Without taking his eyes off me, François opens the box and removes a gold key dangling from a thick gold chain.
He holds it up in the light so that I may see it.
“I do not fear you, monsieur,” he says as he opens his suit jacket and carefully drops the key into his hidden breast pocket. “I did want to give you an opportunity to, perhaps, negotiate your terms. But you really do possess more confidence than any man should.” His deep-set light-colored eyes drop from mine and fall on the new wine glass in front of me. “Why don’t you do the honors and drink from the wine you brought.” He smiles vindictively and brushes his hand in the air toward me, urging me to drink it. “That is what you expected, isn’t it?”
The dark-haired man on my left suddenly appears uncomfortable, shifting on his chair with a look of agitation. He reaches up and slides his index finger behind the neck of his dress shirt and moves it back and forth, trying to pull the fabric from his sweating skin. His face is growing pale and sickly.
François looks at him with little concern. “Is something wrong?”
The dark-haired man stands from the table. “Forgive me, monsieur, but I am not feeling well. Perhaps I should sit the rest of the evening out.”
François nods and waves him away.
The man pushes his chair out and steps away from the table, grasping his napkin in his hand. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with it as he leaves, stumbling just before he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.
“I’m certainly glad I didn’t eat the food,” I say with a raised brow. Touching the edge of my plate with my finger, I push it away from me.
The other men, including François, look down at their plates simultaneously and then toss their napkins on top of the leftovers. Two waiters act immediately to remove the food from the table.
François looks irritated, as if he’s already addressing the issue in his mind of firing his head chef as soon as this is over.
“Why don’t you have a drink?” he suggests, getting back to the matter at hand. “Or, did you forget?” He points at my glass.
“What, you think I poisoned it?” I ask.
François smiles and steeples his hands again. He looks at me knowingly.
“I would like for you to drink the wine,” he repeats, ready to get this over with.
All eyes are on me. The three men left at the table. François. One waiter standing against the wall behind him. The woman with honey-colored hair standing in wait on François’ right.
Finally, I nod and curl my index and middle fingers around the stem of the glass. Hesitantly, I bring the glass to my lips and slowly take a drink. As I’m doing this, I notice another one of the men starting to show signs of distress.
François only notices me.
“Drink it all,” François instructs.
“As you wish.” A grin tugs the corners of my lips just before I touch them with the glass.
A hard thump sounds from the area on the other side of the wall where the dark-haired man went just moments ago. A woman’s scream pierces the air, followed by shouts in French:
“Call an ambulance!”
“Monsieur Bertrand has collapsed!”
Clearly rethinking this whole situation, François’ eyes dart back and forth between me and the other men. But then he can only look at them when he realizes they are also sick. One collapses from the table, the chair that had been holding up his weight knocked onto its side.
François looks right at me, his deeply lined eyes wide with worry and rage.
“What have—,” he shoots up from his chair and points at me with a bony finger. “You did this! How did you do this? You will tell me!”
He clutches his chest and falls back into the chair.
Another man stumbles away from his chair and collapses on the floor, vomiting and convulsing.
Gun shots sound outside the mansion.
The waiter standing against the wall tucks his tail between his legs and takes off running. The sound of glass shattering and metal trays clanking against the marble floors echoes throughout the halls.
“Bastard!” François shouts, still pointing a finger at me while he tries desperately to cling onto the edge of the table with the other hand. His face is turning colors, a very nice shade of burgundy and ash. I’ll have to remember that when I buy my next tie.
I stand from my chair and casually straighten my black Armani suit, tugging both sides of the lapel. Then I take up the glass of wine I brought as a gift and I drink the rest of it down in front of him, setting the empty glass back on the table. François watches with horror, barely holding onto his life. Then I take the other glass of wine into my hand, the one I never really drank from but only pretended to, and I approach him with it. His eyes dart back and forth. He tries to reach into his jacket to grab his gun but he begins to vomit instead. I stop and wait, not wanting to get any of it on my shoes. François chokes and throws his head back, pressing his back against the chair. He gasps for air to fill his lungs with, but it just won’t come, and he falls over forward onto the table, his cheek pressed into the expensive wood grain.
He is already dead before I can tell him how I did it, how I managed to poison a bottle of wine that I never touched.
More gunshots sound outside. And they’re getting closer.
I set the glass down beside the balding spot in the top of his head and then I grab him by the shoulders, pulling his dead weight away from the table. His eyes are wide open. Lifeless. His vomit-laced mouth remains open partway in a ghastly display. His tongue is swollen.
I reach inside his hidden breast pocket and retrieve the safety deposit box key, afterwards slipping it down inside my own pocket. In a way, François did freely give me the key. I simply needed to know where it was and he played right into my hands with his arrogance by revealing it to me.
“You did well,” I say to the woman with the honey-colored hair still standing in the same spot near François’ chair.
She smiles…no, she blushes, and glances briefly at the floor. So demure. So fragile. So fake. So willing to do anything that a man asks her to do when promised enough cocaine and sex to send her into oblivion for the next week.
Suddenly, she doesn’t look so shy anymore, but rather needy and quite repulsive. Such a pity, really, I looked forward to fucking her later. She crosses her arms over her large breasts and swallows nervously. Her little green eyes move back and forth at each of the dining room entrances. Staff are still running frantically through the mansion.
“Where is it?” she asks anxiously about the cocaine.
She rubs her hands up and down against her arms.
Just then, as the last of the gun shots abate, Dorian Flynn, known by Izabel Seyfried as the ‘blond-haired, blue-eyed devil’, walks into the room with his 9MM down at his side.
The woman jumps at the sight of him and springs over next to me.
“Did you get it?” Dorian asks.
I nod subtly.
Dorian’s short, blond, spiky hair, I notice has blood in it. I cock my head to the side inquisitively.
“Can you ever get through a mission without making such a mess?”
“Fuck no,” he says. “I like a fucking mess.” Then he smirks and adds agitatedly, “Can you ever get through a mission without lingering? I’d like to leave before the police get here.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” the woman says, stepping from beside me. “What about me?” She crosses her arms and glares at Dorian, but then looks to me for the answer. “You’re not leaving until I get what you promised me.”
Growing more anxious every passing second, Dorian takes things quickly into his hands. He raises his gun and a shot zips through the room. The woman falls against the marble floor with a bullet in her temple.
“Fucking druggie bitch,” he says and jerks his head back. “Let’s go.”
I dust off my suit and step over her body.
Chapter Two
Fredrik
I’m back in Baltimore the next day, waiting for my employer and friend, Victor Faust, to arrive. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and it has been difficult to refrain from going into the basement. I usually visit her long before the afternoon hours, but today is a different day and sometimes things must be done out of order.
She gets very distraught when she doesn’t see me for a long time. It kills me to leave her like that, but she understands that my job requires much of my time and attention. But I make it up to her the best I can. And she always forgives me.
Besides, she is also a job—a private and very personal one—and no matter what my responsibilities are to Victor Faust, I make time to spend with her. There has been progress and I’d hate to lose any of it by being away from her for too long.
After a late lunch, I’m sitting in the kitchen with my laptop open on the bar when Victor arrives.
“It’s good to see you.” I offer him a smile at the front door and gesture him inside.
Victor takes a seat in the den in one of two black leather chairs with carved wooden legs—imported from Italy—beside a matching wooden table. I take the one opposite him.
Reaching into the pocket of my white dress shirt, I retrieve the key I acquired from France and set it on the round table between us.
Victor leaves it there for the moment, his eyes only skirting it.
“I take it Moreau wasn’t very cooperative,” he says.
He sits with his arms resting across the length of the chair arms, the sleeve of his black suit jacket barely covering the thick silver watch he wears on his right wrist.
I smirk and shake my head.
“Monsieur François Moreau was exactly as you said he’d be. A stubborn and overly confident bastard.” I motion two fingers in front of me when I see my maid, Greta, enter the room. “Please, get my guest and I a…,” I glance over at Victor.
“A beer would be fine,” he says.
I hold up two fingers to Greta. “Two Guinness’.”
She nods her gray head and slips into the kitchen.
Victor finally takes the safety deposit box key from the table between us, sliding it carefully across the shiny wooden surface. He examines it closely, the gold chain draped across the backs of his fingers.
“So, this box in New York,” I begin, propping my right ankle atop my left knee, “it contains all the information you need? Or will I be making another trip to France soon?”
Victor drops the key into the secret pocket of his suit jacket and shakes his head. He props a foot on a knee just as mine is.
“It contains enough,” he tells me. “Sébastien Fournier may be difficult to track down, but I don’t need him to take over his black market operations. He entrusted the identities and personal information on his operatives to François Moreau. Called him the Gatekeeper. Moreau did an excellent job keeping the information hidden by securing it on an independent device and clear across the ocean. But he was a fool to think it would stay hidden forever.”
Greta enters the den with an opened bottle of beer in each hand. She offers the first to Victor.
“Would you like me to prepare extra for dinner this evening?” Greta asks after she hands me my beer.
She stands before us dressed in a calf-length navy skirt and a short-sleeved, button-up pink blouse. Her long, gray hair is fixed into a bun at the back of her head. She is of average height and weight, but her legs truly show her age, with tiny, varicose veins running along her thick calves and ankles.
I look to Victor again, curious myself if he’ll be staying for dinner.
“No, I will be leaving soon,” he says to Greta. “But thank you.”
She nods to both of us and then I dismiss her, but just before she turns and leaves, her eyes catch mine privately, giving me a look of concern I’m all too familiar with.
She leaves the room, knowing she has made her point clear.
Cassia has been asking for me.
I turn to Victor.
“Well, I have to say that you were right,” I speak up. “I didn’t think it would be as easy as it has been to take control of these black market operations.”
Victor takes a sip of his beer and sets the bottle on the table.
I grasp mine firmly in my fingers over the end of the chair arm.
“Easy is too light a word,” Victor says with a small smile. “I believe I used the word do-able.”
I return the smile, because it’s not often I ever see the statue of a man actually smile. For a long time, when I first met him, I never knew he had teeth.
“Alright, yes, easy is putting it lightly,” I agree and take another sip. “But I’d say taking over three operations in under three months is pretty damn good.”
Victor nods.
“It’s been a group effort,” he says, always giving credit where credit is due. “I couldn’t have done it without the four of you.”
Victor is being modest. I know that, yes, he could do it without us. Very easily, in fact. Without myself, or Dorian Flynn, or his brother, Niklas Fleischer, or even that redheaded spitfire of a woman of his, Izabel Seyfried, who I’ve grown rather fond of in the past year. And Victor may treat us all with respect, but I also know that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of us if it came down to it. Victor Faust is the epitome of ‘iron fist’. I don’t fear him. I fear no one. But I do respect him and I owe him my life.
However, if he were ever to find out about Cassia, he would likely take back the life he saved by getting to me before Vonnegut did a few months ago. Vonnegut is our former employer, head of The Order, which myself, Victor and Niklas were all a part of before we went rogue.
Now there is a heavy bounty on our heads and we’ve been laying low ever since.
“Where are we at now?” I ask. “What are our numbers?”
“Six black market operations are now under our control. Four in the United States. One in Mexico. And one in Sweden. All totaling one hundred thirty-three active members. Aside from what we had before obtaining them.”
“One hundred thirty-three?” I ask, looking at him inquiringly, cocking my head gently to one side.
“One operative was eliminated by Niklas yesterday. He did not pass the final tests. Spilled all of the false information we gave him to Izabel.”
“Ah, I see,” I say, tilting my head back briefly. “And how is Izabel doing in the field?”
“She’s doing well,” Victor says, but offers me nothing more, which strikes me in a curious way.
“It’s not my place to ask,” I say, “but is there anything to worry about?”
Victor looks over at me. He shakes his head. “Nothing you need to worry about,” he clarifies. “My brother, on the other hand, I wonder every day if I’ll get word that she has finally slit his throat.”
I try to force my smile at bay, but it pushes its way to the surface. I shake my head and bring the bottle to my lips again just to attempt to conceal as much of the smile as I can. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Surely, you didn’t think it would.”
Finally, I set the bottle on the table near Victor’s.
“No, I did not,” he says with a faint hint of a smile in his voice. “I doubt they will ever get along. It doesn’t help that Niklas doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. But Izabel…,” he shakes his head with his short brown hair, as if he’s concluding in his mind that there’s no hope in this situation, “…she is just as bad as he is.”
“As long as their…differences, don’t get in the way of our operations,” I say, “then it’s probably best to let them ride it out.” I shrug. “Besides, you know as well as I do that Niklas deserves the shit beat out of him every once in a while. He’s almost…,” I point my index finger up in front of me in emphasis, “…almost as bad a Dorian.”
Victor switches feet, propping his left on his right knee. He drops his arms between the chair arms, leaving his elbows propped on the intricately carved wood, and he interlaces his fingers.
“Speaking of
Dorian,” he says, “how did he do in France?”
I sigh, shake my head and glance upward at the ceiling for a moment, expelling a burst of air before dropping my head and looking at him again.
“Like Niklas, Dorian is a train wreck,” I say. “I admit, he gets the job done, and he never makes a mistake, but he shocks even me at times. And, as you know, that’s not an easy thing to do.”
Victor raises an inquisitive brow. “Shocks you?” he says. “Yes, I do find that hard to believe.”
I nod quickly. “Well, yes. He’s trigger-happy.”
“That is his job,” Victor says. “To kill the enemy and anyone who steps in the way.”
“Yes, but,”—I chew on the inside of my mouth in thought—, “he’s quite brutal. Kills without thinking.”
Victor actually laughs, throwing his head back once and laughs. It stuns me for a moment, but I recover quickly.
He picks his beer up from the table and points at me with it in his hand and says before placing his lips on the glass, “You, of all people, accuse Dorian of being brutal because he kills without thinking about it.” His laughter begins to fade but it’s still present in his voice. “Don’t you think that perhaps it shocks you because, unlike you, Dorian doesn’t play with his food before he eats it? He’s your polar opposite. How do you think he felt the first time he witnessed you in the interrogation room?”
He takes one more drink and sets the beer back on the table.
“OK, yes, I do see your point,” I say with a faint smile.
“So, then he’s doing well?” Victor adds, dropping the humor and getting back to business. “I trust that he hasn’t set off any red flags since he became your partner?”
I shake my head. “No, he hasn’t. And so far he has passed all of the tests.” I shake my head again, though this time with a long, deep sigh. “I hate to say it, but I think you were right about him, too.”
I hated to say it because when I first met Dorian Flynn, I wanted to strap him to a chair and pump his veins full of poison. He talked too much. Was cocky, arrogant, and incredibly impetuous. He’s still all of those things. But he is, unfortunately for the sake of my killing him being put on hold probably indefinitely, an excellent operative.