Dorian says nothing. I can’t even tell if these new stipulations bother him or not. But I suppose they’re better than being dead.
“Wait—” Nora presses her back against the chair and crosses her bare arms over her chest. She purses her dark red painted lips, eyeing Dorian suspiciously. “So, you’re saying he’s still going to be working for you, while at the same time working for U.S. Intelligence?” She shakes her head with rejection, chewing on the inside of her mouth. “You cannot serve two masters—masters vie for power, they don’t share it.” She leans forward against the table, her dark eyes like burning embers piercing through Dorian. “What master do you serve, Dorian Flynn? The ones who brought you into this dark world, or the one who will take you out of it?”
Now there’s the intelligent, cold and calculating Nora Kessler I have come to envy, the same dangerous woman she was when she waltzed into our lives and shook us all to our bitter cores.
I notice Fredrik quietly watching Nora with a little more interest than I’m used to seeing him show, and I’m not sure I like it or not. I’m not sure I even understand it.
Dorian cocks his head to one side, studying the beautiful, cunning blond that not so long ago shot him in both shoulders, made a fool out of him, manipulated him with a skill he could never match, and forced him to confess to all of us who he really is. It’s because of her that he’s in this situation with Victor. I wonder how much of him would love nothing more than to wrap his hands around her throat and choke the life out of her.
“You’re very beautiful,” he says in a soft playful voice; his bright blue eyes glistening under the fluorescent light above the table. “But you’re a mouthy fucking bitch.” He grins, leaning forward, pressing his chest against the edge of the table just like Nora. “I serve no fucking master,” he says, “but if I have to choose, I will always make the choice that suits the circumstance.”
My head snaps back to Dorian—that’s definitely not the kind of answer I would’ve given considering the predicament he’s in.
Victor turns his head slowly to face Dorian, but his expression is unreadable.
Fredrik has also turned all of his brooding attention on Dorian.
James Woodard, who has been awfully quiet the entire time, looks over at Dorian with wide eyes veiled by a thin layer of panic.
Nora’s red smile lengthens maliciously.
“Those are bold words,” she says. “Maybe you should just kill him, Victor.” She never takes her eyes off Dorian’s.
“Izabel trusts me,” Dorian says, challenging her. “Fredrik apparently trusted me enough after torturing me for days, to release me. And Victor, your leader”—his words have become ice—“freed me from that goddamned cell, and here I am, sitting with the rest of you.” He stands from his chair, leaning over the table, and points a finger at her; his jaw moving as he grinds his teeth together. “I don’t need to prove shit to you—fucking cunt.”
That’s all his ‘bold words’ had been: just words to get underneath Nora’s skin. I sense that Victor must’ve gathered as much, knowing Dorian’s confrontational personality.
Nora just grins.
“And you should take into consideration that you’re no longer in any position to be making threats,” Dorian adds. “You’ve got jack-shit to hold over my head anymore.”
Dorian’s hand, still pointing a finger at her, slowly falls back down, but his hard gaze never falters.
“Not that I’m taking sides,” Fredrik speaks up for the first time, “but it should be noted, Nora, that you aren’t exactly trusted here fully, either.”
“And I should never be trusted fully,” she shoots back. “Nor should anyone in this room”—she looks at each of us in turns—“Any one of us, no matter who we love, or where our loyalties lie, have more potential than the average person to turn and chew off the fucking hand that feeds us.”
“What are you saying then?” Dorian asks with accusation. “Are you admitting something, or just warning us in advance about how you’re likely to turn out?”
“I’m simply stating a fact,” Nora growls. “I just say aloud what everybody’s thinking.”
I stand from my chair and put up my hands. “Come on now, let’s not do this right now,” I say, trying to defuse the situation.
Slowly Dorian finds his seat again, and he and Nora have a hate-filled stare-down for several long moments.
I turn to Victor.
“So, who’s going with you and Dorian to meet with these people?” I ask. “I volunteer.”
Victor shakes his head. “No—Fredrik will be the only one joining me for the meeting. And I have something else in mind for you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he says, “but first we need to discuss your mission with Nora last night.”
That nervous feeling in my gut has returned.
I nod and listen.
“Although your mission went smoothly,” Victor says, “it wasn’t without error.”
“OK,” I say, both as a statement and a question. I place both hands on the table and take my seat again; I feel Nora’s eyes on me from the side, but I focus only on Victor. “As smoothly as it went, I can’t imagine you’d have much negative to say about my performance.”
“The mission was smoothly orchestrated,” Victor says, “but your performance left little to be commended”—I swallow hard—“Gustavsson, you and Woodard may leave; take Flynn with you.”
James Woodard lifts his large weight from the chair and gathers his briefcase and cup of coffee from the table. “I’m not feeling well anyway,” he says, looking a little pale and sweaty now that I think about it. That’s probably why he’s been so quiet all this time.
“Report back to me this evening,” Victor says to Fredrik as the three of them make their way to the tall double doors. “I’ll let you know then more about when we’ll be leaving.”
“Wait,” I call out and get up from my chair.
I dig in my pocket for the key to Dorian’s safety deposit box—he gave it to me during his interrogation with Fredrik because he thought he was going to die.
Stepping up to him, I place it into his hand.
“This belongs to you.” I smile warmly. “Looks like you’ll get to live long enough to give it to Tessa yourself.”
“Thanks,” he says.
We share a smile and Dorian follows Fredrik out the door.
Once the doors close, Victor stands and looks right at me; he folds his hands together down in front of him.
He begins to pace.
Izabel
A little bitter about his choice of words before, I finally ask, “So, what exactly did I do, Victor, that left ‘little to be commended’?”
He stops and says without looking at me, “Nora, why don’t you begin?”
“All right.” Nora gets up from the chair in her tall black heels. Her slender, hourglass frame is hugged by a skin-tight black dress that extends to her knees. In typical Nora style, it has a plunging neckline made of crimson fabric dropping between her uplifted breasts in a ruffled, wave-like pattern. Her long blond hair cascades down the center of her back, kept away from her face made up by her trademark dark red lipstick, darkly-painted eyes and creamy porcelain skin.
I remain seated, instantly feeling intimidated by both of them—I feel like I’m about to be scolded for getting an F on my report card.
I turn to see Nora on the other side of me.
She stops, her fingers clasped on her backside, missing pinky finger on one hand obvious as always. “Pinceri could’ve easily killed you,” she says. “I was watching him just in case—and he knew I was; he saw me—but it took you too damn long to notice.”
Confused, it takes me a moment, thinking back on the details of the mission, before I realize.
“But I did notice,” I say. “Within seconds of him putting his hands underneath the table, I stopped him before he could go for the hidden gun.”
“But it took you too long,” Victor r
eiterates, underlining the point.
My gaze moves to his at the head of the table. He’s standing beside his chair, looking at me with quiet, disappointed eyes.
I sigh.
“He never should have gotten his hands underneath the table to begin with,” he adds. “If Nora had not been there, watching, you would not be sitting here right now.”
Anger growing inside of me, I take a deep breath to keep it at bay. Because I know they’re right, and as embarrassed as I feel right now, I’m angrier with myself than with them.
Reluctantly I nod, accepting what I did wrong.
“But that’s not all,” Nora says as she begins to walk down the length of the table again; my eyes follow her all the way around. “You’re too emotional,” she goes on. “You can’t let your target know your weaknesses.”
“Too emotional?” I echo with disbelief, my gaze moving between the two of them. “How the hell did you come to that conclusion?” Truly, I’m baffled.
Deciding I don’t want to hear Nora’s opinions anymore, I turn to Victor instead and wait for him to answer.
“You wanted to throttle Pinceri for choosing money over his wife,” Victor says. “And Pinceri knew that he hit a nerve. Nora is right: you should never let your target know your weaknesses, because the smart ones will know how to use them against you.”
“What could he have possibly done to use that against me, Victor?” Surely he must detect the offense and sarcasm in my voice because I’m not trying to hide it.
“He could have told you that, yes, he did want to change his mind when you gave him that last chance to do so,” Victor answers instantly. “He could have played on your emotions long enough to buy himself more time, to distract you.”
“And while you were going back and forth in your mind,” Nora puts in, “about why you think it’s not right to kill him because he changed his mind, the alarm on the building would’ve set and getting out of that building alive would’ve been a lot harder to pull off.”
“But that’s what we went there for,” I say, looking between both of them, trying to justify my actions, “to get him to give up the information. If he chose to do that, why not let him?”
“Because that is not why you went there, Izabel,” Victor corrects me. “Your mission was to give him a chance to give up the information for the life of Mrs. Pinceri, but the moment he chose not to do that, and I gave you the order to kill him, he should have been dead a second later.”
I look down at the table, letting out a long deep breath.
“And that’s the other thing you did wrong,” Nora says. “When you’re given an order, you carry it out—no questions, no hesitations. Not after you give the target ‘another chance’, not after you taunt him a little to satisfy your anger, but right then, you kill the target.”
“OK,” I say with surrender. “Yes, I see what I did wrong and you’re right. I’ll do better next time.”
I think that’s the end of it until Victor says, “But that is not all.”
“Oh great,” I scoff, shaking my head.
“You never remove your mask until you are away from the scene, Love,” Victor says. “Preferably not until you are inside your getaway vehicle—there are cameras everywhere, not just in and around the target’s location, but everywhere: streetlights and intersections, businesses, cell phones—you removed your mask the moment your feet touched the ground.”
“OK,” I say with another series of nods. “That was stupid, I admit.”
Victor moves toward me. He sits on the table next to me with his hands folded loosely between his opened legs.
“But despite the things you did wrong,” he says in a softer, forgiving voice, “you did well.”
I look up at him, nodding once, thanking him with my eyes. I can’t smile, I’m too disappointed in myself to go that far.
“I will get better,” I tell Victor, peering up into his forgiving eyes. “Whatever it takes, I’ll master this.”
“I believe in you,” he says and offers me a private smile very softly on his delicious lips—momentarily, it reminds me of the ache between my legs.
Then he pushes himself away from the table and begins to walk back toward his chair at the head, but doesn’t sit down. Nora sits on the table now, just as he was, across from me on the other side. She crosses her long legs.
“But now to address the next mission,” Victor says and he has my and Nora’s full attention. “While I am away with Gustavsson and Flynn, the two of you will be heading to Italy.”
“Who’s the target?” Nora asks.
“That,” Victor begins, putting emphasis on the word, “is not going to be as easy as your previous missions have been. In fact, the nature of the mission will be a bit different from what you are used to.” He looks only at me when he says that.
I listen intently.
Finally Victor takes his seat again. A manila envelope is on the table; he takes it into his large fingers and breaks apart the little metal clasp, producing a series of photographs.
“The target is a woman,” he says, gently pushing the photos outward across the table so that we can reach for them. “Her name is Francesca Moretti; she will not be as easy to find because the client is not sure which woman in the Moretti estate is Francesca. And apparently, most outsiders do not know who the real Francesca is, either.”
I look down into one photograph while Nora sifts through a few others. The photograph was taken inside what looks like an elaborate mansion. I count six women at the forefront of the photo, all of which resemble one another in many ways: light brown hair just past their shoulders; light caramel-colored skin; outfitted lavishly in revealing dresses of different shades of ivory and red and blue; jeweled sandals and high-heels. Each of them are holding a glass of champagne; they’re smiling, mingling with guests.
“They look like sisters,” I say, not looking up from the photo.
“Decoys,” Victor says.
I look up then.
“And there are more than six of them,” he goes on, nodding toward the other photos in front of Nora; she pushes them across the table to me. “According to these photos, taken just weeks ago, there are at least twelve decoys—you’ll need to figure out which one of them is the real Francesca Moretti, and that is not even the most difficult part of the mission.”
“Oooh, a challenge,” Nora says with a smirk. “I’m lovin’ this already.”
“I thought you might,” Victor says.
He turns back to me; he appears indecisive all of a sudden.
“I’ve had reservations about sending you on this mission, Izabel—I want that to be clear.”
“Why?” I’m used to this, Victor being worried about me, so I don’t make a big deal out of it, even though it bothers me a little—I still understand, and I love him more for it.
“The…nature of the mission might be too much for you considering your past in Ruiz’s compound. It just concerns me, not only if you will be able to set your feelings aside about what you might see long enough to see the mission through, but also I do not want you to feel—”
“I’m not afraid, Victor,” I cut in softly, reassuringly. “I told you before, about being involved with the future mission to Mexico with Nora, that I can handle it.”
He nods slowly, but I get the feeling he’s not fully onboard with my willingness.
“So once we find the real Francesca Moretti, what are we supposed to get from her?” Nora asks. She pulls out the chair Fredrik usually sits in and makes herself comfortable. “I’m assuming we’re not to kill her right away if finding her isn’t even the hard part.”
“Killing Moretti is not part of the mission at all,” Victor reveals. “The client would very much like the honors.”
“An abduction,” I say.
“Yes,” Victor confirms. “But it will not be easy. The security Moretti has around her at all times is topnotch. Moretti is very wealthy, and it is believed that she has the loyalty of the police as we
ll as some government officials—it is how she and her mother before her, have been able to run their business without being taken down by authorities—Moretti has many influential, prominent clients, from all over the world.”
“What kind of business does she run?” I ask, already knowing it’s sexual in nature.
“Francesca Moretti is a madam,” Victor says. “The most successful madam in Italy, maybe even the world. Clients come from all over to buy sex from her workers—she calls them cyprians—and she only employs the best.”
My eyebrows wrinkle in my forehead. “OK, so I don’t understand why you were concerned that a mission like this I might not be able to handle.”
Nora, surprisingly, seems as curious as me.
“The women—and men—employed by Moretti did not seek out their lives as sex workers,” Victor says. “Those employed under her iron foot were once like you were, Izabel”—he retrieves another photograph from the envelope and slides it toward me—“just like the client’s daughter; they were sold to Moretti after being abducted.”
The anger is growing inside of me, but I keep it to myself and look down into the photograph. A bright, innocent smiling face with pretty white teeth and vibrant brown eyes, is looking back at me. There’s a birthmark underneath her left eye the size and shape of an almond sliver. She’s wearing a red and white cheerleading uniform. Her honey-brown hair is pulled into a ponytail, wrapped by red and white ribbons.
Slowly I look back up at Victor. And I swallow.
“How old was she?” I ask in a low, saddened voice.
“Olivia Bram was fifteen-years-old when she was abducted while on vacation with her parents. Her mother committed suicide shortly afterward. That was seven years ago. Her father has been searching for her since—it took him that long to come to this possibility.”
“So the client isn’t even sure Francesca Moretti is the one who bought his daughter?” Nora asks. “And why go after the buyer and not the abductor?”
Absently I slide the photo of Olivia Bram across the table to Nora.