Chapter 43: The Threat to Protect

"I can hold a conversation about fishing towns," Viviana said thinking that might calm him down. She wouldn't want him to have one of his angry episodes. 

She used to live in a coastal town in the South. And she had visited fishing towns when she was young. She can make a convincing case that she was from there.

She wouldn't lie. Leander's mention of the South made her doubt if he remembered the short meeting they had in the past. She had heard that he too was caught in the fire his family started. He wouldn't have forgotten about it then, right?

But if Peter Kastello really hears her talk about the Southern coastal towns, what kind of expression will he have? Will there even be a smidgen of guilt?

Her heart sank remembering that fire. The gut-wrenching screams of children, the wails of people as they burned…

She still hears them. And the stench…the pain... the fear and numbness...

She could never escape those harrowing screams.