“Is he—?”
“No,” Victor says. “Half of me wanted to kill him, but the other half couldn’t do it. I just wonder which half would’ve won if you hadn’t been alive in that moment.”
I reach across the bed a few inches with my hand in search of his. He interlocks his fingers with mine.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I say, pushing a faint smile through to the surface of my face. “I couldn’t live with myself if I had been the reason you killed your brother. I-I never should’ve come between you. I didn’t know what I was doing, Victor. I am so sorry.”
He squeezes my hand.
“You did something that no one else could,” he says and I eagerly wait for him to tell me what that could possibly be. “You made me remember that I have a brother, Sarai. He and I have practically sat side by side at a table as strangers for the past twenty-four years. And I see now that despite his faults, he has never once betrayed me.”
He pauses and his gaze veers off.
Then he looks back at me.
“In a sense he did betray me when he went there to kill you,” he goes on. “He betrayed me when he misled me so that he could get to you. Yes, that is a betrayal. But it’s a very different kind of betrayal.”
“I know,” I say. “Look at me.” He does. “You did the right thing. Regardless of what he did to me, you did the right thing and I don’t ever want you think I’ll feel differently.”
He doesn’t speak, but I know that look on his face, it’s the conflict that’s always there. I wonder if he’ll ever be rid of it.
Then he says, “But you did something else that no one else ever could.” His features soften and my heart is slowly melting. “You made me feel real emotions. You unlocked me.”
I reach out and touch his lips with my fingers, my hand cradling his chin.
The subject changes all too fast.
“Niklas will never hurt you again,” he says. “He gave me his word. And besides, he knows that if he ever tries that I won’t hesitate to kill him the next time.”
Then suddenly he adds, “You’re just as important to me as he is.”
I’m quietly stunned.
Victor stands up and walks to the window, crossing his arms looking out at the brightly-lit day. I can see that there are so many things he wants to say, so many loose ends he wants to tie up with me. But things have changed since Niklas shot me. I can feel it. And I won’t fight him anymore because I know that it has to be the way it is, that it has to end the way it’s going to end.
“I don’t expect to ever see you again, Victor, and I understand.” I swallow hard. I don’t want to say these words. “It’s better this way, I know.”
“Yes, unfortunately it is,” he says distantly with his back to me. “I can’t keep you safe with the life that I live. I wanted to, but in the end, I couldn’t. I knew better, but I…”
I wait quietly.
“…but I was wrong,” he says, though I feel like he wanted to say something else. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way.”
My heart is breaking….
“Promise me one thing,” I say and he turns only his head to look at me. “Don’t go to Germany. Don’t go to that man, your employer or whatever the hell he is. Niklas told me about what will happen if you go there. Please don’t go there….”
I hear him sigh softly and he looks back out the window.
“I can’t promise that,” he says and my heart crumbles. “But I can promise that I won’t just stand there and let someone kill me.”
That doesn’t make me feel any better, but I know it’s all he’ll give me.
He leaves the window and produces a package from a briefcase lying on the nearby table. He walks back over beside me and places it in my hand. It’s an elongated black box stuffed inside a tattered paper package that had been covered in tape at some time. I pull the box from the package and open the lid. A single stack of cash is inside along with an envelope that has been folded over length-wise to fit and a few other random pieces of paper.
“What’s all this?”
“Your real birth certificate, social security card, shot records, which you are behind on a few that you should get taken care of soon.” He points to the folded envelope as I’m opening it to see the contents.
I look at my birth certificate first.Sarai Naomi Cohen. Born July 18, 1990. Tucson, Arizona.I say my full name over in my head three times just so that it might feel real to me, real like it used to feel.
It doesn’t.
“How’d you get this?” I look up at Victor.
“I have my ways,” he says with a smile behind his eyes. “I also set you up a bank account. The details are on the rest of the documents in the box.”
“Thank you, Victor,” I say, setting my birth certificate down on my lap. “For everything.”
I mean what I’m saying to him. I would’ve been dead many times over if it weren’t for him. But saying these things to him, these goodbyes, are shredding every last bit of what’s left of my heart.
“When are you leaving?” I ask.
I don’t really want to know the answer.
I put the documents back into the envelope and close them away inside the box.
“In a few minutes,” he says and I choke back my tears. I want to be strong for him because I know this is hard for him too. “But there’s one more thing before I go.”
He goes to the door and opens it. In walks Mrs. Gregory. I’m so shocked that the only part of my body that moves are the tears streaming down my face. My hand comes up over my mouth. I look back and forth between them. They’re both smiling, Victor less so, but smiling nonetheless.
Mrs. Gregory, looking so much older than I remember her, walks toward my bedside with open arms and she envelops me in a hug. She smells of Sand & Sable perfume. She always wore it.
“Oh, Sarai, I have missed you so much.” She squeezes me gently, knowing just how to without hurting me. Her voice is heavy with emotion, but she’s vibrant with joy.
“I missed you too,” I say, squeezing her back. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She pulls away and sits beside me on the bed, running her long, aged fingers through my hair.
But then my smile fades and my heart finally dies completely when I look back at where Victor stood to see that he’s gone. For a long moment the things that Mrs. Gregory is saying to me sound muffled, forced somewhere far off in the back of my mind. I want to leap out of the confines of this bed and run after him. I swallow hard, pushing my scarred emotions down into the very depths of me and pull myself together as much as I can for Mrs. Gregory’s sake.
I turn back to her and enjoy our reunion.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
That was six months ago.
Today life is very different. The bank account Victor set up for me had two million dollars in it. When I got on the plane with Mrs. Gregory four days after Victor left, only then did I find the strength to look at the other documents he left inside the box. One was my bank account information and on the back, scrawled in Victor’s handwriting:
Your profit for executing the job.
Sincerely,
Victor
He gave me his portion of the money Guzmán paid to have Javier killed. I guess it’s only fair since I’m technically the one who killed him.
But life is definitely different. I’m living back in Arizona with Mrs. Gregory. Over in Lake Havasu City. And I have enough money that I don’t have to work, but to keep my mind busy and try to conform to this life of normalcy I work nights at a convenience store. Mrs. Gregory doesn’t like it. It scares her. She says it’s dangerous working in places like that which are open at all hours of the night.
She happened to be right.
I was robbed my second week there, but as the guy stood on the other side of the counter pointing that gun at me, all I could do was watch his eyes. When he glanced down at the money I put into his view, I smacked the gun aside, managed to gra
pple it from his hand and then I hit him in the face with it. It was stupid, really. But it was instinct. I’m not much intimidated by low-life meth-heads that rob young women in convenience stores.
That’s child’s play.
But I’m definitely not some kind of reformed badass created by my extraordinary experiences, either. Just ask the spider that crawled on me the other night while I was reading a book in bed. Mrs. Gregory about had a heart attack I screamed so loud.
I went to school to obtain my GED and passed the test two months ago. It wasn’t very hard for me, although I struggled with the math. Now I’m enrolled in community college taking Computer Science, though I don’t know why. I really have no interest in it out in the ‘real world’, but…well, normalcy. That’s my excuse for everything these days, for hanging out with my new friends, to pretending to be interested in their life goals. It makes me feel like an awful person that I have to pretend these things at all, but I can’t force myself to like something just because I should.
But not everything is so unbearable. I love Mrs. Gregory and I spend most of my time with her. She has arthritis so bad that her fingers are gnarled and she can’t play the piano much anymore, but she still teaches me and I still play, sometimes for hours until my fingers are cramped and my back is stiff. I finally mastered Moonlight Sonata. And each time I play it I think of Victor and the night he sat with me at the piano.
Mrs. Gregory’s health is getting worse. I take care of her, but I know she won’t be around forever and that one day I’m going to be alone again. I like to think that maybe Victor is still out there watching over me and sometimes I trick my mind into believing that he is. But the reality is that I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I try not to think about that, but it ends up being all that I ever think about except when I’m lost in the piano.
I miss him. I miss him so much. Some people believe that when two people separate that over time they heal. They start to find interest in other people. They go on with their lives. But that hasn’t been the case with me at all. I feel a deeper void now than the one I felt when I lived at the compound. This is more painful, more unbearable. I miss everything about Victor. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about him sexually on a daily basis. Because I do. I think I’m addicted to him.
It has been so hard for me to adjust to just about everything, but in the grand scheme of things, six months isn’t a very long time. Not compared to the nine years I was at the compound. So, I’m hopeful that by the time another six months rolls around, I’ll be better. I’ll be ‘normal’. My friends, although I can’t tell them about my life—and I think that’s why I’ve had such a difficult time getting close to them—are really great. Dahlia is a year older than me. Average beauty. Average intelligence. Average car. Average job. We are alike in the ways of average, but we couldn’t be more different when it comes to everything else. Dahlia doesn’t jump at any sound that remotely resembles a gunshot. I do. Dahlia doesn’t look over her shoulder everywhere she goes. I do. Dahlia wants to get married and have a family. I don’t. Dahlia has never killed anyone. I would do it again.
But I’m grateful no matter how often I dream of being somewhere else. Of being someone else. I’m grateful because I got away. I’m grateful because I’m home. Though ‘grateful’ is very different from ‘satisfied’ and despite finally having a normal life that a lot of people would love to have, I’m as far away from being satisfied as I can be.
Victor Faust did much more than help me escape a life of abuse and servitude. He changed me. He changed the landscape of my dreams, the dreams I had every day about living ordinarily and free and on my own. He changed the colors on the palette from primary to rainbow—as dark as the colors of that rainbow may be—and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him or about the life I could’ve had with him. Although dangerous and ultimately short, it’s what I want. Because it would’ve been a life that better suited me and, well, it would’ve been a life with Victor.
I’m just not ready to let him go….
“There you are,” Mrs. Gregory says from the doorway of my room. “Are you going to come and eat?”
I blink back into reality.
“Oh yeah, I’ll be there in a second. I need to wash my hands real quick.”
“Alright,” she says; her smile bright.
I truly am the daughter she never had. And, I guess it’s safe to say that she’s the mother I never had.
Mrs. Gregory, or Dina, always cooks chili dogs on Friday nights. We sit together at the kitchen table watching the HD television mounted on the wall in the kitchen. The news is on. It’s always on around this time.
“So, have you and Dahlia decided on a place to vacation this summer yet?”
I wash my food down with a swig of soda. I start to answer when something on the news catches my eye. A reporter is standing outside a very familiar mansion talking to a very familiar man.
Absently, I set my fork down on my plate.
“I sure wish I could tag along with you two,” Dina goes on. “But I’m too old for that stuff anymore.”
I’m too engrossed in the television to give her my attention:
“Yes ma’am,” Arthur Hamburg says into the microphone. “Every year I do my best to contribute. This summer I’m planning an event to raise one million for my new charity, The Prevention Project, in honor of my wife.”
The reporter nods and looks faintly remorseful, repositioning the microphone in front of him.
“And is that drug or suicide prevention?”
“Drug prevention,” Arthur Hamburg says. “In my heart my Mary didn’t commit suicide. The drug addiction is what killed her. I want to do my part in helping others who are addicted to drugs and also to help prevent drug abuse before it starts. It is such a terrible disease in this country.”
So is lying and sexual violence and murder, you bastard.
“Yes, it is, Mr. Hamburg,” the reporter says. “And speaking of disease, I understand that you’ve also been giving money to cancer research because of—”
“I have,” Arthur Hamburg cuts her off. “I still feel awful about lying to everyone about my wife’s disease and I doubt I’ll ever feel as though I’ve apologized enough for it. But as I’ve said before, I was only protecting her. People can accept cancer, but they’re not so accepting of drug use and I did what I had to do to protect my wife. But yes, I feel it’s only right that I also give to cancer research.”
You are such a piece of shit.
I grit my teeth.
“Sarai?” Dina says from the other side of the table. “Did you decide on Florida or New York?”
The rest of Arthur Hamburg’s words fade into the back of my mind. I think about Dina’s question for a long time, staring right through her.
I look at her finally and pick up my fork and answer, “No, actually I think we’ll be taking a trip to Los Angeles this summer.” I cut a piece of hot dog from the bun on my plate and scoop it up with some chili and take a bite.
“Los Angeles?” Dina says inquisitively and then taking a bite of her own. “Going to do the Hollywood thing, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say distantly. “It’s going to be great.”
I have unfinished business there.
I smile to myself thinking about it and cover it up with another drink of soda.
Look for the continuation of Victor and Sarai’s story in…
REVIVING
IZABEL
To see more of the characters in KILLING SARAI, visit the author’s Pinterest page:
pinterest.com/jredmerski/KILLING-SARAI/
OTHER BOOKS BY J.A. REDMERSKI
***
THE EDGE OF NEVER
THE EDGE OF ALWAYS
(Coming November 2013)
DIRTY EDEN
-THE DARKWOODS TRILOGY-
#1 – THE MAYFAIR mOON
#2 – KINDRED
#3 – THE BALLAD OF ARAMEI
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
/> J.A. Redmerski, New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas with her three children, two cats and a Maltese. She is a lover of television and books that push boundaries and is a huge fan of AMC's ‘The Walking Dead’.
www.jessicaredmerski.com
www.facebook.com/J.A.Redmerski
www.twitter.com/JRedmerski
www.goodreads.com/JRedmerski
Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you haven’t read THE EDGE OF NEVER, do not continue.
~~~
Read a sneak peek of the first chapter in J.A. Redmerski’s upcoming sequel to THE EDGE OF NEVER, THE EDGE OF ALWAYS:
THE EDGE OF ALWAYS
CHAPTER ONE
Andrew
A few months ago, when I was laid up in that hospital bed, I didn’t think I’d be alive today much less be expecting a baby and engaged to an angel with a dirty mouth. But here I am. Here we are, Camryn and me, taking on the world…in a different way. Things didn’t quite turn out how we planned them, but then again, things rarely do. And neither of us would change the way they turned out even if we could.
I love this chair. It was my dad’s favorite chair and the one thing he left behind that I wanted. Sure, I inherited a fat check that will set Camryn and me up for a while and of course I got the Chevelle, but the chair was equally sentimental to me. She hates it, but she won’t say so out loud because it was my dad’s. I can’t blame her; it’s old, it stinks and there’s a hole in the cushion from my dad’s cigarette smoking days. I promised her I’d get someone in here to clean it at least. And I will. As soon as she figures out whether we’re going to stay in Galveston or move to North Carolina. I’m fine with either, but something tells me she’s holding back on what she really wants because of me.