Chapter 11
It couldn’t be explained with human words how my mind was racing. It boggled, to say the least.
“Scarlett!” George startled me. I had been staring absentmindedly at the kettle. “Are you awake?”
“Fuck.”
“Let me help you,” he unplugged it for me.
He set the tray and handed it to me, making sure I was holding it securely. Slowly but surely, I made my way to Sayer’s office.
“Come here,” his arms were open, waiting for me once I strode around the desk.
He pulled me to his lap, wrapped his arms around me and we held onto each other for the longest time. He nuzzled my neck, kissed my chin, my lips.
“There’s something you need to know, Scarlett,” he held me inside his arms, looking intently into my eyes. “I will care for you, no matter what.”
“No matter what?”
“There comes a time in a man’s life when lots of things cease to matter.”
“Does it?”
“Yes,” he shrugged, an air of unconcern in his voice. “I don’t fear consequences anymore.”
“I’ll always care for you too. I’m your caregiver.”
He chuckled. “And you’ve done a brilliant job.”
He let go of me. “However, the tea will get cold, and that does matter to me.”
I poured our tea and, as I sipped, I tried to put my mind on hold from all the spinning it had been doing inside my head. The tea did soothe me a bit. I was starting to feel more grounded with every sip.
“I was told that… George, I mean. He told me you care for your people.”
“I do, I always have. Now you’re one of them, one of mine, and I must care for you.”
There was a tingling sensation on the tips of my fingers. It turned to numbness, and it felt as if I would drop my cup any second.
“One of yours?”
“This is in your blood, Scarlett. You were born for this, a natural.”
I was considering telling him the truth, spitting it out right then and there. Or maybe he knew and was toying with me. The thing was how to do it, how to confront him.
Yes, Ferdinand, I am in some deep shit all right.
“Did you arrange for your friend’s burial?”
“He will be cremated.”
“Less of a fuss.”
“Yeah.”
I fixed my sight on the rim of my cup when…
“Don’t go thinking I don’t know.”
“That you don’t know what?”
“What your friend was. What you are.”
Oh fuck.
“Armand…”
He stopped me with a raised hand, like he always did. “No need to speak. I’ve known it since the beginning.”
My hands shook so much I had to put the cup down.
“I was meaning to tell you.”
“Then now is your chance to tell me the truth. Are you a cop?”
“I’m Interpol. I’m sorry…”
He set his cup on the desk and brought his hands to his head, combing his hair back with his fingers as he exhaled.
“You broke Cisneros. We all thought of him as the weakest link. And now they’ll be coming after you.”
“I was warned about this. Patrick Humberts… He told me this is all MacGowan. Your shooting, the punks in Brixton, Helga and Cisneros. He’s been scouting kids from the estates for that sort of thing, and now he’ll ask you to give me up, after Helga’s funeral.”
Sayer strode around the desk with such speed that his face came up an inch from mine in a second.
“I won’t let them,” he held on to the armrests of my chair. “I can’t let them have you.”
“You won’t have a choice.”
“Wrong. I always do. MacGowan has always been a greedy son of a bitch, but this time he won’t have it his way. This time he’s gone too far.”
“I’m police, Sayer. I’m supposed to be your enemy.”
“But you are not. I’ve met hundreds of undercover agents in my lifetime, believe me, and you… you’re different. I know you’ve been sending out information, yet I also know how little you’ve sent to incriminate me.” He held my chin when I tried to bow my head. “I know where you come from. You are many things, and a cop isn’t one of them.”
I was so confused and so terrified at the same time that I didn’t know what to say, what to do, what to think.
“Armand…” was all I managed to whisper.
“Now, listen to me. They’ll be coming for you and it won’t be pretty, Scarlett. It will be your worst nightmare come true. You are a woman. Do you know what they do to women in this business? Do you have any fucking idea of what they’ll do to you if they get you? It won’t be your fucking nightmares, it will be far worse than that.”
His eyes were filled with tears as he peered into mine. I knew what he was talking about, even better than him.
“I won’t let them,” he continued, “I can’t let them. Not to you.”
“Kill me then.”
“The fuck you say!” He jerked back.
“Kill me!” I snapped, some hidden rage suddenly taking charge of me. “I am a fucking cop, Sayer! Kill me. Kill me now!”
I leapt to my feet, rummaged through one of the drawers of his desk, produced a gun and shoved it into his hands.
“Shoot me. Right here, right now.”
“I won’t shoot you!”
“Then make George do it. He’d be more than happy to.”
He placed the gun on the desk.
“No, I won’t.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Armand? What the fuck is this? I’m a cop. All this time I’ve been a cop. Now it’s out there. I’m your fucking enemy! Take that gun, pull that fucking trigger and fucking kill me!”
He took my face inside his hands, drew me closer, “I can’t, Scarlett, I can’t,” his eyes welled up with tears, and his forehead touched mine. “I can’t kill you and I can’t let anyone do you harm.”
Shit, shit, shit, shit. This was so wrong. The pain in my chest was completely wrong, the urge that made we wrap my arms around him, the instinct that parted my lips when we kissed. He was shivering, bitter tears rolling down his cheeks, his fingers burrowing into my back, trying to cling to my flesh.
“This shouldn’t have happened. Not like this,” I said as I dried his tears and tried to contain mine. “There is no way we’ll be able to walk away together, not in a million years.”
“There is always a way, and if someone can make it happen, it’s me. When I said I would take care of you I meant it.”
He kissed me again, a faint smile, a reassuring look. Then he recomposed himself, took a deep breath and handed me the tray with the empty cups.
I took it down to the kitchen, cleaned everything up and headed back upstairs. He was waiting for me. He took me by the hand, into his room and under his sheets. Just snuggling, little nothings, caressing and kissing each other. We were both filled with sadness, grief and fear. Some part of us had been violently ripped from our selves, another was about to be torn asunder, and, as humans, we were trying to deal with it all.
Humans.
Nothing more than flesh, bones and a beating heart. As much as I would’ve liked to think about him as a beast, he was as human as anyone else.