“Please don’t abandon me. You’re all I have left.”
Daniel looked at his father for a moment.
Then he turned to the men.
“You can begin.”
In the darkness, Ellen watched from her window as the men carried someone out of the house on a special transport stretcher covered with a sheet.
Robert’s face was completely hidden.
Daniel watched silently.
The following morning, Ellen noticed a black ribbon attached to the window of the house.
Robert’s photograph stood beside the door.
Flowers had been placed next to it.
Ellen covered her mouth in horror.
“Oh my God… Robert is dead!”
Within hours, the news spread throughout the neighborhood.
People gathered outside the building, crying and remembering what a kind, hardworking man Robert had once been.
Everyone was convinced that his son’s cruelty had driven him to his death.
When Ellen approached Daniel and asked what had happened, the boy only said,
“The Robert you all knew these past few years will never come back.”
Ellen decided to contact the police.
She told them everything: the insults, the secret phone conversation, the mysterious vehicle in the middle of the night, and the black ribbon that had appeared the next morning.
When the police arrived at Daniel’s home, the boyurm calmly handed them an address.
“My father is there.”
It was the address of a specialized rehabilitation center.
And that was where the truth was finally revealed.
Robert was alive.
For the past eight months, Daniel had secretly worked at a car wash after school and at a restaurant on weekends.
He had sold his car, spent all the savings he had put aside for university, and arranged treatment and professional care for his father with the help of a social worker.
Robert had agreed to go to the center after his son explained that the specialists there could help him.
