Sunday Short: WRATH

No one noticed the nanny at first.

She was polite. Soft-spoken. Always punctual. She wore neutral colors, kept her hair neatly tied back, and spoke gently to the children who clung to her legs while their parents rushed out the door.

She always smiled when the parents said the same thing.

“Sorry, I have a meeting.”

“Sorry, work never ends.”

“Sorry, I’ll be late again.”

The nanny would nod.

“I understand.”

She always did.

Because once, she had been a mother too.

Her name was Lena Morales.

She worked three jobs — mornings at a bakery, afternoons cleaning offices, nights stocking shelves. She slept in fragments, ate standing up, lived paycheck to paycheck. When she couldn’t afford childcare, she brought her son Mateo with her whenever she could.

Until the day she couldn’t.

A customer complained.

A manager threatened.

A neighbor called social services “out of concern.”

They said she was negligent.

They said love wasn’t enough.

They said she wasn’t fit.

Mateo was taken away while she was at work.

She came home to an empty apartment and a silence so loud it broke something inside her.

The first kill was an accident.

Lena had taken a nanny job for a well-off couple on Elm Street. The mother barely looked at her as she handed over the baby monitor. The father joked about how easy it was to “outsource parenting.”

That night, when Lena confronted them — screaming, shaking, begging them to understand — the knife in her hand slipped.

The blood didn’t.

It sprayed across the kitchen tiles like paint.

Lena stood there, chest heaving, staring at the bodies on the floor. She waited for the guilt.

It never came.

Instead, she felt… calm.

After that, it became deliberate.

She studied routines. Found families who treated their children like accessories — something to be scheduled, delegated, ignored. She applied as a nanny, a babysitter, an overnight helper.

She always chose the knife carefully.

Always cleaned it afterward.

Always whispered the same thing before she struck.

“You don’t deserve them.”

The papers called her The Parents Killer.

A masked woman.

A butcher of families.

A monster.

But the children were never harmed.

They were always found asleep in their rooms, untouched, with a note left beside them.

You are loved. I wish someone had fought for me like this.

The town panicked.

Parents started staying home. Trust eroded. Nannies vanished from job boards overnight. The police chased shadows — false leads, wrong faces, mistaken women.

They never suspected the quiet one pushing a stroller down the street.

The woman volunteering at shelters.

The nanny who cried when children hugged her goodbye.

One night, after her final job, Lena returned to her apartment and sat on the floor.

She took out a worn photograph — the only one she had left.

Mateo, smiling, missing two teeth.

“I tried,” she whispered. “I really did.”

The news played softly in the background.

Another couple found dead.

Another warning to parents everywhere.

Lena stood up and picked up her coat.

Wrath wasn’t loud anymore.

It was patient.

And it was far from finished.