CHAPTER EIGHT
Victor
Fredrik reaches out for the sliding glass door and pulls it shut the rest of the way.
“She has no idea about Niklas?” he asks, as I knew he would.
“No, but I’m going to have to tell her. She’ll need to be aware of her surroundings at all times. Now more than ever.”
“She can’t stay here long,” Fredrik says, glancing through the glass to see her sitting on the couch outside, watching us. “Neither can you.”
“I know,” I say. “When Niklas finds out about her involvement in the murder at Hamburg’s restaurant, my brother will know right away that I’m involved now, too. My brother is no fool. If Sarai is alive, Niklas will know that I’m helping her.”
“And since Niklas suspects that I’m working with you now,” Fredrik adds, “she’s in as much danger anywhere around me as she is with you.”
“Yes, she is.”
Fredrik shakes his head at me, a faint smile hidden behind his eyes. “I don’t understand attachment,” he says. “I respect you as always, Victor, but I’ll never understand a man’s need to love a woman.”
“I am not in love with her,” I clarify. “She is just important to me.”
“Maybe not,” he says and starts to head toward the kitchen, “but it appears that love and attachment both carry the same consequences, my friend.” I follow him into the brightly-lit kitchen and he opens a cabinet. “But I’m here for you. Whatever you need me to do to help, I will do it.” He points at me briefly from around the cabinet door now with a loaf of bread in his hand.
Fredrik’s housekeeper comes into the kitchen, plump and older than both of us, precisely the kind of woman that Fredrik can never be tempted by, which is why he hired her. She asks him in Spanish if she can go home to her family early tonight. Fredrik responds in Spanish, granting her request. She nods respectfully and walks past me into the living room. I watch her from the corner of my eye as she takes a bulky brown leather purse up from the floor beside the leather recliner and shoulders it. Then she makes her way to the front door, shutting it softly behind her.
Sarai is standing in the shadows of the living room when my gaze falls away from the front door. I didn’t even hear the sliding glass door open when she entered, and apparently neither did Fredrik.
She steps into the kitchen and into the light, her arms crossed loosely under her breasts, her delicate fingers arched over her girlish, yet toned biceps. She is so beautiful to me, even in the ravaged condition she’s in.
“How long did you plan on leaving me outside?” she asks both of us with a trace of irritation in her voice.
“No one ever said you had to stay out there, doll,” Fredrik replies.
He likes her, it’s obvious to me and he probably knows as much. But he also knows that I’ll kill him, too. Though, I trust him more than I worry if he’ll ever revert to his dark side and harm her of all people. Fredrik Gustavsson is a beast of the most carnal kind with a love for women and a love for blood, but he has boundaries and standards and he takes loyalty and respect and friendship very seriously. His loyalty to me is, after all, the reason he betrays the Order every day by helping me.
Sarai walks over to me and looks up into my eyes, cocking her head softly to one side. The smell of her flesh and the gentle warmth emanating from her skin nearly sends me over the edge. I’ve done fairly well to hold myself back since I kissed her in the elevator. I intend to maintain that control.
When she doesn’t say anything, but continues to look into my eyes as if she’s waiting on something, I become confused. She cocks her head to the other side and her eyes soften, though with what exactly, I’m not quite certain. It feels expectant and a little mischievous.
I hear Fredrik chuckle under his breath and the refrigerator door closing, but I never look away from Sarai.
“Things are so much easier the way I do it,” I hear him say with a smile in his voice.
“Contact me as soon as you get the information on Niklas,” I say still looking into Sarai’s eyes and disregarding his comment altogether. “And when you hear from your contact that Dina Gregory is safe in Phoenix.”
“I will do that,” Fredrik says and then walks toward the hall entrance that leads toward his room. But he stops and looks back at us. “If you don’t mind—”
I finally look away from Sarai and give Fredrik my full attention. “Don’t worry,” I interrupt, “I know where the guest quarters are.”
He shoves the corner of a sandwich that I barely noticed him prepare into his mouth and bites down, tearing the bread away from his lips. I catch him wink at Sarai just before he disappears down the hall. It was perfectly harmless, directed at what he assumes might happen between us once he’s gone, rather than a flirting attempt.
“What information on Niklas?” Sarai asks, her soft features now shadowed by concern.
I reach out and drag my fingers behind a small portion of her hair. “I have a lot to tell you,” I announce and I let my hand fall away before I lose control of myself and touch her more than I intended. “I know you must be exhausted. Why don’t you shower and get settled in first. Then we’ll talk.”
A soft grin sneaks up on her lips, but then fails under her blushing cheeks.
“Are you saying I’m disgusting?” she asks coyly. “Is that your way of telling me I need to wash my disgusting ass?”
“Actually, yes,” I admit.
For a flinching moment, she appears offended, but then she just shakes her head and laughs it off. I admire that about her. I admire a lot about her.
“All right.” Her playful expression shifts into something more serious again. “But you have to tell me everything, Victor. And I know you may have a lot to tell me, but I want you to know that there’s a lot I need to say to you as well.”
I expected as much. And before she pushes herself up on her toes, leaning her body against mine and kisses me on the lips, I know that by the time she gets out of that shower I’m going to have to figure out what we’re going to do. I’m going to have to make some important decisions that will affect both of us.
Because I am sure of only one thing: Sarai can never go home.
Sarai
When I return, Victor is sitting in the living room, perched on the edge of the couch, leaning over the glass coffee table now littered with pieces of paper and photographs. He continues to sift through them without raising his head to look at me as I walk farther into the room. But he’s not fooling me, I know he’s as aware of my presence as much as I want him to be.
I raided Fredrik’s closet for a white T-shirt, which I’ve slipped down over my bare breasts. Unfortunately, I’m still in the same panties I put on this morning, but Fredrik’s boxer-briefs aren’t exactly the kind of undergarments I would want to wear to seduce Victor. Just a T-shirt and panties. Of course, I made it a point to wear as little as possible, because I want Victor and I’m not shy in the least bit about letting him know it. Though I’m still having a hard time believing I’m even in the same room as him again after months of thinking he was gone forever.
I think the kiss in the elevator is where my mind is suspended, as though time stopped in that moment and every part of my being is still yearning for the moment to continue, but the rest of the world has still been going on all around me.
I sit down next to him, pulling one bare foot onto the couch and tucking it underneath my thigh.
“What’s all this stuff?” I gaze down at the paper and photographs on the table.
He fingers a few pieces of paper, stacking them into a precise spot. “It’s a job,” he says and then places a photograph of a man wearing a wife-beater tank on the top of the small pile. “I work for myself now.”
That takes me aback. “What do you mean?” I think I know exactly what he means, but I’m having a hard time believing it.
He picks up the stack and hits the edges against the table to make all of the pieces fall neatly into place. Then he
slides the stack down into a manila envelope.
“I left the Order, Sarai.” He glances over at me.
He presses the little flaps of the silver clasp down to seal the envelope.
My thoughts are stuck in the back of my head, my words, hanging precariously on the tip of my tongue. I struggle desperately to believe what he just told me.
“Victor…but…no—.”
“Yes,” he says and turns his head to face me, looking directly into my eyes. “It is true. I’ve rebelled against the Order, against Vonnegut, and now I’m a wanted man.” He goes back to the other papers on the table. “But I still have to work and so now I work alone.”
I shake my head over and over, not wanting to swallow the truth. The thought of him being hunted by the people who made him what he is, by anyone, sends a hot flash of panic through my veins.
I let out a long breath. “But…but what about Fredrik? What about Niklas? Victor, I…what’s going on?”
He sighs heavily and lets the sheet of paper fall lightly back against the table and then he leans his back into the couch.
“Fredrik still works for the Order. On the inside. He keeps tabs on Niklas and…,” his eyes catch mine briefly, “…he’s been helping me keep you safe.”
Before I have the chance to ask anymore broken questions, Victor stands up from the couch and continues as I sit watching him with my mouth partially agape and both legs drawn up on the cushion.
“As you know, when anyone is suspected of betraying the Order, they are immediately eliminated. But I believe that Niklas has left Fredrik alive and not reported his concerns to Vonnegut for the simple fact that Niklas is using Fredrik to find me. Just as he has left you alive all this time, hoping that one day you’ll lead him right to me.”
It isn’t what Victor said that shocks me the most, it’s more about what he didn’t say that leaves me reeling. I let both of my legs drop from the couch and press my feet into hardwood floor, my hands pushing against the cushions on either side of me.
“Victor, what are you telling me? Are you saying that…Niklas is still with Vonnegut?”
I hope that’s not what he’s trying to tell me. I hope with everything in me that my decision to let Niklas live that day back in the hotel when he shot me wasn’t the biggest mistake of my life.
His eyes stray toward the sliding glass door and I sense a sort of infinite grief consuming him, but he doesn’t let it show on his face.
“I told my brother—you were there—that if he decided he wanted to stay with the Order if I chose to leave it, that I wouldn’t hold it against him. I gave him my word, Sarai.” He walks toward the glass door, folds his hands down in front of him and gazes out at the luminescent blue pool glowing under the night sky. “It is Niklas’ time to shine now and I won’t take that from him.”
“Bullshit!” I shoot up from the couch, my fists clenched down at my sides. “He’s after you, isn’t he?” I grit my teeth and step around the coffee table. “That’s fucking it, isn’t it, Victor? To prove his worth to Vonnegut, he’s been commissioned to kill you. Your piece of shit brother betrayed you. He thinks he’s taking your place in the Order. I can’t fucking believe—”
“It is what it is, Sarai,” Victor stops me, turning around to face me fully. “But right now, Niklas is the least of my worries.”
Crossing my arms, I start to pace, gazing down at the dark and light swirling patterns in the wood beneath my bare feet. My toenails are still painted blood red from two weeks ago.
“Why did you leave the Order?”
“I had to. I had no other choice.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Victor sighs.
“Vonnegut found out about us,” he says and has my undivided attention. “It was Samantha…the night she died. Before I left the Order, I met with Vonnegut in Berlin, the first face-to-face meeting I’d had with him in months. I was in an interrogation room. Four walls. One door. A table. Two chairs. Just me and Vonnegut sitting across from each other with a light blazing in the ceiling above us.” He looks back out the glass door behind him and then goes on:
“At first I thought for sure he brought me there to kill me. I was prepared—”
“To die?” If he says yes, I’ll slap him for it.
“No,” he answers and I feel like I can breathe a little more. “I went prepared. I kidnapped Vonnegut’s wife before I met with him. Fredrik held her in a room, prepared to do…his thing, if it came down to that.”
Immediately I want to ask what Fredrik’s ‘thing’ is, but I skip that for now and say instead, “If Vonnegut intended to kill you, you had his wife as leverage.”
With his back to me, he nods.
“Samantha was being watched by the Order. Probably for a long time.”
“They suspected her of betrayal? Why didn’t they just kill her then, like they did Niklas’ mother, or like they wanted to do to Niklas?”
Victor turns around to face me again. “They didn’t suspect her of betrayal, Sarai, she was…,” he takes a deep breath and presses his lips together.
“She was what?” I walk over to stand closer to him. I don’t like where this seems to be heading.
“She was more loyal to the Order than I ever could have imagined,” he says and it hurts my heart. “As I sat in that room with Vonnegut and the more he spoke, the more I began to understand that Samantha was as much a traitor to me as Niklas has become. Vonnegut told me things that he couldn’t have possibly known. He knew I helped you. Sometime before she died that night, she was able to relay information to Vonnegut about us being there.”
“I don’t believe that.” I slash a hand in the air in front of me. “Samantha died trying to protect me. We’ve already been through this. I don’t believe you, Victor. She was a good woman.”
“She was a good manipulator, Sarai, nothing more.”
I shake my head, still not believing it. “Niklas is the one who told Vonnegut about you helping me. He had to have been. Niklas even knew that you had taken me to Samantha’s house.”
“Yes, but Niklas didn’t know that I made Samantha taste-test our food before we ate that night. I knew the second that Vonnegut brought up how distrusting I still was of her after all the years I had known her, that she had betrayed me.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” I start to pace the floor again, arms crossed, one arm bent upright, my fingers touching the side of my face. “Why would she protect me from Javier?”
“Because she wasn’t loyal to Javier.”
I throw my hands in the air above me, washing my hands of this revelation.
“Can’t trust anybody,” I say, plopping down on the couch again, looking at nothing.
“No, you can’t,” Victor says and I look up, detecting a hidden meaning behind his words. “Now maybe you can understand why I don’t get close to anyone. It’s not just the job, Sarai. People generally cannot be trusted, especially in my profession where trust is such a rarity that it’s not worth wasting the time and effort searching for it.”
“But you seem to trust Fredrik,” I point out, looking up at him from the couch. “Why’d you bring me here, of all places? Didn’t you learn your lesson with Samantha?”
His expression darkens subtly, stung by my accusation.
“I never said I trusted Fredrik. But right now, Fredrik is my only connection inside the Order and for the past seven months he has done nothing to indicate he is untrustworthy. Quite the opposite, he’s done everything to prove that he is.”
“But that doesn’t make it true,” I say.
“No, you’re right, but soon enough I’ll know one hundred percent if Fredrik can be trusted, or not.”
“How so?”
“You’ll find out when I do,” he says.
“Why bother? You just said that trust is so rare it’s not worth the effort.”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. And you don’t answer enough of them.” r />
“No, I guess I don’t.” He smiles faintly and it melts my heart into a puddle of mush.
I look away from his eyes and swallow down my feelings.
“I’m not safe here,” I say looking back up at him.
“You’re not safe anywhere,” he says. “But as long as you’re with me, nothing will happen to you.”
“Now who’s full of shit?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“You’re not my hero, remember?” I remind him. “You’re not the other half of my soul who could never let anything bad ever happen to me. Trust my instincts first always, and you, if I choose, last. You said that to me once.”
“And it’s still as true today as it was then.”
“Then how can you say nothing will happen to me if I’m with you?”
His expression becomes vacant as if for the first time in his life someone has rendered him speechless. I gaze across the room into his quiet and emotionless face, only his eyes revealing a trace of numbness. I get the feeling that he spoke before thinking, that he expressed something to me that he truly feels but never wanted me to know: he wants to be my ‘hero’, he will do anything and everything in his power to keep me safe, he wants me to trust him fully.
I do.
He walks back over and sits down beside me. The smell of his cologne faint as if he makes it a point to use as little as possible. It makes my head swim with need. I have longed to feel his touch again, to taste his warm lips, to let him ravage me the way he did a few nights before we last saw each other. I’ve thought of nothing but Victor for the past eight months of my life. While sleeping. Eating. Watching television. Having sex. Masturbating. Breathing. Every single thing I have done since he left me in that hospital with Dina, has been with him in mind.
“Do you think Fredrik will tell Niklas where we are?” I change the subject for fear of breaking into him too much too soon.