Chapter 34

Packing the last of her clothes into the suitcase, Maria forced the latch closed placing the item near the doorway of her cottage bedroom. Stepping to her dressing table she began to pack their last remaining articles into a small box. All in all, it had taken her less than an hour to pack all of their belongings for the journey to her father in laws house.

Gingerly wrapping her toiletries in paper for the trip, it hit her how sad that was. She and the children had been in Austria for eight years and they could pack their lives in one large box. It was kind of sad when she thought about it. Thinking back to the solemn faces of her children as she had tried to cheer them up as they packed their room minutes ago, she couldn't fight the sinking feeling that she had failed them as a parent. Here she had thought that she had been a good mother, devoting her life to them, giving them a childhood better than what she had. Now she was beginning to doubt herself and her motives for that.

"Bill," she pleaded in her head, "I have failed our children." Even after all of these years she could still feel his spirit wrapping himself around her mind in comfort. Whenever she needed him he was always there, but today he felt different. Instead of the usual warmth she felt when she thought of him, today it was cold and indifferent.

"Maria," Bill's voice came to her, "you haven't failed them. But you will if you can't move on."

"I can't let you go." She whispered out loud to his ghost.

Like an echo from distant waters Bill's snicker filled the room around her, invading her soul.

"Don't make this about me." The voice said bounding against the walls of the tiny room. "You and I both know this has nothing to do with me. If you don't let your past go, then your father is going to succeed in what he didn't finish that night. You're letting him kill you day by day, little by little. You need to let it go."

Walking over to the window, Maria peered out its glass to the surrounding nature of the property. The sun shown high in the clear Austrian sky and the lake mirrored the mountains off in the distance. Taking in the beauty that surrounded her, Maria couldn't reconcile the picture perfect world that shown on the outside to the horrific one that lived within her memories. Gunshots and blood, her mother's pleading cries, followed by the woman's dead eyes staring back at her, these were what lived inside of her. The nightmare played like a broken record over and over again in her head. Seeing the evil finally leave her father's eyes as the bullet entered his skull, spilling blood and brain against the wall.

"I can't." She whispered against the glass of the window. "I can't let it go."

"Then he wins."

"There you are." The Captains booming voice stole Maria out of the trance that she had been in. Jumping back from the window, she grabbed at her heart through her shirt, in an attempt to trap the beating organ in place.

"Georg!" She yelled at him for startling her again. "I hate when you do that!"

Giving her a halfhearted chuckled he stepped into the room, "Do what?" he questioned in innocence.

"You're always sneaking up on me and scaring me." She said swatting at his arm as he came closer to her.

Shaking his head in denial he gave her his little sly smile, "That's because you're always lost in some dream."

Licking her dry lips Maria internally sniggered at what he had just said, saying the words she was thinking out loud, "Not a dream, a nightmare."

Slowly moving towards her, he went to take her into his arms. His movements were calculated and gradual, almost asking for permission to do it. When he found no resistance on her part he wrapped his arms around her, brushing his lips along her forehead before he rested his own against hers, so that they were eye to eye and nose to nose.

"Tell me about it." He said in a pleading voice leaving the reference out. They both knew of what he was referring to.

Smirking against the pain of the memory, Maria gently shook her head against his, "No." She whispered, "That's something that you don't want to know about."

Sighing against her skin he began, "Maria, I already know what happened to you that night, I've heard the tales…"

"You've heard the tales—but not the truth. Sometimes, Georg, fiction is better than the truth."

Stepping out of his embrace, Maria ran a smoothing hand down her skirt as his arms stood empty, still holding the position they were in before she had vacated them.

"I see," he said on a huff and walking away from her. Stopping at the box that she had been previously filling he began her vacated task for her. Only he was throwing the glass bottles into the box whereas she had been taken great care with them.

"Georg," she said his name, trying to soothe his agitated soul; however she lost her words as his piercing gaze fell upon her.

"Why is it," he said tearing her pear shaped perfume spray bottle from the vanity, holding it in his grip like a weapon, "that you can love and trust my children, but you can't do the same for me?" He threw the bottle into the box and she heard the fragile glass shatter on impact. "You can share your body with me, but not your heart?"

"Georg," she started again still unsure of the words needed to soothe his soul, "you know—"

"No I don't know!" He shouted taking the next bottle off the vanity sending it sailing across the room, "Tell me," he said squaring himself off to her, "did last night mean nothing to you? Do I mean nothing to you?" He screamed grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

"Of course you do!" She cried at the pain that he was causing her gritting her teeth against it. She didn't blame him though for being angry. She was tearing his heart out, she knew how that felt. For her actions against him were causing her just as much pain, but it was for his own good, she reminded herself.

"Then why are you leaving me? Why won't you let me in?" Releasing the strong grip against her shoulders he pulled her to him in a tight embrace. Grabbing the back of her head and pushed it into his chest. Whispering against her ear he pleaded, "Let me in, Maria, for god sakes, I love you."

Now openly sobbing Maria shook her head against him, "I can't Georg. If I did, you wouldn't like what you saw in here. You wouldn't love me anymore." She gasped at herself for letting her inner truth escape her lips. It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel vulnerable. Only Bill had been able to penetrate the shield she had worked so hard to create around herself. She had thoroughly believed no other man could come close to doing it again. Yet, here she was confessing to a man she had known barely a month. A man that she was sure once she walked out his door she would find it hard to breathe without, a man she was willing to sacrifice her happiness for so that he could be spared her turmoil. For nothing in the world would make her happier than to spend the rest of her life standing by his side.

Taking her by both sides of her head he brought her eye level to him. She saw behind his eyes that he was trying to make sense of her riddle, and yet she also saw the raw and open love there. Like a coward she held onto that, finding a solace within herself that someone could love her when so much ugliness lived inside of her.

"Maria, there is nothing that you could tell me that would make me stop loving you, nothing." Maria internally laughed at his statement. The man was determined if he was anything. First she had thought that he would run when he had found out that she was a Von Helstin. Then she had thought that he would run when he had found out that she was not only married into a company that he despised but an owner and operator as well. Or maybe she had only hoped that he would, because then she would be spared from having to share the truth with him. The real reason she pushed the world away from her.

"Take a chance Maria," Bills voice once again filled the room around her, "he needs you as much as you need him. Trust him."

The words of her deceased husband passed through her body like a shiver. There was no one in the world that she trusted more than Bill. He had picked her up and put her pieces back together after that horrific night. He had held her and rocked her when the nightmares had been their worst and had cried tears with her over her shattered life. If he trusted the Captain, maybe she should too.

Taking a steadying breath, she looked into the Captains eyes slightly nodding her head she began, "What if I told you that I—"

Her words were cut short when a frantic, "Countess!" was heard coming from the downstairs kitchen.

Jumping apart from the intrusion, the Captain still held onto Maria's hand, his eyes begging her to continue.

"Maria!" Daniel yelled again. Maria figured his state of panic was probably due to having lost track of her for a moment.

She yelled down her whereabouts to calm his nerves. When they heard him bounding up the stairs, they both got a nervous expression on their faces. Something was wrong.

Slamming into the room, Daniel looked past the two adults as if looking for a missing piece to a puzzle.

"Maria, where are the children?" He demanded more than asked.

Still a little startled from the interruption, she stammered, "I sent them to the villa to retrieve Bills camera."

Daniel walked over to one of the twin beds, for a moment Maria thought that he was going to heave it into the air and look for her children underneath it.

"They're not there. I found the camera and a knocked out Friedrich on the path back here."

"What!" Both Maria and the Captain exclaimed at the same time.

The Captain was the first to recover from the shock, "What happened?"

"I don't know. Somebody gave your boy a blow to the back of the head. Max and I revived him for a moment but he was incoherent. He mumbled something that we couldn't make out. He passed back out after that. We called for the doctor. But Liam and Lynn are nowhere to be found."

Running to the stairs, Maria turned to Daniel. "What was it that he muttered?"

Throwing his hands up in the air, Daniel said, "It sounded like Ann's." Maria took a moment to think. There wasn't anyone on the grounds with Ann for a first name. Maria had made friends with all of the staff and she was sure of this. Remembering what the two men who had come to visit her yesterday at the cottage had said about getting information from one of the staff at the villa, she was sure that whoever had attacked Friedrich worked at the house. Then a sick thought hit her. But it couldn't be, could it, she thought. That would be the biggest betrayal of all.

"Daniel, it couldn't have been Franz that Friedrich muttered, could it?" She asked what she had been thinking in her head.

By now they had all run down the spiral staircase and had made it across the kitchen to the door. The Captains hand froze on the knob at the thought of his butler having committed a crime against his family.

"Maybe." Daniel said and pushed his way past the Captain out the door.

Maria and Daniel frantically searched the grounds for her missing children, while the Captain tended to Friedrich. Having searched the lake, the boathouse, the ballroom, coming up empty handed, Maria remembered the garage. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach opened up and swallowed her whole when Daniel lifted the door to the garage revealing Franz's missing truck. On the floor of the garage in the empty space where the truck was once parked a small pool of blood colored the ground.

A hurricane force wind smacked Maria in the chest knocking the wind from her lungs. She fell to the floor in a heap, sobbing as pain wracked through her body. Her babies were gone. They were scared, they were hurt and she couldn't do anything to help them. Then darkness overtook her.