Seeds of Iniquity

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m not valuable to them,” I say, though still trying to make myself believe it, too. “I don’t want to just be Victor’s woman, his lover. And I know that everyone else, when they look at me, that’s all they see.”

  “That’s something you’ll never be able to change,” she says. “When I got involved with my first civilian while working in the field, something happened to me that I never expected—I started to care. I saw how this man lived, how he loved his wife, his sons; I envied his monotonous office job and mundane existence. I never had anything like that before. I never knew what it was like—a normal civilian life, because the very first breath I took was filled with training. I mean that in the literal sense—as a newborn, I was in training.”

  I know I must look aghast, but I can’t make myself look any other way.

  “That man,” she goes on, “when I saw him and his wife with their newborn, I was fourteen-years-old. They hired me on as a babysitter. But the way they loved that baby, the way the mother held it in her arms, stroked his little bald head, kissed his tiny nose; I was intrigued by it because the babies where I came from were not treated with such kindness and love, and it was so foreign to me. Where I come from, from the moment babies are born there’s no one to cradle them, or stroke their heads, or sing to them, or pick them up every time they cry. They are fed and they are seen by a doctor to make sure they stay healthy, but no one loves them or thinks they’re cute. No one feels guilty about leaving them in their cribs and letting them cry themselves to sleep. They grow up disciplined, hardened soldiers, and they know nothing else. But that man I was sent to kill when I was fourteen, he changed me. Somehow just seeing the way he lived, experiencing it, it infected the soldier in me and made me weak.”

  Nora looks off toward the wall, a look of anger and animosity at rest in her eyes.

  “Did you kill him?”

  She looks back at me.

  “I killed him and his wife,” she says, “and made their sons orphans. I fulfilled my mission. I did what I was told.”

  I can’t tell if it bothers her or not.

  “But you can’t make Niklas and Dorian and Woodard and Fredrik look at you and see someone other than Victor’s woman,” she says. “I couldn’t make my family, my organization, see me any differently when they found out my emotions had been compromised. I was who I was. And I paid the price for it.”

  She glances down briefly at her pinky finger, but doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t think she wanted me to notice.

  “I see,” I say softly.

  “Do you?” she asks. “Or could what you see be a lie?”

  She’s trying to confuse me now, because she told me more than she intended.

  “No, I believe that it’s the truth. A lot like Niklas, you wanted to tell me.”

  She smiles vaguely.

  “But how do you know for sure?” she asks. “What makes you think that everything I just told you wasn’t me just manipulating you?”

  “Because I’m more intimate than most with that look,” I say evenly, “and because I’m a professional liar and know the difference.”

  She nods respectfully.

  “Perhaps, Izabel, you should stop worrying about what you don’t possess and focus all of your energy on what you do. No one can be good at everything.”

  I don’t offer her a response and I get up.

  “Dina Gregory is a nice woman,” Nora says. “I really do hope that Fredrik comes.” She pauses for a moment, pondering. “My meeting with him I don’t expect to go so well, and I’m not too proud to admit that he scares the fuck out of me, but he’ll play an important role in my being here.”

  Intrigued by her admission, I study her for a moment.

  “How so?” I ask.

  “You’ll have to wait and see.” Her lips turn up at the corners.

  I start to walk away, but Nora stops me.

  “What I’m most curious about though,” she says with my back turned to her, “is what’s taking Victor Faust so long to talk with me. Of course we all have something to hide, even I have done things I’m not particularly proud of, but what do you think Victor’s secret could be? What is he afraid of?”

  “Victor isn’t afraid of anything,” I say, turning to look back at her.

  She nods reflectively.

  “That may be true,” she says, “but it makes you wonder what his secret is, just the same, doesn’t it?”

  She’s trying to get under my skin again. And it’s working.

  I hear the door click unlocked.

  “Do you still want to kill me when this is over?” she asks as I’m opening the door.

  “I will kill you when this is over,” I say, and walk out with her undaunted smile etched in my thoughts.

  14

  Izabel

  Victor and Woodard are in the surveillance room with Niklas when I walk in. They’re all looking at me—Niklas shaking his head as if to say I never should’ve done that; Woodard can’t meet my eyes and he looks embarrassed for me; Victor is expressionless as usual, but behind the nothing there is something that maybe only I can see.

  “You did good,” Victor says. “We know a lot more about her than we did before.”

  I look away from him and go toward the coffee pot, turning my back to all three of them.

  “Yeah, thanks, but I don’t need anyone’s sympathetic pat on the back.”

  I pour coffee into a small paper cup. I don’t really even like coffee all that much¸ but I need something to do to distract me.

  The room grows quiet and then Victor says, “I need to speak with Izabel alone.”

  Without a word, Niklas and Woodard take up their things and head for the exit.

  The second they’re gone, Victor drops the professional mask and is the man I know on the inside. He steps up behind me and I feel his hands hook about my waist.

  “Is that what you think, Izabel?” he says. “That no one here respects you, that you’re just here to share my bed?”

  “None of that matters right now, Victor”—I drop two teaspoons of sugar into my cup and begin to stir it with a plastic spoon—“Dina is all that matters to me. I have to get her back. If Fredrik doesn’t show, I’ll never forgive him.”

  Stir. Stir. Stir.

  Victor places his hand on top of mine and forces me to stop. He pushes the cup to the side. I don’t argue about it, but I don’t look at him either.

  “You are an asset to this organization,” he says, turning me around. He looks into my eyes, focused and determined. “I told you a long time ago that it will take you the rest of your life to learn all there is to know. And that many things you’ll never fully grasp. But you’re still an asset.”

  I push myself out from in front of him and walk toward the tables with the television screens.

  “That may be true,” I say. “I may help with things, but the real truth is”—I look over at him when he steps up next to me—“is that you could easily do without me here. Victor, I’m not looking for pity. I’m not waiting for you to tell me how wrong I am and then point out all of the reasons why—Nora is right about me being in over my head. I accept that. I don’t want to be lied to. But what I do want…well, I don’t want that to be the truth. I want to change it. I want to prove myself an asset and not just wear the crown because I share your bed.”

  Victor sighs heavily.

  “What are you saying, Izabel?”

  With my arms crossed, I look back over at him.

  “I want you to send me on a mission alone. A real one, not some training mission, but a real, money-paying, kill-or-be-killed mission like you’d send Niklas on. And I don’t want your men following me, either. I told you a long time ago, the night I dropped Sarai and became a part of your Order, that I don’t need a babysitter.” My gaze hardens on him. “And if I do need one, then I don’t belong here. I want to be treated like everyone else and not be given special treatment. It’s the only way I’ll ever truly learn.??
?

  The center of Victor’s throat moves as he swallows, the outline of his rigid, unshaved jaw shifts as he grinds his teeth.

  “I’ll think about it,” he says.

  “No,” I shoot back, “you’ll do this for me or things between us are going to get complicated.”

  His greenish-blue eyes become flecked with anger, but it remains settled there.

  “You know she’s manipulating you, right?” he says about Nora.

  “Yes I know that,” I answer right away, offended. “She’s manipulating every one of us—you don’t think I know that?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You think I went in there to prove a point, only for my plan to backfire?” My voice rises and my demeanor begins to change uncomfortably. “I knew what I was doing when I went in there, Victor. I knew that she’d trust me to open up if she could believe that my act was real, that I truly felt that way. But the thing is, it was easy to pull off not because I’m good at it, not because it’s one of my ‘skills’, but because it was how I felt. I was believable because I wasn’t lying. About anything.”

  “You’re not giving yourself any credit at all,” he says. “Typical.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean—typical?”

  Victor shakes his head. “The things you told Nora may have been true,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean you didn’t accomplish the very thing you went in there for. Just because everything you told her was true, doesn’t mean you’re not good at what you do.”

  “And what is it that I do exactly, Victor?”

  “Well, for starters, you can’t be satisfied with what you can do,” he says, his voice laced with accusation and sarcasm. “You’ve this incessant need to prove yourself, to me, to everyone else. Now you want me to send you on a mission alone. You’re not ready.”

  Neither of us says anything else for several long moments. I don’t want to argue about this right now—we have less than six hours left—but it’s definitely a topic for later. I won’t let Victor forget it and he knows as much.

  I feel the warmth of Victor’s hand touch my neck as he pushes my hair away from my shoulder and onto my back.

  I look over at him.

  “You are beautiful, Izabel. Your defiance provokes me. Your mouth infuriates me. Your obsession with independence makes me question everything you do. But I love every single thing about you.” He tilts his head slightly; his eyes regarding me quietly for a moment—my stomach flutters and my heart starts to break. “I know I’m not your first anything, but I hope that I’ll be your last everything.”

  There it is—my heart finally broke. Into a million fucking pieces.

  I look away from his eyes.

  Did Victor hear me tell Nora that I used to love Javier? I know he heard everything—even if he didn’t, I’m sure Niklas gladly filled him in.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, looking back at the screen. “I know I told you once that I never loved Javier, but I was ashamed admitting it back then.” I glance at the floor. “I’m still ashamed admitting it.”

  “You cannot help or control who you fall in love with,” he says. “It was a long time ago, and you were in an extraordinary situation, and I cannot fault you for it, or tell you that it was wrong.”

  My eyes meet his again. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  He hesitates and then answers, “No. As I said, it was a long time ago.”

  We don’t say anything to each other for a while.

  Then finally I step up closer to him and push up on my toes, kissing his lips.

  “You are my last everything,” I say softly, my eyes searching his.

  He smiles gently and we turn back to look at the screen together.

  “On another note,” he says minutes later, changing the subject, “putting the information together that I have on Nora and with what you just found out, I’m confident to be able to say that although I still have no idea why she’s here or who she’s here for, I believe her to be a part of the Shadow Sect.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  We look back into the screen together, watching Nora in her chair, calm as ever.

  “More appropriately named SC-4, or Source Contractors Number Four,” he begins. “It’s an organization more underground than The Order or the black markets. Its purpose isn’t to fulfill contract hits, but to produce contractors.”

  “Produce them?”

  “Yes. In the same way that Nora told you, members of the Shadow Sect are born and raised within their organization, trained as assassins and spies from the moment they leave the womb. They have no mother or fathers to care for them. They are born without identities and only later are assigned names. In a sense, Nora Kessler is more experienced than even I am, almost entirely numb to the basic human emotions, like love and sympathy, that would make her weak. My mother and my father may have been agents when I was born, but my mother was loving, and my father, although I rarely saw him, when I did, he treated me as any father would treat his son. I, just as Niklas did, had a normal childhood until we were taken away by The Order to be trained when we were just boys.” He nods toward the screen. “But with Nora, a life of killing came as naturally to her as spending time with my father came to me. If she is in fact from the SC-4, and I believe she is, it could mean a plethora of things, and what her business is here with us doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of them.”

  I glance over at Victor, his gaze focused on Nora, and I notice something in his eyes that makes me uncomfortable, something that feels like…not a sexual attraction that I should be jealous of, but something more like…intrigue. It’s as if he’s looking in on a rare specimen of sorts, something to be studied because of the wealth of information he can learn from it.

  I look back at Nora and I’m engulfed by several different conflicting emotions, none of them positive.

  “You mentioned you had something else on her?” I say, trying to ignore it. “Something to add to what I found out?”

  “Yes,” he says, turning away from the screen entirely, and putting his back to it. “I had Woodard run her DNA through the data files I took with me when I left The Order. I wanted to see if she matched up with any of the operatives that were under me when I worked for Vonnegut.” Victor leans against the edge of the table. “There were no matches with any of the operatives, but there was a match with one of our hits.”

  “Who?”

  “Solis,” he says. “Six years ago when we first began looking for Solis, like Niklas said when he was confessing to Nora, we did not have anything on this man except that he had been in contact with Claire. But several years later, we were closing in on him and he was shot. He got away and to this day he is believed to still be alive, but because he was shot we were able to get a blood sample.”

  “Nora’s related to this Solis, isn’t she?” I ask, my eyes filled with anticipation.

  “She is his daughter,” he confirms. “The DNA proves it, and the story she told you only solidifies the truth further.”

  “Who is Solis?”

  “He’s one of the leaders of the Shadow Sect who breeds people like her.”

  I look over Victor’s shoulder at Nora again.

  “So then this has to do with Claire,” I say and Victor looks somewhat surprised. And proud. He smiles and I go on. “Other than Solis, Claire is the only other connection.” I don’t even know why I’m saying this, or how any of it makes sense, but I feel it in my gut to be true.

  “I think you’re onto something,” Victor says, still smiling.

  I think he already came to this conclusion himself before I did, but he doesn’t want to ruin my ‘moment’. I let it slide this time.

  “So then do you by chance have a DNA sample on Claire?”

  “No,” he answers quickly. “Claire wasn’t a hit or an assignment of mine so I had no reason to keep records on her.”

  “But Niklas did?”

  “He retrieved samples from Claire, and he turned them over t
o The Order, but did not keep private records as I did. When he left The Order, all of the information he obtained as an operative, he left behind.”

  “So then that leaves us at a dead end,” I say.

  “There are no dead ends,” he says. “There is always a trail; sometimes they are just harder to find.”

  I think about Niklas and Claire again, and all of the things Nora and even Niklas have said to me. After a moment I work up the courage to say, “Do you think that…your love for me is a weakness, Victor? Do you ever worry that your feelings for me could get in the way of what you do?” I don’t want to know the answer, but I need to.

  Victor fits his hands about my elbows, brushing his thumbs against my skin. He looks into my eyes with a soft, longing look of study.

  “If it ever did, I would deal with it.”

  At first, I’m happy with his answer, until my paranoid mind starts running away with me again.

  “You’d deal with it how?” I ask with a nervous tenor in my voice and a look of uncertainty in my eyes.

  He sighs and then presses his lips to my forehead.

  “Izabel,” he says softly, “yesterday I knew what you were going to say but didn’t. When you were talking about how I couldn’t become someone I’m not simply because I’ve developed feelings for you.”

  I look away from his eyes, but he brings both hands up and holds my face within them, reclaiming my gaze.

  “I would never kill you,” he says with determination and sincerity. “I know my brother has probably filled your head with nonsense—he wouldn’t be Niklas if he didn’t try to hit you where it hurts the most—and I’ve known for a while that you still have concerns, but I could never hurt you”—his fingers put pressure on my cheeks—“I don’t expect you to simply believe me, just like that, and never think about it again, because you’re not naïve. You’ve been through too much to put your full trust in someone so fully and so easily—not even me—and I accept that. But look into my eyes, Izabel”—his hands squeeze my cheeks gently—“look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t see a man who would do anything for you. Tell me, with that uncanny ability you have to read others, that you don’t see a man who is in love with you, who would kill for you…and a man who would die for you.”