A Glimpse of Justice

The sterile white of the hospital room did little to soothe the tremor that ran through Reka’s hands. She traced the faint scar on her wrist, a pale ghost against her skin, a testament to a time she tried to erase from her memory, from her very existence. Outside the window, the city lights blurred into streaks of indifferent color, a stark contrast to the sharp, agonizing clarity of the news she’d just received. Maria, her eyes brimming with a mixture of relief and apprehension, had delivered it with a hushed urgency, her hand a comforting weight on Reka’s shoulder.

“They’re looking into him, Reka,” Maria had whispered, her voice barely audible above the hum of the hospital’s machinery. “Detective Evans… he’s been asking questions. About you. About Rome.”

The words hung in the air, heavy with unspoken implications. Rome. The name itself was a coiled serpent in her gut, a familiar ache that had become a constant companion. For seventeen years, he had been the sun around which her world revolved, a sun that burned with a cruel, destructive heat. And now, after months of carefully constructed silence, of building a fragile new life brick by painstaking brick, the shadow of his presence was beginning to recede. Or, at least, that’s what she hoped.