The Swan & the Jackal

  I stop, expecting him to have already cut in and told me to shut up and leave, but still, he offers no words of his own and I don’t know how to feel about that. Relieved that he’s listening to me? Concerned that he isn’t? Worried about what’s going on inside his head that’s so all-consuming that I have to be surprised he hasn’t spoken against me either way?

  When still he shows no signs of rebuttal, I go on:

  “This may sound insane—actually, I know it’s going to sound insane—but I felt that way when I killed Javier.”

  Nothing but silence.

  “After being with Javier for so long, it didn’t matter that he raped me or kept me prisoner, because he was all I knew. I brainwashed myself into believing that only he would ever love me, that only Javier would ever want anything to do with me. And when I killed him, I felt like I killed the other half of me. If it wasn’t for Victor—”

  “One day, Victor Faust will be the death of you, Izabel,” he cuts in and I’m stunned by his words. He looks over, locking his eyes on mine. “If you want to help me, you can by keeping that in the back of your mind. One way or another, you’re going to die because of him, because you love him.”

  I want to argue, to fight back and tell him that he’s wrong, but I know he’s hurting and I can’t make this about me. I won’t.

  He looks away.

  “Tell Victor that I’ll accept any sentence he feels fits my offensives.”

  “Fredrik—”

  “Please just go,” he says looking down at the floor. “I give you my word—I’ll be fine. I don’t want you worrying about me, least of all.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Izabel!” he snaps.

  I stand up and look at him for a moment before taking my coat up from the cushion.

  I don’t even bother putting it on as I begin to walk away.

  Stopping at the den entrance with my back to him, I say evenly, “I’m going to help you. Just like I did with Kelly Bennings. For as long as it takes.”

  Once again, he says nothing, and with a heavy heart I leave the house and step out onto the porch just as the cleaners are making yet another trip outside from the backyard. But all three of us stop mid-stride down the sidewalk when a vociferous crash, like glass breaking, fills the night air coming from inside Fredrik’s house. And then more glass. And the sound of furniture crashing against the walls.

  I feel the cleaners’ eyes on me, but I can’t tear mine away from the house where Fredrik is feeling the worst pain he’s ever felt, just on the other side of those walls.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Fredrik

  Every last bit of furniture, I destroy, flinging chairs and shattering tables against the walls as if rejecting its right to exist if Cassia can’t exist. If Seraphina can’t exist. Anything that gets in my way, I move it with violent, resentful force.

  I scream at the top of my lungs before grabbing the last standing chair and hurling it through the den and into the television screen. The glass shatters and what’s left of the frame falls over onto the floor sending pieces of glass scattered across the hardwood.

  I follow suit, unable to maintain my footing, and fall against the floor on my bottom in the center of the room, surrounded by destruction—destruction of objects, but also the destruction of what was left of a man. Sitting helplessly with my legs bent at the knees, I do the only thing fate will allow me to do in this moment—I cry into the palms of my hands, letting the pain do with me whatever it wants. The same way I did when I was just a boy, after I had been beaten and raped and broken. Only this time, the pain I feel inside is a hundred times more unbearable.

  Blackness. All I see is blackness though my eyes are wide open as I look downward at the floor. And in that fucking blackness I can still see her face. Her light brown eyes and plump lips. Her soft, creamy skin and near perfect complexion. Long blonde hair. Short black hair. And I know that she will haunt my soul for the rest of my days, however many of them there are left to suffer.

  And I know I deserve it.

  Without another thought, I jump up from the floor and rush into the kitchen, flinging open the cabinet underneath the sink. On my hands and knees, I shove the top half of my body through the opening, furiously swiping away bottles of cleaner and other various supplies. When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I jump to my feet again and do the same to all the cabinets, tossing out boxes of food onto the kitchen floor. Finally, in the cabinet above the microwave I find a bottle of lighter fluid and I storm toward the hallway with it clutched in my hand, but tripping over debris on my way and falling. My back hits the wall as my hands hit the floor to brace for the impact, but as soon as I’m in control of my body again, I pick the bottle of lighter fluid up from beside me and hurl myself down the hallway. Swinging open the basement door, I fly down the steps taking them three at a time and almost falling again, but I make it to the bottom of the stairs unscathed.

  I spray the lighter fluid everywhere, starting with Cassia’s bed and when the bottle is empty I toss it on the floor and just stare at it without moving until my legs become numb beneath me. I look at the chain stretched across the floor and then at the corner of the room where I often found Cassia sitting when I came home.

  Sobs roll through my body and I’m unable to stop them.

  Tearing my eyes away from all that is left of her, I look around the room for anything I can use to set the fluid aflame, and when I find nothing I’m up the stairs and back down here again so fast it feels like I never moved from this spot.

  Cassia’s thin white nightgown lays in a small silky pile next to my feet. I reach down and take it into my fingers, wanting to put it to my face and breathe in her scent one last time. But I don’t. I set it aflame with the lighter in the other hand and then toss the quickly burning fabric on the fluid-soaked bed. The room is engulfed in seconds.

  And I realize as I stand here watching the flames lick the walls, that I’ve come full-circle and there is no going back.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Fredrik

  Two months later…

  Victor Faust owns a fancy new building just outside of Boston and he’s quite proud of it, though one wouldn’t know by his expressionless face—oh wait, he just smiled. I walk alongside him toward his private office, impressed with the building so far with all of its Old World charm, original stone walls and newly-furnished marble floors and stunning artwork in large intricate frames. It’s certainly fitting of a man like Faust, and I have to say, as much as I love the rich, modern style, I could get used to this. But it’s a special building for all of us in Victor’s new Order, because it’s the first place we’ve been able to meet and conduct business that feels more like a business than a hideout in a back alley somewhere.

  We’re out in the open—somewhat—hiding in plain sight.

  The word is that Vonnegut is threatened by Victor—by all of us. And while although we still have to watch our backs every minute of every day, we’re gaining the upper hand.

  Sometimes I think the only reason Victor ever chose to hide in the first place had everything to do with Izabel. He would do anything to keep her safe—of course, he can’t tell her that.

  We step into the private office with scaling walls lined by bookshelves packed with leather bound books from floor to nearly the ceiling. A large elongated table sits as the centerpiece of the vast room, occupied by eight high-back dark leather chairs on each side and one at each end. Attending this meeting today other than Victor and myself are the usual: Izabel, Niklas, Dorian and even James Woodard who Victor has decided to keep with us as his official information go-to guy. Woodard has grown on me, I admit. Dorian, not quite so much.

  “Well, look who it is,” Dorian says from his seat with a grin, “the guy bringin’ crazy back.”

  Dorian was finally reassigned to a new member of our Order that I think might despise him more than even I did—a highly-skilled spy named Evelyn Stiles who used to work for the CIA. Bu
t she hasn’t been fully tested here yet and has no business at this meeting. James Woodard got in faster than the usual, but I trust Victor’s judgment.

  I take a seat next to Izabel. She smiles over at me, but doesn’t say anything. The two of us haven’t spoken much since the night I killed my wife two months ago in Baltimore. But the distance I put between us has been all my doing. I can’t have her involved in my life the way she wants to be—or the way she used to be. I’m not the man I was when Izabel—as Sarai—and I first met. And as long as I’m in control of my life, that’s the way it will stay. I don’t want to love anyone—in any manner or situation—because to love is to be controlled. I will always care for Izabel and look after her and I will kill for her, but I can’t let myself love her, not even as my sister, or my friend. I don’t want Izabel, of all people, to end up like everyone else I’ve ever loved.

  Despite the distance I keep, she still has it in her head that she’s going to help me with ‘personal’ interrogations and tortures the way that Seraphina did.

  But she is very wrong.

  I have other plans for that.

  Woodard smiles above that double-chin of his and pushes a newspaper across the table toward me with his pudgy hand.

  “You might like this news, sir,” he says—always respectful, always terrified of me.

  I glance at Victor once just as he’s taking his seat at the head of the table, and then look down into the newspaper which has been folded over to the second page. It takes me a moment to realize it’s a paper from Seattle.

  Scanning over the text and images, my eyes fall on two small photos in one corner set side by side of Kelly Bennings and Ross Emerson in convict-style mug shots. As I read, the paper reveals how after a ‘traumatizing and brutal kidnapping and interrogation by two unknown men’ that the couple are ‘facing years in prison after incriminating video evidence had been dropped off at the Seattle police department, which included their confessions and their crimes in full detail’.

  I lean back against my chair, cross one leg over the other and say indifferently, “They’re getting what they deserve.”

  I don’t look at the newspaper again. And I don’t think about it again.

  “The reason I brought you all here today,” Victor speaks up with one hand atop the other on the table, “is that I have significant news.”

  He has the room’s full attention.

  “Seems that Vonnegut has united with Sébastien Fournier’s order in France and they’re working together for one reason.” He raises only his index finger from the top of his other hand. “I trust you all know very well what that reason is.”

  “Because they’re fucking scared,” Niklas chimes in, sitting to Victor’s left; an unlit cigarette dangles from his lips.

  Dorian shakes his blond head, smiling. “I say we just get it over with and take them all out.”

  “Can’t kill someone you can’t find,” Izabel reminds him.

  Vonnegut and Fournier have both proven elusive since Victor Faust went rogue from The Order.

  “That’s not entirely true,” I speak up. “We’ve been taking them out slowly but surely by killing those loyal to them and taking control of those who aren’t.”

  “Yes, Mr. Gustavsson has a point,” James Woodard says and smiles across the table at me with a little too much admiration for my tastes.

  I ignore him.

  “Yes, but that’s not even the most significant news I have for you,” Victor says and all heads turn simultaneously back in his direction.

  Victor pauses and steeples his hands in front of him.

  “I have reason to believe—and for now I will not reveal my sources—that the U.S. Intelligence somehow knows about our operations. Not only are we being hunted by The Order, but we might also be hunted by the FBI and the CIA.”

  “What do you mean ‘might’?” Izabel asks from Victor’s right, her eyes filled with concern. “And what exactly do they know?”

  Everyone, including me, want the same answers, so no one interrupts.

  “What they know is also something I’m going to keep to myself for now,” Victor says evenly, looking at no one in particular. “It doesn’t surprise me that they know some things—operations like ours which continue to grow cannot be entirely inconspicuous—quite impossible, actually. But I will say that they know enough to lead me to believe that there might a mole our midst.”

  I look at Woodard. Woodard looks at me until he realizes why I’m looking at him and he shrinks his back against his chair and opts for looking at the table instead. Izabel looks at Niklas. Niklas looks at Dorian and then looks right back at Izabel with the same accusing eyes she’s casting his way. Dorian looks at me. There sure is a lot of suspicion at this table.

  We all look at Victor, though only with question on our faces.

  “Someone at this table is a traitor?” Izabel asks.

  “Well, it sure as fuck isn’t me,” Dorian says.

  Woodard puts up his inflated hands. “I-It ain’t me neither.”

  Niklas pulls the cigarette from his lips and slouches in his chair, draping one arm over the back casually and coolly. “Yeah, well other than my brother,” he says with pride and confidence, “I’m the last person at this table who’d involve this shit government in anything.” I picture Niklas spitting on the floor to show how deeply his aversion for the U.S. government and intelligence goes, but he doesn’t.

  “You’re my first pick,” Izabel accuses, her pretty features twisting into a smirk.

  Niklas flips her off.

  “Oh, how mature can you get?” Izabel scoffs.

  Victor inhales a noticeable breath and all eyes fall on him again.

  “I never said the mole—if in fact there is one—was at this table. And truly, it could very well be that Vonnegut, as a last ditch attempt to get rid of us, is the one who provided the CIA and the FBI with the information. I have my suspicions, but the dilemma is that if they do know how and where to find us, why haven’t they made a move?”

  “That’s a good question,” I say and then add, “If they know, how long do you think they’ve known?”

  “I’m not sure,” Victor admits. “But I want all of you to be on the lookout for anything suspicious—of course, not that you don’t already do that.”

  Dorian and Niklas both laugh.

  “That’s daily life for me,” Dorian says.

  Niklas nods, agreeing.

  Victor changes the subject—a little too soon, in my opinion—and says, “Next order of business is a fifty thousand dollar hit in Miami. I’m assigning this one to Evan Betts”—he looks to his left—“and Niklas.”

  Niklas doesn’t look pleased.

  “You’re putting me with a newbie?” In fact, he looks outright offended.

  Izabel, on the other hand, is all smiles.

  “Betts may be new,” Victor says, “but he’s good. I want to see more of his work and I’ll only pair up newcomers with someone from this table that I feel I can trust.”

  Niklas appears more accepting now, but Isabel’s smile turns into a sneer.

  The meeting goes on for another twenty minutes and as it’s coming to a close, everyone leaves but myself and Victor, who requested that I stay.

  I’ve been out of commission—by Victor’s orders—since what happened two months ago. I had expected more of a sentence than the ‘time off for personal issues’ that I feel I was given, but Victor didn’t see my keeping Cassia a secret from him, a betrayal. It only further proves that Faust is not a tyrant leader, but a man with a conscience—though he sure goes out of his way to hide that fact.

  But my time off alone to deal with what’s left of my life didn’t have the sort of effect that anyone at the ‘round table’ might’ve expected. I didn’t grieve or come to terms or have any epiphanies. I didn’t remove any heavy burdens from my shoulders, or bathe in the sun, or reflect on my life and force myself to be positive and move forward.

  No, I didn’t do an
y of that.

  Instead, I stood in front of a mirror.

  Naked. Still bloody after torturing and killing a man who led a notorious gang in Detroit. I stood in front of that mirror as the shower water got hot and I saw the shell of my former self looking back at me with new insides. New darkness. New demons. New memories. New everything. And yes, I did move forward, but not in the direction of the light.

  That finite glimpse of light I experienced with Cassia was an illusion.

  “I have to be honest with you,” Victor says standing behind me. “I’m not convinced you’re…yourself.”

  I nod subtly, standing with my hands clasped together behind me.

  “And you would be right,” I admit.

  Victor walks slowly around the table away from his chair, also with his hands clasped behind his back just as mine are.

  “If you were anyone else,” he goes on, “I wouldn’t risk it, but all I’m asking of you is to back away from our operations at the first sign you feel that something you might do could compromise us. Can I trust you to do that?”

  I nod again. “You have my word.”

  Victor glances at the wall and then looks back at me as if he had used that brief moment to decide what to say next.

  “I have every bit of trust in you, Fredrik, but I would be fooling myself to believe that you’re not walking the thin line between sanity and self-destruction. I’ve seen that look before—in fact, I saw it in the mirror once.”

  How ironic—the things we see in those malicious, mocking pieces of glass.

  “I would ask how you, of all people, ever walked that line,” I say, “but I know you won’t tell me.”

  Victor smiles faintly.

  “And you would be right,” he says in the same even tone as I had said it to him moments ago.

  “Despite my acceptance of all this,” Victor says dropping his smile, “I do have to make something very clear.”