My blood ran cold when I stared at him, every part of me hardening. The innocent girl I pretended to be vanished, replaced by someone with an anger problem, someone who wanted answers and would do anything to get them.
Father Charlie was a good man. A nice man, a rarity in these parts. There were more mobsters, more gangsters, around here than good people. He had been alone in his righteousness, and that was why this community didn’t deserve him.
He’d told me once that was exactly why they needed him here. If he could save a single soul, then he’d consider his life and his work well-spent and well-done.
“No,” I whispered, pushing inside the confessional, dropping my hat in the process. There wasn’t much room, but I managed to fit along with Father Charlie. I pulled his body away from the wall, shaking him a bit, as if he could magically heal from a bullet to the head.
His body was heavier than it looked, and I let out a soft cry when his head fell back and his eyes no longer stared at me. He was gone, and nothing I could do or say would change it. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t fucking deserve to go out like this. I didn’t know who the hell would come after a priest, but—
As I thought that thought, I heard something. A noise. A sound that definitely did not belong in a church, much like a corpse. If some thugs had decided to raid the church for money, they wouldn’t find much. This church didn’t rake in the money like others in different cities might. If they’d killed Father Charlie for a few bucks, I was going to lose it.
No, wait. I’d already lost it.
I pulled myself out of the confessional, letting go of his body. It slumped back over in a different position, his head tucked in the corner of the tiny room, bent at an unnatural angle. His glassy eyes stared off into the distance, and I swore I saw my reflection in them.
Three years ago, he’d saved my life, and I wasn’t here to return the favor. What kind of shitty irony was that?
I glanced down at my hands, at my gloves. It felt like I stared at them for hours, but in reality, only seconds passed. The white fabric had been stained a bright red from Father Charlie’s blood, and I held my breath as I worked to take them off. Once they were off my hands, I let them fall to the floor. They landed in the pool of blood near the side of the confessional.
My damned gloves sat on the floor, further stained with the escaped blood.
Damned. That’s what this place was here for: to save the sinners, to welcome the righteous, to turn away the damned.
That’s what I was. I’d known it all along. Coming here, getting close to Father Charlie, trying to be like my mother… it never would’ve worked. Everything I was today was a lie, and no amount of fighting would prove otherwise.
I could not be saved, much like Father Charlie.
My fingers curled into fists, and I turned toward the altar. On its far side sat a door, where a room was hidden. That room was where the church must keep its collected money, along with the extra wine and bread for communion. As I walked across the church, abandoning Father Charlie’s corpse, I shrugged off my jacket, knowing I’d need full range of motion.
I passed the front stage, where the altar sat, and I grabbed the processional cross as I went, lifting it out of its holder. A tall cross on a metal pole, its weight felt wrong in my hands, like I shouldn’t touch it. Like I wasn’t meant to. I was too sullied, too dirtied.
And yet it did not burn me.
I made not a single sound as I approached the door to the back room, and the closer I got, the louder the noises became. Someone was definitely searching for something, and rage boiled inside of me. How fucking dare they come into this place, take away someone I cared about, and have the balls to stay to ransack it? Whoever it was wouldn’t leave this church alive.
Standing before the door, holding onto the metal pole, it was like the world shifted. Everything changed. The person I was faded away, replaced by someone who was so very angry. Angry at whoever had done this, angry at my father, angry at the world. When the person you thought you could trust betrayed you, fury tended to come all too easily.
Voices came from inside the room. At least two men were in there, searching the place. Two men. I wasn’t scared. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I could take them, no matter who they were or why they were here. Whether they were sent here by their boss or if they’d come to this church of their own accord didn’t matter.
The walls of this church would be painted in blood by the time I was done here.
I pushed into the room, instantly causing the men inside to whirl at me, each pointing their guns at me. Okay, I recounted, so there were three. It still didn’t matter.
One look at them, and I knew who they were. They each wore the same style leather jacket, a handmade patch on their right sleeves. Hair shaved short; one of them had a teardrop tattoo just below their eye. I wondered if that was the man who’d killed Father Charlie.
My father had some run-ins with the Greenback Serpents in the past. I knew the shitty patchwork anywhere. My question was: what the fuck were they doing here, in this church, with a priest’s blood on their hands? Every gang in the area knew this was a safe place.
They saw the cross in my hand, smirks spreading on their faces, and they chuckled. Two of them put their guns away, tucking them into the waistband of their pants, while the other resumed tearing up the room. Clearly, they didn’t think little old me was a threat.
I knew I didn’t look threatening. An eighteen-year-old girl, wearing all white. Pretty. I’d taken after my mother where my hair was concerned: long and blond, a little wavy here and there. My eyes were warm and brown; something I’d gotten from my father, the Santos side. My skin might be pale right now, but if I was in the sun often, I took a tan pretty well.
Just a girl. One look at me and that’s what they thought. Unlike them, I didn’t wear a patch on my sleeve telling the world who I was or who I owed allegiance to.
“Lookie here, boys,” the man closest to me spoke, cocking his head at me as his eyes studied me. The one with the teardrop tattoo on his face. “What do we have here, hmm? Come to confess your sins, girl? I’m no priest, but if you get on your knees, I’ll—”
That was enough.
He’d stepped close enough to me that I could get him with the cross’s pole, and I did. I whipped the pole up, getting the guy right between his legs. Pretty sure his balls made an audible sound as they popped, and he instantly turned red in the face and collapsed on the floor before me, sputtering out curse words at me.