He flicked his cigarette into the ashtray, trying to steady his nerves.