Page 49 of The Guardian

“I am glad. I do not wish for Alessia to be a widow. It would destroy her to lose you.”

“You speak as if we shall fail,” I told him.

He looked back over at me. “No one has ever stopped those vampires. Especially after they hired the League.” He then turned to look at Maya. “You were there in Catemaco to find your family,” it was not a question.

“That is how I became a nanny to your…to the twins.”

“And from what they have said, you saved them.”

She lowered her head. “I did the best that I could.”

Reaching over, he tipped her chin up with his forefinger. “You did more than that, dolce ragazza. Sweet girl. “If not for you, they would have perished.”

She stared at him wide eyed. “How did you know that?”

He dropped his hand and said, “I have seen that look before. The one you wear. You are a pure soul but now you believe that you carry sin.”

I was blown away. The man was a force on his own, let alone sensing things like that.

“I had no choice,” she whispered.

“No, you probably didn’t,” he agreed. “I can say I have lived that scenario many times over. Having no choice but to shed blood. While it was just once for you. I do not speak for God. Bene, dearest Maya, you will literally fly into heaven most likely. And most of us cannot say that.”

We all stared at him.

I agreed with this, though I wisely remained silent.

Chapter Sixteen: Angel’s Fear

Maya

I was a bit startled when Mr. Mancini reached over to kindly pat my hand. I felt like he could somehow see right through me. As if he knew my dark secret. One that only Henry knew. How could this be? I held this crime close to myself. Of course, I had. I literally beat those two old women to death with a shovel. Then I covered up the killings by burying them. I was not sorry that I saved the twins from such a horrible end. But I never once believed in my planned life of being a schoolteacher that I would ever kill someone. Let alone two people.

“You avoided detection of the League while living right there in Catemaco. And that is a feat,” Mr. Mancini stated as he interrupted my fearful worries of discovery.

I had no idea about this League while I lived there with the twins and the old women from hell. Although, I knew someone had murdered that detective and my brother Rafael. “The house the Castillo women had was in the slums and very plain. They also were part of it somehow.”

“Part of the group who organizes the blood moon?” he asked.

I nodded. “So that is probably why I never gained attention. I found out that they were like messengers for that group. I tried for a long time to find out what the messages were, but I never did. No one in that area would ever look at those two as part of anything like that. Si, they were sinister and vicious, but they seemed too flighty and well…far too stupid to be with a dark, powerful group. They were loud and they cackled like real brujas, they were lazy and selfish…” My hands clenched into fists as I went on with the list of their black hearted traits, “They were cruel and mocking. They punished the twins for made up infractions as if they needed to punish them for something or anything. I do not know. I tried hard to deflect their rage and make them happy too so they would be distracted. The many times they taunted and put those sweet kids down made me just want to…”

“…to kill them?” Mr. Mancini asked as he stared into my eyes.

I looked up at him. Again, I felt like he knew everything. As if you could not hide any secrets. I raised my gaze to Michael and Rain, not knowing what they would think of me after this. “I am sorry to have that on my soul. But I am not sorry I stopped them. They were going to give the twins a treat for the first time in ever, I think? A cake. Only they’d laced it with poison. When I discovered them in the basement in the middle of the night, they were laughing about it while standing at two freshly dug graves. Proud to have the twin’s resting place all set. Then they caught me listening and made me dig my own grave as one of them held a large gun on me. I was never so afraid in my life. Until they taunted me about how much the kids would suffer before they died…” I looked away from everyone at the table staring at me and added, “I saw red and I lost my mind, I think? I used that shovel to end those evil monsters.”

A noise came from the kitchen doorway.

I gasped in fear about what I just said and who might have heard it as I looked over.

Gabriela stood in the entry now. She stared at me as her face went ashen.

“My sweet Gabriela,” Mr. Mancini greeted her as he looked concerned. He stood from his chair and went over to take her hand.

The woman was very pregnant and she looked very upset.

Mancini led her over to the table.

Nudging him aside, she leaned down to embrace me as she cried. “I knew you took care of them and made sure they were safe. But I never guessed…” She wept openly. “That you did that for them!”