“So you murdered an innocent woman,” Apollo drills me like a prosecuting attorney, rubbing vinegar into the wound, “because you cared about her.” He clicks his tongue, shakes his head.
“Yes,” I admit. “I killed her for no other reason than my feelings for her. Even if I could never love her, the way that I love you”—(a tear slips down Izabel’s cheek)—“I knew I had to kill her, or The Order would have killed me.”
I stand up and move close to the bars, crouching to Izabel’s eye-level, wishing now more than ever that I could touch her.
“And Marina was not the first,” I say.
Another tear tracks down her cheek. And another.
It will all be over soon, my love.
It will be over soon.
Izabel
I love you, Victor, with every shred of my soul. I wish I could tell you—can’t you see it in my eyes, in my tears? Can’t you fucking see it?!
Or is the pain all that you see? The disappointment and the disapproval? What you did was awful, Victor. That poor, innocent girl, who was not so unlike me. She needed your help. She trusted you, and you cared for her, yet you chose to take her life rather than to save it.
But I understand. I don’t approve, and I can never look you in the face and tell you that what you did, you had to do, that you had no other choice. I can’t look at you as a man whose hands haven’t been stained by the blood of the innocent, like I could before. It didn’t have to be you who killed her—it didn’t have to be you. You knew The Order would’ve killed her and your conscience would be clear, your hands would be clean; they could’ve done the job you shouldn’t have done yourself.
But you did it.
And for that I can’t give you the forgiveness you seek. I can’t pretend any longer that…you are perfect.
But I will always love you—that will never change.
I close my eyes softly, trying to force back the rest of my tears. If I’m going to die here today—and I know that I am—I don’t want the last few moments of my life to be spent crying. Because I’m stronger than that, and I don’t want these crazy people who brought us here, to feel the satisfaction.
A powerful, excruciating jolt moves through my body, nearly knocking me unconscious. My heart stops and my muscles tense so tightly I become a rock on this unsteady chair; my teeth catch my tongue and the taste of blood pools in my mouth; my eyes roll into the back of my head. I try to scream, but the gag in my mouth prevents anything but muffled curses.
“I told you!” Victor shouts, his voice banging in my ears as I struggle to stay upright. “I told you I would cooperate! Leave her alone!”
I try to catch my breath, but it’s that much harder when I can only inhale and exhale through my nose. My back is on fire where the cattle prod left its mark.
I want to kill that sonofabitch!
“Oh it gets much better,” I hear Apollo say somewhere behind me. “Marina was just the beginning”—I feel his hot breath on my ear—“wait until he tells you about Marina’s baby sister.”
My eyes, dizzied by the electric shock, find Victor’s again. He looks the same as before, when he was about to tell me the story of Marina, and I’m not liking what I see.
I shake my head again, just as I did earlier when I wanted him to refuse to talk. We’re going to die anyway, and I’d rather die with the man I know and love, not with a stranger that I love. But I know he’s going to tell me anyway. And I know the more he talks, the less I’ll be able to forgive.
I love you, Victor…please, don’t say anymore.
Victor
“I killed her, too,” I confess. “No need to go into those details—I killed her. She had to be…put down…because she knew too much, because Marina told her too much.” I sigh, hesitating, because the rest of the truth is worse. “It was not even an official order that the sister be terminated—it would have been, but I did not wait for it; I took it upon myself to tie up that loose end like any skilled operative would have done.”
“A loose end,” Apollo echoes. “Put down like a dog.”
“Yes.” It is all I can say.
Izabel is shaking her head; I feel like she wants me to stop talking. But I cannot. I may not have brought her on vacation to tell her the truth about my past—though I would have told her that, too, eventually—but I did bring her here to tell her other truths. And this was not exactly how I envisioned coming clean. But it is the hand that I was dealt, and it is the hand that I will play. It will be my only chance to tell her.
I notice Apollo, from the corner of my eye, concentrating hard again, and I realize that he is listening to someone, possibly through an earpiece.
So far I have counted five different people, including Apollo, who are in on this. Now I have to figure out which one of them Apollo is answering to. Osiris, perhaps? It would not surprise me, despite their tumultuous past.
“I have to take a piss,” Apollo announces.
He walks past Izabel and me and says on his way to the door, “I hope you don’t miss me too much while I’m gone.”
He slips out and the gray light blinks off as the door closes with an echoing bang behind him.
“Izabel, listen to me,” I say in a rush the moment Apollo is gone. “I need to know if you can move your hands at all. Enough to work them free.”
She struggles against the chair, and then after a moment, shakes her head no.
My heart drops. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I had been counting on her having a plan. This cage around me is not coming open without a key, and I have a feeling Apollo is not the one in possession of it. Izabel’s hair is still growing back from when it was cut in Italy, so there are no pins holding it in place like she wore on occasion with longer hair. She wears no jewelry; her feet are bare; not even her bikini top has an underwire—there is nothing I can use to pick this lock. Frantically I check the pockets of my khaki pants, but they are empty. I am not even wearing a belt.
I sit down against the filthy stones, cross my legs Indian-style, and I let out a long, surrendering breath.
“Taking you away for a while,” I finally say after a moment, “was supposed to be a fresh start for me. I wanted to get things off my chest, to be honest with you about why I did not kill Nora Kessler…but I”—I raise my eyes, look right at her now; hers are full of heartbreak—“but I also wanted to tell you about something that I did. You have a right to know. And I still want to tell you these things, but I feel in a way that now it is wrong, because you cannot speak, you cannot have your say, or ask the questions you have every right to ask—you cannot scream at me, if that is what you want to do. It would just be me talking, confessing, not so unlike Kessler had us all doing not long ago. But bad timing or not, it is the only way…”
She mumbles something through the gag in her mouth.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” I do not know why I am asking because I intend to tell her anyway; maybe I just need to hear her say yes.
She starts to shake her head no, but it changes direction. She looks frightened, not of our predicament, but of the things I will tell her.
I nod, acknowledging her, and then I look down at my feet partially hidden beneath my crossed legs.
“Your confession,” I begin, “in the room with Nora…I…later I listened to it; I had bugs in the room aside from the audio in the ceiling. Izabel, I know about the child you had with Javier Ruiz.”
At first, she just stares at me, but then more tears appear in the corners of her eyes and slip down her face unrelenting; the gag in her mouth catches them, soaks them up as if they are nothing.
“I am sorry,” I go on. “I know that it was your secret to tell, and I never should have listened to that recording, but I had to know.”
“Why?” Izabel mumbles—I am confident I made out the word correctly.
“Two reasons,” I say. “One, because it is my duty to know everything about every person in my Order, even you. But secondly, and more importantly, I wan
ted to know if your painful secret was something I could help you with.”
She looks away from me, angrily.
“Look at me, Izabel, please.”
She refuses.
“Please…”
She relents, and turns her eyes slowly toward me again, but they are still filled with anger and hurt.
“After that day,” I continue, “I began the search. None of my contacts in Mexico have found anything yet, but one of them has a possible lead. I knew it would take time, but…Izabel, I only wanted to find your child.”
“Why?” she asks again, this time with more accusation, disbelief.
And I find myself stuck between wanting to tell her the truth like I claimed, and not expecting to have to tell her this much so soon.
“Because I wanted to help,” I say, trying to sidestep the answer in its entirety.
“Why?” Her face is turning red, her tears have become tears of anger. “Why, Victor? Why?”
I sigh and answer with the truth: “Because…I wanted to…steer you in another direction.”
The tears seem to vanish from her eyes as if my magic; she looks across at me, coldly, unforgivingly, and with eyes that express only the deepest of betrayals, that hold the heaviest of questions.
The guilt, as I knew it would, ravages me.
I do the only thing I can do—answer those questions for her.
I push myself into a stand, thankful that the drug has finally worn off. Then I begin to pace. Back and forth over the stones in my five-by-ten prison cell. I can hear Izabel’s heavy, tremulous breaths; I can sense the resentment in the air. But I do my best to ignore it. Because I know that our time is limited.
“After Nora,” I begin, not looking at her, “after what she put us through—what she put me through—I knew, Izabel, that there was no hope for me; I knew that no matter how much I loved you, that one day my love for you would be the end of me, and my brother, and even you.” I stop, turn, look at her once to emphasize my point, and then go back to pacing. “Kessler opened my eyes to the truth; she infiltrated my Order, outsmarted me and everyone in it, and she turned my brother against me. It was my Awakening, Izabel”—I step over to the bars and look down at her; she glares up at me—“I knew I could never kill you, but I had to do something. And I thought that if I could find your child, that maybe your motherly instincts would kick in and you would want to change your life, leave my Order, give your child the life he or she deserves, and then I…” I avert my eyes from hers; this is so hard to say. “…I could go on with my life with a clean conscience. And I—”
“STOP!” she screams through the gag—it might have also been NO! But either means the same.
“STOP!”
“I am sorry, love…with all my heart, I am sorry.”
Izabel
I can’t listen to this…STOP, VICTOR!
I tongue the cloth in my mouth until I can no longer feel my tongue; my throat fills up with saliva, choking me. I gag, and my eyes sting and water. I work tirelessly to loosen the rope from my wrists to the point that they too become strangely numb. My knees open and close, open and close, as I try to free my ankles, but like my wrists, I know they’re stuck like that. Indefinitely.
How could you do this, Victor?!
I scream against my gag, my fury intensifying because I can’t say the words I so desperately want Victor to hear. He watches me from behind the bars of his cell, helpless to do anything but let this torturous moment between us run its due course.
The door opens again, and that man, Apollo, re-enters the room. My eyes dart to find the cattle prod on the floor, but I don’t see it.
Because it’s in his hand and—
I think I blacked out.
I know I did.
Where am I?
Where am I…?
Victor
“Where was she taken?” I demand, my hands gripping the bars. “Apollo, answer me!”
He has been giving me the silent treatment for fifteen minutes while he sits on the chair reading a magazine.
“Apollo!”
He finally raises his head, very slowly, and makes eye contact with me. He is smiling faintly, more in his dark eyes than on his lips. He places the magazine on his leg propped on his knee, and then stares at me, enjoying this.
“What is it like, Victor,” he begins in a composed voice, “knowing that you’ve ruined so many families? How do you sleep at night? Do you ever think about the people you’ve killed?”—he gestures a hand in front of him—“Do you ever sit around in those expensive suits and expensive shoes and that high-dollar haircut and ask yourself: ‘I wonder what kind of life so-and-so might’ve had if I didn’t take it from them?’ Or, ‘I wonder how many people will never be born because I, singlehandedly, destroyed literally generations of future families.’” He drops his leg from his knee and leans forward, the magazine wedged in his hand. “Tell me, Victor—tell me the truth.”
It will do me no good to continue asking about Izabel.
“Do you really care about any of that, Apollo? Is that why I am here—retribution for being less than a human being, a danger to society? Or is this about you and your notorious family? A family, I should add”—I hold up my index finger—“known for being less than human and a danger to society. He who casts the first stone, Apollo.”
He drops the magazine on the floor and gets up from the chair—he is not smiling anymore.
“My family,” he defends, spitting out the word, “may be known for some heinous crimes; my mom and dad may have been the biggest bastard and bitch this side of the hemisphere”—he grits his stark white teeth and snarls at me—“but my brothers and my sisters, when you came in with your lies and your bullets, never did anything to deserve what they got. I never did anything to deserve what I got!” (A tiny droplet of spittle from his mouth hits my cheek.) “The worst I’d done by that time was rob a liquor store! And I didn’t even kill anybody!”
In a calm voice I respond, “This business is not about eliminating criminals, Apollo. I was not commissioned to kill your family because you were a menace to society. I was commissioned to kill your family because your mother and father were the biggest bastard and bitch this side of the hemisphere. They are to blame for the death of your brothers and sisters, not me—Osiris is to blame. Or have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that things would have been much different if your own flesh and blood brother did not betray you, betray your family name?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” he comes back, rounding his chin.
My hands slide away from the bars.
“It seems that you have,” I point out. “You are in league with Osiris again, after all these years, after everything he did to you and your family—yet, I am the one in the cage.” I do not know if my theory is correct, if Osiris is in on this, but it is the only ammunition that I have, as unlikely as it feels.
Apollo’s hands knot into fists down at his sides; his eyes churn with animosity. I see now that maybe things between Apollo and Osiris are not as patched-up as I assumed, after all.
“Where is Osiris, anyway?” I ask, hoping to get some truth myself. I would very much like to speak with him.
Apollo turns his back on me, crosses his arms.
“He’s not here,” he says. “I have better things to do than to keep track of my brother.”
A moment of silence passes between us.
I decide to switch gears, careful not to push too far, in hopes he might open up more if I manipulate him gradually. But this is all very hard to do when all I can think about, all I care about, is Izabel.
“Why fifteen years, Apollo?” I inquire. “That is a tremendous amount of time wasted. Why wait fifteen years to put me in this cage?” Other than it probably took you that long to figure out how to successfully pull it off.
He smirks. “Oh, believe me,” he says, his tone laced with bitterness, “I would’ve done this a long time ago—I wanted to, but…well, that’s beside the point.”
/>
“You wanted to,” I echo, “but this whole plan does not only involve you, does it? You are not here—I am not here—simply for your revenge.”
“There isn’t anything simple about this!” he shouts, and it surprises me, furthermore confirming my suspicions: he is not the one in charge.
He steps right up to the bars, well in arm’s reach, at last giving me that opportunity I wanted moments ago. But I do not take it. I fear now more than ever for Izabel’s well-being. Regardless knowing this is the day she and I will die, the last thing I want is to make her final moments more difficult than they already are.
“Where is Izabel?” I ask, my voice relaxed, but my core apprehensive.
He shakes his head. And then he smiles a smile so chilling that it alone elevates my concern.
“With my sister,” he answers.
I blink, stunned, and a wave of anxiety moves through my body, settling in my chest. If there is any one person in this world I would choose not to leave Izabel alone with, it is certainly Hestia Stone, the only Stone sister still alive. She is beautiful like her sister, Artemis, was, but unlike Artemis, Hestia is cruel and dangerous and with a bloodlust that would have given Fredrik’s ex-wife a run for her money.
“Hestia? You left her with Hestia…”
“Ah, there it is,” Apollo taunts me, “that fear I never imagined I’d live to see in the great Victor Faust.” He tosses his head back and laughs, then lowers his eyes on mine once more, and a grin spreads across his lips. “I’d say not to worry, but, well, you know how my sister is.”
I grab the bars and try to shake them, managing only to shake myself. “Apollo, do not do this! If we are to die here today, then just kill us! Just kill Izabel—torture me if that is what you want, but do not—”
“Wow, look at you”—he points at me—“this is fanfuckingtastic, bro”—he pumps his fists—“YEAH!”
But then his smile disappears and he steps up to my cage, places his fingers atop mine around the bars and squeezes; he is so close I can feel his warm breath between us. “Wait until you see her—my sister. I can’t wait to see it myself. There will be fireworks n’ shit. And I’ve got a front row seat.” He visibly shakes his upper body, demonstrating his excitement with dramatics. “It’s even makin’ my dick a little hard.” Then his fingers move from mine and he presses his face even closer, daring me to take advantage of it—I keep my calm, as much as I want to choke him to death where he stands. “And by the way,” he adds, “begging doesn’t suit you, either.” He steps away from the cage slowly.