“Niklas needs time alone,” he says and I slam my palm against the table before he gets the last word all the way out.
“Fuck!” I say angrily.
Victor stands up quickly from the table in one swift motion, sending the paper he had been reading in his hand falling onto the floor. His chair screeches as it’s pushed back a little on his way up.
James freezes, looking between the both of us under nervous hooded eyes.
“Woodard,” Victor says demandingly, “leave us.”
Without hesitation, James gets up, tucks his laptop underneath his arm and makes his way out.
A nervous ball sits in my stomach. I know he’s pissed at me, but I feel very strongly about what Niklas must be going through, and I can’t find any acceptable reason that Victor wouldn’t be trying to make things right between them, right now.
“Is that what you think of me?” he asks, angry but at the same time wounded by the prospect. “You think that these files and these photographs”—he waves a hand at the table—“are more important to me than my brother? Look at me”—he points at his eyes with his index and middle fingers—“and tell me you think that way about me, because that’s exactly how it feels right now—I want to hear you say it.”
I swallow nervously and begin to shake my head. I’ve rarely ever seen him like this before, so I know I’ve overstepped my bounds, that I’ve hurt him, and already I feel terrible for making him feel this way.
“I’m sorry…I just…”
Victor’s shoulders slump into a long sigh and he looks back down at the table, but not at the things scattered atop it. He falls heavily back into his chair and slouches against it.
“Izabel,” he says more calmly, but not looking at me, “I knew it had to come out sometime. Not a day has gone by in the past six years when I look at my brother and I don’t feel like shit for what I did. Niklas may never forgive me, but he will understand.”
I walk toward him down the length of the massive table.
“You seem to forget that he tried to kill you,” Victor adds.
“I’ve never forgotten that,” I say, “and I don’t think I ever will.”
“You haven’t forgotten or forgiven,” Victor says, “but you understand.”
I didn’t expect that, so I say nothing at first.
“I feel guilty,” I finally respond, still feeling some kind of need to confess because the guilt is weighing so heavily on my shoulders.
Victor’s head raises and he eyes me with a look of disbelief and maybe even disappointment.
I lean my backside against the end of the table in front of him, crossing my arms.
“Why?” he asks harshly. “Why do you feel guilty? If you say because you’re alive and Claire isn’t, you’re—”
“I’m what?” I snap back, challenging him. “I’m stupid and weak for having a conscience? I’m naïve? Too emotional? Go on, Victor”—I point at my eyes with my index and middle fingers—“tell me what you really think of me.”
His gaze strays.
“I think your heart is too big,” he says and instantly my tough exterior falters. “That’s why I feel the need to protect you all the time. Not because you lack skill or because I don’t believe in you, but because your heart gets in the way. And if there’s any profession in the world that you cannot and should not put your heart into”—he points harshly at the floor— “it’s this one.”
I’m quiet for only a moment, letting his words sink in.
And then something enters my mind that I’m more afraid to say to him than my accusations about Niklas—but I can’t hold in how I really feel.
“Things would be better for you if I was…more like Nora, wouldn’t they?” I did everything I could not to make it sound bitter or accusing, because I don’t mean it that way.
He raises his eyes to me, and for a long time he doesn’t say anything.
“In a professional and emotional sense, yes,” he answers truthfully, “but not for any other reason. But if I wanted someone like Nora at my side, you wouldn’t be here—unlike her, I do not play games—so please, don’t accuse me of wild attractions to that woman, or start feeling insecure that I’m going to stray.”
“I don’t think that at all,” I say, and I mean it. “That’s not what this is about.”
I lift my body to sit on the table in front of him, my legs, covered in a tight black bodysuit, hang over the edge of the table at the bend of my knees. Victor moves his chair closer to sit between them, laying his arms across the tops of my thighs and fitting his hands about my waist. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows; veins run along the hard muscles of his lightly tanned forearms.
I run all of my fingers through the top of his short brown hair.
“Do you not trust me to take care of myself at all, Victor?” I ask with concern and not with accusation. “Is there not anything about me—from a professional and emotional standpoint—that you feel doesn’t need…improvement?”
Victor sighs.
“I trust your judgment, Izabel,” he says. “When it comes to others, you’re a good judge of character. You inherently know, before I even do usually, about a person on the inside. But I don’t trust you when you’re angry or out for vengeance. You tend to make rash decisions, jump head-first into dangerous situations without a plan—take Los Angeles and Arthur Hamburg for example. But when you’re calm and not acting out of anger or revenge, you know what you’re doing. And I trust you one hundred percent.”
I thank him with my eyes.
We sit quietly for a long time and then I say in a soft voice, “What if Niklas doesn’t come back?”
“He will come back,” Victor answers, but in his voice I sense that he may not be as confident in that assumption as he’d like. “He is my brother,” he goes on, “and he may hate me for a while or even want to kill me, but he’ll always be my brother and I’ll always do anything for him and he knows it.”
I think about that for a moment, letting the reality of the truth sink in—Victor is emotionally handicap not because of one, but two people in his life that he loves. It amazes me how he can hold it together, how he can continue to act as if nothing ever bothers him, that he has no feelings, or fears. On the outside, Victor is cold and calculated and detached almost all of the time—anyone who doesn’t know him on the level that I know him might think he was just like Fredrik, but the truth is that he carries more of a burden than any of us do. Victor feels responsible for me and Niklas. He has had to choose, twice now, between me and his brother. And when you have to choose between two people that you love, no matter which way you go there are painful consequences.
I lean over him and kiss the top of his head.
“I’m sorry for doubting you,” I say. “I really thought you were going to let Dina die and I’m sorry for not believing in you.” I’ve been wanting to say this to him since the very moment he confessed his secret to Nora, but I’ve been avoiding it out of shame and guilt. But more than that, I needed time to think about all that transpired because of it.
He looks up at me.
“And because I won’t lie to you,” he says, “just like I can’t lie to Niklas about Claire, the truth is that I almost did let her die.”
I nod. Because I understand. It was a choice between me and Niklas. And it was never going to be an easy choice.
“I know,” I tell him and drop my hands from his hair.
Then he curls his long fingers around mine between my legs and raises one hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles.
“What are you going to do about Dorian?”
He stands up and cups my face in his hands, pulling my lips to meet his.
After he kisses me, long and soft, his lips so warm and his tongue so tender, he says, “That will all depend on what Fredrik gets out of him.”
An uncomfortable shiver moves through me.
“You’re going to let Fredrik interrogate him?”
Victor moves from between my legs an
d begins stacking the photographs on the table into a small pile.
He doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself.
“When are you going to kill Nora?” he asks, steadily stacking things.
“Before the morning,” I say. “I wanted to deal with everything else before I see her again.”
He nods.
“Have you thought about it?” I ask. “About what she said?”
“No,” he answers and makes his way over to his briefcase with the photographs and files.
“Not even a little bit?”
He glances at me. “I’ve thought about it,” he says, “but not considered it, if that’s what you mean. I admit, it was a bold move, but she should have thought more about the consequences of her actions than she did. She killed one of my men in Mrs. Gregory’s house. She turned my brother against me. Kidnapped your loved ones and used them against you. And she has wasted a lot of my time, quite frankly.”
“True,” I say, pursing my lips contemplatively, “but she did kind of prove herself in the process.”
Victor raises his eyes momentarily and then clasps his briefcase shut with two clicks.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asks suspiciously.
I shake my head. “Not what you’re probably thinking—I don’t want her here as much as any of us—but I saw the way you were looking at her in the surveillance room. It uh, well, it just seemed like you wanted the chance to dissect her.”
A faint, almost invisible smile appears on his lips as he lifts the briefcase from the table with his hand clamped about the handle.
“You saw that, did you?”
I shrug and grin. “Yeah, I kinda did.”
“Well, the answer is no,” he says walking toward me. “She’s caused enough trouble. Kill her and be done with it.”
He kisses me on the lips one more time and heads toward the door.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he says from the doorway. But just before he walks out he stops and looks back at me.
“And I’ll talk to Niklas soon.”
I nod with a little smile of support and he leaves.
20
Izabel
The cell floor has only ten cells left which Victor wanted to keep for reasons just like this one—detaining traitors and other kinds of prisoners. The cells are named A through J. I head for cell C with a lot of mixed emotions and a heavy heart. I don’t want to think about what Dorian will go through with Fredrik later, but as I pass down the dingy hallway and cells A and B that are wide open and empty, it’s all I can think about. I don’t want to think that Dorian is a traitor, either—maybe the things he told Victor are true. Maybe he’s not our enemy and never intended to be. But he lied. And he worked with us under false pretenses. And he gave information about us to the government and that alone is enough for Victor to kill him.
I step up to the heavy steel door and push up on my toes to see inside through the small box Plexiglas window.
Dorian is laying against a cot on a metal bed jutting from the wall. Bloody bandages are wrapped about both shoulders. All he’s wearing are his dark-colored jeans and his Rolex. His boots have been kicked off onto the floor, laying sloppily with the long strings strewn against the tile.
Reaching up my hand, I tap on the window with the tip of my finger.
Dorian raises his blond head and after a second of looking at the blurred face in the window and trying to distinguish it he mouths ‘Izabel?’ and with difficulty forces his wounded body from the cot to sit upright. His face twists with pain and he stops, takes a deep breath and pushes himself to his feet and walks to the door.
I crouch down in front of it and slide away the metal covering over the food slot that’s long and wide enough to pass a tray through.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Feel like shit,” he says and sits down on the floor on his bottom, wincing with every abrupt movement. All I can see now are his bright blue eyes and his forehead through the opening.
“Sorry,” I say. “Hey, I wanted to come here and tell you that Tessa is fine.”
His eyes light up a bit and relief washes over him through all the pain and discomfort.
“In fact,” I go on, “she was fine the whole time. Nora didn’t hurt her at all.”
“Where is she now?”
“James took her back home.”
Dorian nods.
“Thank you, Izabel. For letting me know.”
I nod back.
After a few long seconds that feel more like minutes, I break the silence with the inevitable.
“Did you tell Victor the truth? You know he’ll find out, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But I did tell him the truth. There’s more to tell him, like what kind of information I passed along to my superiors, but I wasn’t holding any of that from him. I guess Victor just wasn’t ready to hear it.”
“Why did you crack at all?” I ask. “I mean…well, I thought guys like you were trained not to break, not even to save the life of someone you love. Set aside lying to us about who you are; the fact that you broke in itself is a serious flaw in your character, Dorian. You gave up your identity not only to us, but to an innocent civilian. That tells us you’d be willing to give us up under the right circumstances.”
Dorian shakes his head.
“I know it looks that way,” he says, “but like I told Victor, I was eventually going to tell him who I was, regardless—I was given authorization. I just had to do it sooner than expected.”
“And what if,” I say, “you were never given that authorization? Would you have admitted it?”
He sighs.
“If I said no, would you believe me?” It wasn’t really a question.
“What about Tessa?” I point out. “It seemed easy for you to tell her.”
“Yeah, well that’s a different kind of weakness,” he admits. “Still an inexcusable one, but not unforgivable like being a traitor. Look, I know I’m probably going to die in here; it’s a hazard in this line of work. I accept it and I’m not afraid of it, but I don’t want to die a traitor.”
After a brief moment of pause I say, “I wish I could say I don’t think you’re a traitor, but what you did…I don’t know, it’s hard for me to think of you as anything else…but as a person and a friend, I think you’re genuine.”
“Thanks.”
He pauses and asks, “Is she dead?”
“I’m going to kill her soon.”
“Yeah, well put a bullet in that bitch’s shoulders before you kill her,” he snaps. “Make it all dramatic n’ shit—tell her ‘this is for Dorian!’” He laughs at his own joke but winces and a hissing noise pushes through his lips as he sucks in a breath sharply in response to more pain.
I smile and watch his eyes fall away from the door slot as he lowers his head.
“Is your mom gonna be all right?” he asks.
“Yeah, she was fine when James picked her up, just like everyone else.”
“This has been a really fucked up forty-eight hours,” he says. “I guess you’re not at liberty to tell me what was this big confession she wanted, and from which one of us?”
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
He nods.
“Understandable,” he says and then after a few quiet seconds adds, “I guess that means Gustavsson showed up after all.”
“Yeah.” It’s all I can say; I can’t bear to tell him the rest where he and Fredrik are concerned.
The sound of dress shoes tapping against the floor echoes down the hallway—two pairs to be precise. I swallow uncomfortably and look back at Dorian’s eyes through the slot in the door. He knows. He shakes his head and laughs dryly under his breath.
“He always did want to torture me,” he says. “I think the guy even had wet dreams about it—he couldn’t stand me.”
I push myself out of a crouched position and stand upright, grimacing at the pain and stiffness in my legs for being in the
same position for so long. Dorian’s looking back at me now through the Plexiglas window in the top of the door.
Fredrik and Victor come around the corner at the far end of the hall; two tall and frightening men, all business, in dark suits against the dingy white walls and floor. Judge and executioner. Emotionless. Merciless.
I look back at Dorian.
“Whatever happens to me,” he says, “do me a favor and make sure that Tessa gets all of my money. The key to my safety deposit box and other personal things I’d like her to have is hidden in the sole of my left boot. Will you tell Tessa that I love her and I’m sorry for being such a dick?”
“I will,” I tell him.
I leave Dorian and walk toward Victor and Fredrik as they make their way down the center of the hall.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I ask Fredrik, stepping right up in front of him.
I’m sick of him avoiding me, and if I don’t try to force him to talk, I know he never will and he may slip out of this building right after interrogating Dorian, and I’ll not see him again for another month.
Fredrik starts to walk around and right past me, but I cut him off, stopping him in his tracks.
“Izabel,” Victor says, “we have important matters to tend to.”
“I know, but this’ll just take a couple of minutes.” I look at Victor through pleading eyes.
He doesn’t want to give me my way, but he does, walking away in the direction of Dorian’s cell and leaving me alone with Fredrik. I hear the key jangling in the cell door and then the sound of the door booming closed as Victor goes inside.
“I don’t have time for this,” Fredrik says.
“Make time. Give me two minutes. It’s all I ask. Please.”
He looks right at me now, his dark blue eyes framed by dark hair, piercing me with irritation.
“I can’t spare two minutes.”
“Yes you can,” I say intently.
He starts to walk past me again, but I grab his arm, the material of his jacket caught between my fingers. His head turns sideways to look at me and his expression grows darker. His teeth are gritting behind an unshaven jawline.
Finally, I let the other side of me take over, the side that is sick of his shit, and instead of having a heart-to-heart talk with the man who was once my brother, I can’t stop myself from telling him off instead.