Seeds of Iniquity

  “You’re an asshole,” I lash out, pushing the words through my teeth. “Look, I understand, I really do, and if I were you I know I’d probably feel the same way. But I wouldn’t shut out the people who care about me.” He pushes past me, intent on ignoring me, but I move around in front of him and shove both hands against his chest, pushing his tall, solid stature, but he barely moves. He just looks lividly down into my angry face.

  But he stops—not that he wants to hear it, but that he wants me to get it over with so he can be free of me.

  “Do what you want,” I say with acid in my voice, “I don’t care anymore. If you want to shut me out, fine, but I’m going to say what I have to say before you go in there and…do your thing.” A snarl manipulates my mouth.

  Fredrik just stands there looking at me with his briefcase clutched down at his side.

  “Nora Kessler told Niklas something when he was in that room with her, something that stuck with me long after he’d left. And as much as I despise her, I can’t deny that she was right.”

  I point my finger sternly at his chest.

  “You need love to survive, Fredrik,” I say with harsh conviction. “You’re this dark, frightening man who is so cold on the outside that Hell would freeze over if you were ever sent there…but on the inside, you’re a broken man who needs love more than anyone because of the life you were forced to live, because of the horrific things you were forced to endure.” I shake my head with sadness in my heart. “You need love more than anything because it’s the one thing you’ve been deprived. You shove me away because I meant something to you, because out of all of us here, you thought of me as family. You shut me out because of how many times love destroyed you.”

  I step up closer and my eyes never leave his, the anger in them never wanes. His cold, but emotionless face hasn’t shifted.

  “We all need something to survive, Fredrik—Victor needs to be in control; James needs acceptance; Niklas needs something to call his own; Dorian needs to make peace with himself…and me…I need a lot of things, but I haven’t figured out which one of them I need most. But you…you need love, and you can’t push it away forever. It’s not in your nature.”

  I step back and away from him and just look at him for a second, studying his unyielding face, his deep blue eyes, searching for something, anything, but he gives me nothing. I’m so angry! I want him to say something. Argue with me, tell me how wrong I am. Tell me I’m stupid and young and I can’t possibly know how he’s feeling or what he’s going through.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Shaking my head with a sour look on my face and surrender in my heart, I gesture a hand toward Dorian’s cell.

  “I guess I’ll see you around,” I say, turn on my heels and leave.

  I don’t look back as I walk the length of the long hallway, but I can sense that Fredrik stands there in the same spot at least until I round the corner at the end.

  What is happening to us? To all of us.

  Niklas is nowhere to be found. I’ve tried calling him and I left the building and went driving around Boston, checking out the bars he likes, but it’s an hour before dawn and I’ve still found nothing. Niklas doesn’t want to be found and I can’t help but wonder and worry for how long. What if he really never comes back? What if he can’t ‘understand’ why Victor did what he did, and they become enemies? Things can’t be left this way, they just can’t…

  Dorian may be dead, or on his way there. Fredrik is a lost cause who will eventually self-destruct. Niklas has disappeared. Can our organization—our family—recover from what Nora Kessler did, or what she played a very large hand in doing?

  I’m beginning to think it can’t.

  21

  Izabel

  With my gun in-hand, I open the door to the room where Nora has been caged for over two days.

  She looks up at me from the chair.

  “Let’s go,” I tell her with the backward tilt of my head.

  “Where to?” she says curiously as she stands up in her leather pants and blood-stained face and blonde hair. She had slipped the silk blouse back on as well, despite the cuts on her back.

  “You know where,” I tell her calmly.

  Nora walks toward me on her bare feet—her high-heels have been tossed against the floor—and she makes a face as the pain in her back and wherever else Fredrik hurt her, argues her decision to move.

  “Why don’t you just shoot me in here?” she asks.

  I don’t answer, playing it off as unimportant, but the truth is that before I kill her there are a few things I want to say to her, things that I don’t want anyone else to hear.

  We walk the hallway slow and deliberately, Nora in front of me, me at her back with my gun down at my side, and I lead her outside the back of the building in the darkness and in the quiet.

  “On your knees,” I tell her, pointing the gun toward the ground beside a dumpster.

  Without question or argument or an ounce of fear, she goes down on her knees, already knowing to put her back to me.

  “I would ask why you won’t beg for your life,” I say, pointing the gun at the back of her head as I stand a few feet away, “but I already know the answer.”

  “What’s the answer?” she asks, looking at the brick wall in front of her.

  “You would never plead for your life.”

  I curl my index finger around the trigger.

  “And you would be right,” she confirms.

  The ocean and the distant sound of cars rushing over the freeway are faint, but are the only sounds to be heard. The stench of the dumpster just feet from Nora, and the other five lining the back of the nearby buildings make the air foul. A single light shines in the distance from a pole, beaming down on the entrance to a parking garage, but the only light here is from the moon, making Nora’s dark figure appear like a shadow, except for her blonde hair that blankets her back and shoulders like a disheveled mess of white straw.

  I look at her for a long time, almost feeling like I should force her to face me, because if I’m going to execute her I should have the courage to look her in the eyes. But I don’t. I’m not brave enough to look someone in the eyes and then take their life from them—not like this. An unarmed woman. On her knees. Behind a building. Beside a stinking dumpster. It would haunt me forever.

  Time passes and I don’t realize how much until Nora begins to turn her head at an angle to get a glimpse of me behind her.

  “Something tells me you’re not afraid to kill me,” she says, “so, what’s the holdup?”

  I pause and say, “I wanted to ask you something first.”

  She laughs lightly.

  “Oh sure,” she says sarcastically with the shrug of her shoulders, “because I’m so inclined to answer your questions before you blow my brains out.” She looks back once with a smile and turns to face the wall again. “Go ahead and ask whatever you want, but you can expect only one kind of answer from me.”

  “What kind would that be?”

  “The truthful kind,” she says.

  “That’s the only kind I want.”

  “Then by all means”—she twirls the hand with the marred pinky finger in the air beside her—“ask away.”

  Hesitating for a long, tense moment, I think about my question and what her truthful answer could mean.

  “Do you think a man like Victor Faust can ever truly be in love?”

  Nora is very quiet, as if my question has stripped the sarcasm from her and replaced it with intrigue. Then she turns her head to the side again, allowing me to see the outline of her nose and cheek in the moonlit darkness that shrouds her.

  “That’s a bold question,” she says. “And one that I think you already know the answer to.”

  “Maybe so, but I want to know yours.”

  “You mean,” she says as if to correct me, “you want to know the reason behind my answer.”

  “Whatever—just tell me.”

  I sense her smiling, but I don?
??t see it on her face, and I don’t get any spiteful or pleasurable feelings from her—just honesty.

  She looks back at the wall in front of her again.

  “Anyone can be in love, Izabel,” she says in an even voice, “and I can tell by the look in that man’s eyes that he is in love with you”—(I want to be pleased with that answer, but I’m not because I know that’s not all of it)—“but a man like Victor Faust,” she goes on, “can’t stay in love forever. Like Fredrik’s type can’t live without love, Victor’s type can’t live with it. And the more that it gets in the way of his duties, and the more human you make him become, the closer you push him to his breaking point.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” My gun hand is trembling. “Are you saying that no matter what, he’s going to put an end to us?”

  “No,” she says, “but if you want to keep him and what you have with him in-tact, you need to lose what’s left of your personal life, your humanity. Your love for Dina Gregory. Your school-girl jealousy. Your conscience. It’s enough that he loves you and has to protect you, but he won’t—he can’t—continue to protect and take into consideration everything you drag in with you from the outside.”

  “What makes you think he can’t?” Tears sting the backs of my eyes, but I don’t let them fall.

  Nora turns her head to look at me again.

  “Because he’s just like me,” she says not with malice, but with truth. “And one way or another, he’ll instinctively do whatever it takes to restore the balance to the only life he’s ever known.”

  I shake my head repeatedly, not wanting to believe her, wanting to go ahead and shoot her just for saying these things to me. But I can’t. Not yet.

  A hard knot moves down the center of my throat.

  “But you loved Claire,” I point out, grasping for anything I can that might turn the truth on its head. “You would’ve done anything for her.”

  “Yes,” she admits, “I would have…and that’s why every day she was alive I contemplated killing her.”

  My heart stops beating as if she’d just pulled the plug from me.

  “I loved my sister so much,” she begins, “that I knew I couldn’t leave her alive because I’d always worry about her and it was making me weak.”

  “You were going to kill her?” I can hardly believe this, but then again I can. “You were going to kill your own sister? Your innocent sister who never did anything to you and who had no idea what you were involved in?” My words are laced with disbelief and disgust.

  “Yes. If Victor hadn’t killed Claire, I would have done it myself eventually—and yes, I was vengeful because he killed her, but she was my sister and she was mine to kill, not Victor’s.” She pauses and says with sincerity, “I know that’s a lot to stomach, Izabel—I know. I know it’s impossible for you to understand. But I don’t feel emotions or see things the way that you do. I never will because I was raised from the moment I was born, to be the way I am—it’s no different from you being the way you are. We all have our ‘unforgivable’ faults, I suppose that just happens to be my most notable.”

  My mouth is incredibly dry. My heart isn’t beating fast or slow, but it’s not beating right, it’s like it can’t figure out how. Does Victor contemplate killing me like Nora contemplated killing Claire? Could he really get rid of me because I’m interfering in his life as a killer? Could he kill Niklas? A part of me tells me she’s just crazy and that Victor may be like her in many ways, but not in the most extreme ways—and I believe that! My heart tells me that he would never resort to that. He sent me away once, back to Arizona, and had no intention in ever seeing me again…but…but he did. He watched over me the entire time.

  No! I can’t let her get to me like this. I won’t let her.

  I round my chin and reclaim my control.

  Nora has proven her manipulation skills far surpass mine or that of anyone I’ve ever met. She can make a person believe just about anything she wants, make the strongest-minded person doubt himself, or the weakest-minded person believe she’s something extraordinary. I know how she works—I experienced it firsthand—and I won’t make that mistake again. Maybe the things she’s telling me aren’t a manipulation tactic at all, and they are truly nothing more than her opinions, but I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to listen to my heart, and my heart is telling me that…only some of the things she’s saying are true…and the part about losing what’s left of my personal life, I believe is one of them.

  “He doesn’t know...,” I say, though I’m not sure why I’m telling her. I stare at the wall above her head; the gun is still trained on her, but my mind is off somewhere else.

  “He doesn’t know what?” Nora asks.

  A lot of time passes before I answer.

  “…He turned the audio to the room off when I confessed to you,” I say distantly, seeing only the bricks in front of me. “He doesn’t know that I had a baby with Javier…that I have a seven-year-old son or daughter out there somewhere.”

  “And you’d do better to keep it that way.” I think it’s her way of also telling me she’ll keep my secret.

  I look down at her, surprised she hasn’t moved, because in my brief moment of distraction, someone with Nora’s skill could’ve easily reacted quickly enough to knock me from my feet and took the gun from me.

  I hold the gun more firmly, realizing.

  She looks at the wall again, waiting and ready for me to kill her. No fears. No regrets. No attempts to save her own life. Nora Kessler has accepted her fate.

  “I trust your judgment, Izabel,” he says. “When it comes to others, you’re a good judge of character.”

  I feel like I’m trapped within my own spinning mind. I look to and from the barrel of my gun and the back of Nora’s head.

  “How important is honesty to you?” I ask her.

  “I have no reason to lie,” she says, “unless it’s my job to lie—why do you ask?”

  “Then tell me,” I say, ignoring her inquiry, “turn around and face me so I can see your eyes, and tell me why you want to be a part of our organization.”

  After a moment, Nora turns around, still on her knees, to face me. She looks up at me with curiosity.

  Then she smiles with disbelief and shakes her head.

  “Before you make a fool of yourself, Izabel,” she says, “if you want me to hang around to train you just because you want to keep Victor, you might as well shoot me.”

  I push the gun toward her threateningly.

  “Just answer the question,” I demand.

  Her curious eyes study my face, my reactions, and then she says, “I went to a lot of trouble to prove myself to Victor Faust—to all of you. I could’ve hurt or killed the people you love, but I didn’t and had no intention in doing so. I may have forced you all to expose at least one of your darkest secrets, and I may have done more damage than intended, but none of you can blame me for the things that you have done, the secrets you’ve kept from one another—those are your mistakes, not mine.” She grimaces and adjusts her kneeling position just slightly. “But to answer your question, I want to be a part of this Order because I lost the only place I ever belonged when I left the SC-4. I can’t just go out into the world, find a job and meet friends and fall in love and act like a normal human being. Because I’m not. And I never will be. And I can’t go back to the Sect because they’ll kill me on the spot for desertion. Not to mention for killing Solis.” Finally, she sits fully on her bottom, unable to stay up on her knees any longer. “I was born—literally—to do this. It’s all I know. And that’s all I have to say.”

  I believe her. Regardless of how manipulative she is, facts don’t lie, either.

  “Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” I ask. “If you’re not afraid of death, and you can’t live any other way, why not end it?”

  “Because suicide is the coward’s way out.”

  I nod and leave it at that.

  “But what’s to stop you from trying
to kill one of us?” I tilt my head thoughtfully, looking down at her with challenge. “Since you seem to have no conscience.”

  “I’m all business, Izabel,” she answers immediately. “And I’m loyal. It’s in my blood to do as I’m told by my superiors. I do it without question or argument, and I do it well. And if I wanted to kill you, I could’ve the second you brought me out here. I could’ve taken that gun from you moments ago when you were off in la-la land thinking about that secret of yours and deciding not to tell Victor about it, as you were going to do. Probably tonight when you laid down to sleep with him.” (How does she know these things?) “If I wanted to kill any of you, I wouldn’t have spent six years planning this night. I would’ve killed you any of the times I followed you.”

  “But what about Claire?” I say, still needing more. “She compromised you. You loved her. You were going to kill her. And you left the only home you’ve ever known, risked everything, because of her. What’s not to say that won’t happen again?”

  “Because people like me only love once,” she answers without even having to think about it. “To us, the experience is like a child touching a hot pan.”

  I don’t say anything for a while.

  “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.”

  “You said you’d train me.”

  Nora nods.

  “I did.”

  “Then why’d you just say—”

  “I’ll train you if your need to learn isn’t dictated by your love of a man,” she cuts in. “That’s no different than a girl getting pregnant just to keep her boyfriend, or a man marrying a woman he doesn’t love because he knocked her up—it never works out. And I won’t waste my time on nonsense.”

  “Victor’s not the only reason I want to learn,” I say. “I won’t lie and say he isn’t part of it, but he’s not all of it. I’m unlike you in almost every way,” I go on, “but the one way we are alike is that I know this is the only life for me. I’ve already been down that normal road and I don’t think I can ever do it again. This is my life, and I only want to learn how to stay alive in it for as long as I can. Victor never had much time to train me like I need to be trained. He either sent me to someone else”—I quietly recall Spencer and Jacquelyn at the Krav Maga studio—“or started going easy on me after a while because he didn’t want to hurt me.”