The Bull Prince | Max Verstappen

Chapter 38

Warning: Heavy stuff in this chapter. Joanna's childhood wasn't the easiest. Another flashback. This is the only warning. Should some things trigger you, just please ask me before reading. Thank you.

-----------

Opening the heavy doors, Joanna slowly walked down the center aisle of the old church. The last time she was here was nearly over ten years ago, but nothing changed. The red carpet still looked scratchy, the marble floors still radiated the same feeling of coldness, the figures and ceiling paintings were still intimidating. The choir books were all in their places and the benches must still have felt as if they had been built for the purpose of torture, as uncomfortable as they always were. Nothing here changed, it was all the same old. The only thing that always changed were the names of the girl sitting here.

Pushing her sunglasses up into her hair, Joanna watched from afar the girls all kneeling in the front rows muttering prayers while father Stefan was standing in front of them, listening closely. Joanna knew the drill, one wrongly muttered word and you would scrub the floors of the church. Another wrong word and the punishment would go worse.

Glancing to her left, she saw the statue of St. Petrus. A stern-looking old man, Joanna could draw him from memory, so often she had to kneel before him as a punishment. Her arms were tied behind her back. There was still dried blood on the corner of the statue's base. The older girls had told Joanna that a girl once had to kneel for so long without eating that she lost consciousness and hit her skull there. She died instantly. That's why Joanna rather took a beating. It was faster, cleaner. She knew when it would end. The older they got, the more the punishments changed.

"The lost sheep returns to the flock." The voice Joanna only knew too well beamed, which caused one of the girls, not older than seven to turn around to see Joanna. She would have wanted to warn her, but one of the ministrants was fast to hit the child, causing Joanna to grimace.

"Don't be so offended by these images, you have endured worse to come to repentance." Father Stefan told the Austrian as soon as he was standing in front of her. He hadn't changed at all. His hair was about to turn grey on his temples and his beard grew a little bit since the last time Joanna had seen him, but he was still a good-looking man. Sometimes Joanna wondered why he had taken the consecration of a priest. He must be around 45 by now.

"Are you looking for absolution, child?" He wanted to know from Joanna, touching her cheek gently, causing the younger one to painfully close her eyes before nodding.

"Let me send the girls away and then I am all yours, my love." He said after a moment in which cupped Joanna's cheek in his hand and allowed his thumb to softly brush over her cheekbone.

Joanna watched as he told the girls to go on, the ministrants would take care of them until he would return. The girl, who had been hit, did her best to suppress her tear what father Stefan saw. He kneeled down in front of her, tenderly brushed over her cheek, and whispered something in her ear. The Austrian couldn't hear him, but she knew all too well what he said to her.

"Do you understand why you had to be punished? Good, my love. Go on with the others." Joanna had heard that so often, she wasn't sure she could ever forget.

"Are you here to confess, Johanna?" Father Stefan asked her as soon as he was standing next to her, pulling Joanna from her thoughts. Nowadays, nobody no one used the German pronunciation when saying her name, at most her father, but it reminded her of who she was before she joined F1. A frightened and weak little child who felt alone in the midst of all these girls. Someone who was not on the right path.

"I have done things that not even God will be able to forgive me for," Joanna told him, her eyes full of pain and regret, her hand hovered over her belly, but she didn't put her hand there, not since the baby is gone.