Seeds of Iniquity

  “What are you saying?” I ask.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be able to break her,” Victor says. “She’ll tell him some things, just to ease her pain, but she’s not going to tell him anything crucial to why she came here.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong,” I say.

  “I could very well be, Izabel,” he says, finally looking over at me. “I hope that I am.”

  He looks back at the screen.

  It takes me a second longer, but finally I do too.

  “And why are you here?” Fredrik asks Nora.

  She doesn’t answer and so he starts to cut, opening a fresh wound on her already disfigured back flesh.

  My hands are trembling.

  “How did you know about Izabel Seyfried?”

  She cries out in pain, tears streaming from her eyes.

  “I didn’t!” she says, shocking me into submission. “I knew some things about her. I knew enough! I found out what everyone else knows. About her being a sex slave in Mexico. About Javier. And I put a logical scenario together based on her circumstances. I didn’t know her secret. I didn’t know until she told me herself! Just like with Dorian Flynn!”

  I can’t move. I can’t breathe. It takes me a long time to raise my focused gaze from the screen to look at Victor and Niklas.

  “She didn’t know,” I say absently, more to myself than to them. “How…how did she—.”

  “She really is good,” James says.

  “And what of Niklas Fleischer?” Fredrik inquires, pressing the blade of his knife to her back but not cutting it. “How did you know about Niklas and Claire?”

  “The same way I knew about Izabel and Dorian!” she shouts. “I did my research. I had six years to follow all of you. Six years to plot this very night!”

  “Did you tell Fredrik these things?” I ask Victor. It dawns on me that for Fredrik to know about any of this, for him to be able to ask these specific questions, that he must’ve talked to one of us.

  “Fredrik has been on his way here since yesterday,” Victor answers. “I didn’t know until tonight. He was in Sweden. When he arrived at the airport here, he called me and I filled him in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you wanted to be left alone.”

  “And because you couldn’t be found,” Niklas chimes in. “I tried calling you, until your phone vibrated on the table next to me.”

  I look back at the screen.

  “Why are you here, Nora Kessler?” Fredrik asks. “And where is the location of Dina Gregory and Tessa Flynn?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  He cuts her again, and although the act itself is enough to bring Nora to her knees, what strikes me the most is that she doesn’t move. Nora is unbound. Nothing is keeping her from fighting back, from rounding on Fredrik and taking that knife from him to protect herself. Yet, she does nothing. She willingly stands against that wall with her arms raised above her, and is letting Fredrik torture her. I know she can fight. She would very likely give Fredrik a tough time. She did all of us. She proved she has enough skill to fight back and keep Fredrik from hurting her. But she doesn’t move.

  “She’s not going to break,” I say with realization, my gaze fixed on the screen. “Victor…she’s not going to tell him. She’s letting him do this to her…”

  Fredrik’s going to kill her.

  I burst out of the room, nearly tripping over that stupid rolling chair on my way out, and take off down the stairs.

  “IZABEL!” I hear Niklas call out after me.

  But I don’t stop. I keep on running until I make it to the third floor, and I run up to the door and punch in the code.

  “Izabel! What the fuck are you doing?” Niklas is coming up behind me. “STOP!” his voice booms through the hall.

  I rush into the room.

  “Fredrik, don’t you fucking kill her!” I scream. “I can’t let Dina die! PLEASE!” Tears pour from my eyes.

  He doesn’t even look at me.

  Nora shrieks as he cuts her.

  “CONFESS!” she cries out just as Niklas, Victor and James burst into the room behind me. “I say nothing until I get my confession!”

  Fredrik cuts her again.

  I look to and from Victor and Fredrik, my eyes filled with desperation and conflict.

  Nora’s body begins to slide downward toward the floor, her bloody hands leaving smears against the brick.

  Tears stream from my eyes. Dina…

  I feel like I’m going to faint.

  “Stop,” I hear Victor’s voice.

  A sudden uncanny silence fills the room when Fredrik stops. I’m afraid to look up, afraid to see that Fredrik’s blade finally went across Nora’s throat.

  But I look anyway.

  And she’s alive.

  Nora falls the rest of the way against the floor; her blood staining everything.

  Fredrik steps aside and Victor moves closer.

  “Confess you sonofabitch,” Nora says, looking right at Victor.

  I look at him with confusion, but he looks at no one other than Nora.

  “You know I’ll do it,” Nora says, gasping for air. “You know I’ll let them die.”

  She will. If she could withstand Fredrik’s torture, the torture the SC-4 inflicted on her, I know she will…

  Niklas steps up beside me. I feel his hand hook around my waist so he can hold me up. I didn’t even realize I was on my way to finding the floor, too.

  “Wait! What about Dorian?” I call out. “He has to be here—.”

  “She doesn’t care if Flynn is here or not,” Victor says, still only looking at Nora. “The only person in this room she cares hears what I have to say…is my brother.”

  I look up at Niklas standing next to me and I feel his hand go slack on my waist. He’s looking right at the back of Victor’s head with confusion at rest in his eyes.

  “Confess!” Nora says one last time through a heavy breath and with trembling hands.

  “I killed Claire,” Victor says with his back to us. “I killed the woman my brother loved.”

  Niklas’ hand completely falls away from my waist.

  18

  Izabel

  Unable to speak, or find my thoughts, I look back at Niklas with a look of shock on my face that quickly turns to heartbreak.

  Niklas doesn’t move. He just stands there in some sort of incomprehensible void. His arms down at his sides. Is he looking at me? Or is he looking at Victor behind me? Whatever he’s looking at I know he doesn’t see it.

  I’ve never felt so guilty being alive.

  “Claire was my sister,” I hear Nora’s exhausted and pain-filled voice say. “I loved her. She was my weakness. She was why Solis cut off the tip of my finger, why I was beat to near death for being compromised. I was supposed to be reformed by what they did to me. But it only made me worse, brought out a part of me that not even watching Victor Faust shoot my sister dead, brought out. I was there that night. Six years ago. I was there when Victor arrived before Niklas, and killed Claire and the men who were sent to kill her, before I could save her.”

  My eyes dart back and forth between Niklas and Victor. My hands are shaking. My insides feel twisted and sour. I shake my head repeatedly, not wanting to believe what I just heard, hoping to shake the truth from my mind.

  Niklas still hasn’t moved.

  Victor finally turns to look back at him.

  “Nothing I can say will ever make this right, brother,” Victor says to Niklas.

  “Then don’t say anything,” Niklas says as he raises his head and his eyes lock on Victor’s, “…brother. Don’t say anything to me, or I’ll kill you myself.”

  Victor just looks at him and I’m choking on the tension in the room.

  Niklas turns and goes to leave.

  “Wait…” I come up behind him, collapsing my hand about his wrist, “Niklas—.”

  “Leave me alone, Izabel,” he says calmly, pushing my hand away and
then he heads for the door.

  James, riddled with the same kind of shock as me, steps out of his way, mostly for fear of Niklas moving him out of the way.

  “Will you be needing anything else?” Fredrik asks Victor, uninterested in everything that has transpired.

  It takes me a long time to break away from Niklas and my desperate need to run after him, to console him, and finally I look back at Victor and Fredrik and Nora.

  Fredrik is standing at the table, cleaning off his tools with a rag and a small spray bottle filled with bleach solution, and then placing the items back inside the briefcase.

  Victor looks at Nora.

  “Where are they?”

  “429 South Padre Drive,” Nora answers. “24 Arlin Avenue is where you’ll find the daughters”—she still has no idea that James’s daughters escaped—“and the old lady—12421 Griffins Street. All of them are here in Boston.”

  Victor turns to James.

  “Take some men,” he demands. “Go with them and call me as soon as you see them well and alive.” He looks back down at Nora as James is leaving hurriedly out the door.

  “That will be all for now,” Victor tells Fredrik even though he’s not looking at him. “But don’t go anywhere. I have another job for you.”

  Fredrik nods, takes up his briefcase and walks past us.

  He doesn’t even look at me and it cuts me to the bone.

  As much as I want to run out after him just like Niklas, I don’t. And right now if I had to choose which one of them to run after, it would be Niklas.

  “How does it feel?” Nora asks icily from a puddle of blood on the floor. “To lose someone you love? I told you that I’d get what I wanted either way.”

  And she did—if Victor didn’t confess, he would’ve lost me because of Dina, but because he did confess, he lost his brother.

  I don’t know what to think, or how to feel, or who to blame, or—I don’t know anything and it’s killing me inside. The man I thought I knew, the man I love with everything in me, isn’t who I thought he was. I think…

  I don’t understand any of this!

  “Victor?” I say, stepping up behind him. “Why?” It’s all I can get out.

  “I will tell you later,” he says. “Now isn’t the time.”

  I’m so angry with him. Who the hell is this person? I’m so confused. He chose me. He chose to confess to save Dina because he loves me. But why do I feel so awful? Why do I want to run away from all of this and hide?

  “We are even,” Nora says—her face is beginning to swell from the back teeth Fredrik removed.

  Victor pulls his gun from the back of his pants.

  I step up in front of him.

  “Don’t,” I tell him. “Let her speak—we have to wait anyway in case she lied about the addresses.” I can’t believe I’m even having to tell him this; he knows these things better than I do, so his quickness to want to end her life tells me just how angry he really is inside. So angry that he’s blinded by it, which is a rare thing to see in Victor.

  His eyes pass over mine and he gives in, leaving the gun hanging down at his side.

  I turn to Nora.

  “Say what you have to say,” I tell her. “I can’t stop him from killing you, and honestly I don’t really want to after what you’ve done to us, but say what you have to say.”

  Nora grimaces as she scoots over to sit against the wall, pressing her shoulder to it instead of her wounded back. She stops to catch her breath and let the pain move through her before she starts to speak.

  “Claire was born with a defect,” Nora says. “A heart murmur. Anything that could potentially put one of us at risk, or compromise our missions later in life, would make us unfit to be part of the Sect. When Claire was born, she was sold as an infant to a family through an adoption. It’s how the Sect made some of their money—selling the defect babies instead of killing them. Because they’re just babies there’s nothing for them to have seen or remember about the Sect, so they aren’t considered a threat. Just money-makers.”

  I sit down on the chair and listen intently.

  “But the defects are watched all their lives by the Sect,” she goes on. “Just as a precaution. I was commissioned to be the one who watched Claire. I didn’t know she was my sister until much later, but to make a long story short, I found out through a blood test after I had befriended her, and something inside of me…changed. She was a sweet girl. Innocent”—she eyes Victor coldly with blame—“I became protective of her. And because she was my sister, I started lying to the Sect about everything. They found out. And that’s when they realized I had been compromised.”

  She struggles to adjust her position but just ends up slouched against the wall in the exact same way. She takes a deep breath and continues.

  “I went rogue after they tried to reform me. Solis and the SC-4 couldn’t find me. Not a trace even when I was in plain sight—I learned from the best and I used every skill that I was taught to evade them.” She lowers her eyes. “But I couldn’t stay away from Claire. I wanted to protect her, because I knew the Sect would eventually go after her if they couldn’t find me. Claire knew I was her sister, but I never told her what else I was, or who was after her, so it was hard in the beginning to make her believe me when I told her she was in danger and I convinced her to move. But she did and I made sure she was safe while I let her live her life. Claire fell in love—with Niklas—and I was intrigued by it so I never tried to put a stop to it and I never had any suspicions. I was free, experiencing a strange new life—from the shadows, of course; I couldn’t involve myself any more than I had—feeling a plethora of emotions that I’d never felt before. And it made me weak, my intrigue made me blind. Eventually they found her and came for her.”

  “Those men in the house,” I say, “were they part of the SC-4?”

  “Yes,” she says, and then she eyes Victor again, “but they weren’t the only ones sent to kill Claire.”

  I want to look back at Victor, too, but I can’t will myself to do it. I have so many questions for him, and I know that he holds all of the answers that will put everything else to rest, but like he said, this isn’t the time or place.

  I stand from the chair and pace the tile in my boots, my arms crossed over my chest.

  Then I stop and look down at Nora again.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me, or Niklas?” I ask. “If vengeance is what you wanted, why this elaborate game?”—I gesture a hand in front of me—“Why spend six years of your life plotting and spying not only on Victor and Niklas, but on the rest of us? Why not just take one of us out?” I manage to look at Victor this time, wondering if he might be thinking the same thing. His eyes pass over mine slowly, as if he wants to keep them there but doesn’t feel right about it, and then he looks back down at Nora with all the hatred he can muster in a seemingly emotionless face.

  Nora forces herself from the wall, a grimace twisting her features as she sits upright. She never tries to cover her naked breasts, but I guess I wouldn’t care much about shame either if I had just been tortured.

  “I didn’t just come here for vengeance,” she says and looks right at Victor. “I came here because I want to join your Order.”

  I feel my eyes widen in my face.

  I look over at Victor, wordless.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Victor says.

  “No,” Nora says, shaking her head slowly, “actually I’m very serious. Why do you think I did all this?” She tries to gesture a hand, but pain shoots through her when she lifts her arm. She drops it back down. “This was my way of proving my abilities. And what better way to show you all what I’m capable of than to give you the grand tour?”

  Victor shakes his head with disbelief.

  “You are insane,” he says.

  I’m not so sure…

  “You could use someone like me in your organization, Faust,” she goes on. “I am everything you’ve ever wanted in an operative, Victor”—her wor
ds burn me even if it wasn’t her intention—“and you can’t deny it as much as you despise me right now. I have proven myself in more ways than one and even willingly allowed myself to be tortured by the man whose very name spreads fear and paranoia through anyone who hears it in our underground world—I cannot be broken.” She narrows her gaze on him and adds, “And I can no longer be compromised,” and for a moment she is the same cunning, wicked woman she had been before she was tortured.

  I look at Victor. He looks only at her. And while it’s probably just to maintain his unwavering hatred for her, it still makes me uncomfortable. But I brush it off because I want to be strong. I want Victor to know that I trust him and that I’m not threatened by her. Even though I am.

  “Why in the hell would you want to work for the same man who killed your sister?” I ask.

  “Because it is in the past,” she says as her eyes fall on me, though her head remains facing Victor. Then she looks at him again. “And because, like I said, we’re now even.”

  Victor’s gaze breaks and he steps up to me and takes me gently by the arm.

  “Let’s go,” he says, and walks with me toward the wide open door.

  I follow alongside him, looking back at Nora as she tries to get to her feet.

  “You need me!” she shouts. “You know I’m a rare and valuable weapon, Faust!”

  With any other person I might think her delusional and conceited hearing a claim like that, but with Nora, it’s absolutely true—she is a rare and valuable weapon.

  But that doesn’t mean shit to me.

  Hopefully it doesn’t to Victor.

  “I would teach Izabel everything I know!”

  I stop for about two seconds upon hearing her words, but continue walking right out the door with Victor tugging on my arm.

  “I HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!” she calls out as the door begins to close. “YOU NEED ME!”

  The door shuts off her voice in an instant.

  Victor stops me in the hallway.

  “She dies as soon as we know that they’re safe,” he says.

  He won’t look at me. Silence fills the narrowed space.

  “Why did you kill her?” I ask softly. “Why did you kill Claire?” My heart breaks all over again recalling the look on Niklas’ face when Victor confessed.