***

During those years, I lived off the small amount of money my parents had left me and focused on finishing high school. Earning my diploma was essential for my next step: joining the police force. At twenty-one, after extensive training and a probation period, I was finally accepted as a police officer.

I gained access to the case files surrounding my parents' death and began my own investigation. It took me years to get to this point. Late nights were spent poring over old reports, witness statements, and forensic evidence. I reached out to anyone who might have seen something that night, hoping to find a lead that had been overlooked.

I tracked him down to a small, rundown apartment on the outskirts of town. My heart pounded as I walked up to the crooked gate hanging off its hinges. As I knocked on the door, I braced myself for the confrontation that had consumed my thoughts for years. But when the door finally creaked open, I was met not by the man who had destroyed my life but by an elderly woman who informed me that he had died of an overdose just weeks earlier.

My chest felt heavy with sorrow, as if I had lost my parents all over again. In the end, there was nothing I could do for them, not now and not then.

I went to confirm his burial at a cemetery in a town not far from where the accident had taken place. He escaped justice like the coward he was, and from beyond the grave, he continued taking from me.

He doesn't deserve to be remembered, so I won't even mention his name. He's merely a pile of bones in the ground, nothing more.