As the funeral came to an end, I said a last goodbye to my parents. Then I slowly turned and walked away.

My eyes were full of tears as I walked back towards the car park. It made it hard to see where I was going, so I stumbled and nearly tripped on the edge of the path. Luckily a pair of strong hands reached out and grabbed me around the waist before I could fall.

When I turned to look behind me, I saw that it was Jay that was holding me. Detective Jay Collins, and his partner, Detective Maria Martinez, were members of the NYPD Organized Crime Control Bureau. When I saw Jay's face looking down at me, I buried my face into his chest and started sobbing loudly.

I was still in shock from when they had told me that my parents had been killed by the Mafia. My dad had always seemed so quiet and polite, I couldn't believe it when I found out he had secretly been working for the Mafia. He had not wanted to do it at first, but they had threatened to come after his family if he didn't. My dad would do anything to protect me, so he had agreed to their terms.

My dad had been working for one of the large banks in England, when he had been offered a promotion to come to work in the American office of that bank. So that meant we all had to come to live in New York. I had been so excited when we first moved to America.

Jay had filled me in on the details that my dad had told him. It turned out that shortly after we arrived, my dad had been contacted by some members of the Mafia who needed his help. They had convinced him to help them set up secret bank accounts as part of a money laundering scheme.

It had then continued for about two years, before my dad grew brave enough to try and escape what was happening. A new supervisor had started working in the bank, and my dad was scared he was going to get caught. That was when he had reached out to the police, and he had first met detective Collins, and the OCCB.

Jay had told him that they would place our family into witness protection, but first they needed evidence. The banking scheme that my dad had set up was far too complicated for the police to understand, so they were worried that they would not be able to link it back to the Mafia bosses. They needed him to give them the evidence first that linked the money laundering back to the Mafia.

Unfortunately, one of the other people working at the bank was also working for the Mafia. When he noticed that my dad was copying loads of confidential files, he had reported back to the Mafia what was happening. They realised that my dad must be working with the police, so they quickly went round to our house and kidnapped both my parents. They would have taken me too, but luckily I had already left for school that morning.

They took my parents away to find out how much they had told the police already. My dad was not a brave man, so when they threatened him, he told them everything. When they realised they had caught him before he had a chance to hand anything over to the police, they had ordered him to be executed.

My parents' car had been driven to the junkyard with them still inside. Then they had paid off the owner, and dumped the car into the crusher machine. The creaking and crashing of the machine had drowned out the sound of my parents' screams as they had been crushed to death.

Part of my heart had died when Jay had told me that. My dad had been such a kind and gentle man. The thought of them both suffering such a horrible death made me feel sick.

After my parent's bodies had been discovered, Jay and Maria had been spending time with me to make sure I was okay. I didn't have any family in America, my only relatives were my grandparents back in the UK. So Jay wanted to make sure I was safe until I was able to look after myself properly.

I had been taken to a hotel that night, with an officer on the door to protect me in case the Mafia came looking for me. But after a week, they decided that there was no one looking to hurt me and it was safe to go home. It had just been my father they wanted, as he was the only one who knew what had been happening.

I couldn't go back to my house though. Just being back there brought back terrible memories of what had happened there. The kitchen had been cleaned up, but when I went in there my mind was filled with the images of the blood stained glass. It was so bad that I ran out the house crying with Jay running after me. Luckily, Mr and Mrs Jones had heard the sound of my crying, and had come out to check if I was okay.

I knew that I couldn't stay in my house, but I had nowhere else to go. The weight of despair pushed down on me, and made me collapse to the floor sobbing. Mrs Jones came over and crouched down beside me.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" asked Mrs Jones.

"No," I sobbed.

"We were trying to see if she was ready to go back home," said Jay, as he stood over us.

"If you want, you can come stay with us for a while," said Mrs Jones. "You can stay in Cassie's room, while she's not here."

Cassie was Mrs Jones' daughter. She had been in the last year of high school when we had moved here, so I kind of knew her. She had got into Harvard to study medicine. Mrs Jones had told me before that she and her husband were very proud of her, but at the same time they both missed her terribly, and their house felt too quiet with her gone.

I felt a huge relief at the thought of staying with them. I managed to stop crying, and wiped the tears away from my eyes.

"Thank you," I said, with a little sniffle. "I would like that."

"We would love to have you here too," said Mrs Jones, then gave a disapproving look towards Jay. "After that terrible business with your parents, it wouldn't be right to leave you alone."

"Err, well we weren't going to leave her alone, Ma'am," said Jay. "Me and my partner were going to keep watching out for her."

"Well you can keep watching over her while she is at my house," said Mrs Jones.

With that, she stood up and helped me to my feet. Then she took a tissue from her pocket and gave it to me to blow my nose.

"Let's come inside and get you a nice drink of iced tea," said Mrs Jones. "Then we can come back later and pack up some of your clothes and things."

"Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you," I said. "Though could you make the tea hot?"

Mrs Jones gave a kindly smile. "Of course," she said.

As we walked across the road towards the Jones' house, it was the first time in a week that I didn't feel completely lost and alone. And that marked the start of my journey up from the bottom of a pit of despair.