Текст книги "Reviving Izabel"
Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
The corner of my nose and mouth harden into a snarl.
“That still doesn’t explain why you teamed up to find us,” I say icily, thinking more about what he was saying regarding Dina. And the truth is that I don’t care much about why they are working together. I’m just trying to buy myself some time by keeping any conversation going for as long as I can.
Stephens and Niklas trade places and now Stephens is the one looming closely near me. He slides the blade between his fingers into my view, making certain that I see it and am intimidated by it.
He looks at me in a narrow, sidelong glance. “Surely you remember what Victor Faust did to Arthur Hamburg’s wife. Surely you didn’t think that he was going to just forget about it.” He leans in close to my face, the smell of his breath, like old cheap wine and cigars, makes me lightheaded with disgust. “My employer has wanted Faust dead since the night he killed his wife. We knew where you were at all times, but we had no idea where Faust was and had no reason to believe that you did, either. And we certainly didn’t know that he gave a shit about you. I suppose he didn’t really, or he would never have left you alone like that.” A taunting grin sneaks up on his face.
Just as he starts to pull away, I throw my head forward at him, hoping to get at him with my teeth, but he’s out of reach too soon. I coil my fingers around the leather straps above me and lift my body up for a moment to relieve some of the pressure on my wrists. I fall back down harshly, shaking the contraption.
Niklas smiles.
I spit at him, but it doesn’t come close to hitting him.
“They can’t find Victor without me,” Niklas says. “And I can’t find him without you.” He gets in my face again and though I know I could spit on him this time and not miss, I don’t. That look in his dark blue eyes scares me into submission. “So we made an arrangement. They help me find you and I kill my brother for them.”
“FUCK YOU!” I rear my head back and butt him in the forehead with mine. Pain shoots through my temples and down into my jaw and my vision blurs for a moment.
Niklas steps away from me, clearly stunned by the contact, but he doesn’t retaliate. He turns to Stephens and Stephens does the honors. I start thrashing again as he comes at me with the knife.
“Willem,” Niklas calls out in a strangely casual tone from behind.
Stephens doesn’t turn around to look at him, but he stops.
“I need her alive,” Niklas says. “Remember that. Remember our agreement. I find out what I need to know and then you can do whatever you want with her.”
I shake my head and laugh low under my breath at them both.
“I’m not telling you anything,” I snap. “You can’t fucking break me. You think you can. But you are so wrong. You have no idea.” My voice is surprisingly calm.
“Well, we’ll have to see about that,” Niklas says.
He turns on his heels and walks away, the sound of his shoes tapping against the concrete echoes throughout the warehouse until it fades as he disappears on the other side of a metal door.
Stephens’ smile has gotten bigger now that Niklas is gone.
And I just became more afraid of him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Victor
Two days later…
Staring at the laptop screen, the frozen image of Sarai’s sweaty and bleeding face stares back at me. I’ve watched the video over and over again, as Stephens beats her, and my brother, as he tries fruitlessly to get her to talk. It kills me to see Sarai this way, to watch as this man who will be dead sooner than later hurts her. And it kills me that I can do nothing about it.
Not yet.
“She’s not going to talk,” Fredrik says from behind, a deep concern for Sarai’s well-being in his words.
He stands in the doorway of the office in my Albuquerque house, free of dead bodies now that Fredrik and I have gotten rid of them. I refuse to leave this house. If Stephens wants me he is more than welcome to send men here for me. But my brother, on the other hand, wants information first and they all know he will not get it out of me.
“Victor,” Fredrik speaks up again with urgency and even a bit of pleading, “you have to do something. We can’t just sit here. They’re going to kill her.”
“There is nothing we can do,” I repeat as I have explained this to him already. And as much as it pains me to do so, I explain it to him all over again. “I have no clue where she is, Fredrik. Niklas isn’t going to reveal her location until he gets from her the information that he wants. I know my brother. He is smart. He will not risk facing me. Not like this. Vonnegut wants more than my head, he wants information. Niklas will get what he needs from Sarai and then send me another message telling me where to find her. I’ll go after her and he knows this. And then he’ll have me. He’ll have me and everything about you and our outfit and our contacts.”
“So what!”
I push myself out of the desk chair, causing it to roll across the floor and smash against the nearby wall.
“DO YOU THINK I’M ENJOYING THIS?” I point my finger at him and then at the floor.
I calm myself, steadying my breath, and I look down at my vague reflection in my shiny black shoes.
“Victor, I don’t understand. Why don’t you just give them what they want?”
It intrigues me that Fredrik, the master of interrogators, wants so desperately for Sarai to talk, that his concern for her is showing me another side to him.
It also concerns me.
“It’s not that simple.” I look up at him. “Even if I told Niklas what he wanted to know, Sarai is still dead. In fact, she’ll be dead a lot sooner if I give in, if I gave you up and everyone involved in our operation. The longer she holds out, and the longer I hold out, the longer she lives. Until I figure out what to do.”
Fredrik leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. He sighs deeply.
“But it’s been two days,” he says. “She can’t hold out much longer.”
“She will hold out,” I say with confidence.
I turn back around and look down at the video paused on the screen, the tips of my fingers braced against the edge of the desk.
“Then how are we going to find her?” he asks.
I stare at her face for a long, tense moment and then close the lid on the laptop.
“I will find her.”
Sarai
The stench of my urine on the floor in the corner of this dark room I’ve been locked in for two days is becoming unbearable. I lie against the cold, filthy concrete, my cheek pressed against the rough, grain-like texture. My back stings, burns as though the open wounds inflicted by the whip Stephens used to beat me with are becoming infected. It happened last night when Niklas left me alone in this room. By the time Niklas came back, Stephens had already beat me so badly that I passed out briefly from the pain and woke up in a pool of my own vomit. I heard Niklas and Stephens arguing just outside the room, on the other side of the tall metal door. Niklas didn’t approve of how Stephens handled me and he made it known.
“I NEED HER ALIVE, GODAMMIT!” Niklas had yelled at Stephens. “YOU’LL KILL HER BEATING HER LIKE THAT!”
I hate Niklas for what he’s done. To me. To Victor. For what he’s doing right now by keeping me in this place. But a small part of me is grateful that he is intolerant to Stephens’ brutality. It doesn’t matter to me that he’s only intolerant because he wants me alive for information. I’ll take what I can get.
I hear the lock slide away from the metal door to my prison and then the door breaks apart with a small grating echo.
Niklas steps inside. He’s carrying a plate of food and a plastic bottle of water. Another man closes the door and locks it behind him.
“Don’t even bother,” I say from my spot on the floor as he approaches me. “If you won’t kill me, or let Stephens kill me, maybe I’ll die faster of dehydration.”
Niklas sets the food on the floor beside me. I raise my body from the concrete and slap it away. Backing myself against the wall, I sit upright, trying not to touch the wall with my back because of the wounds. My ribs hurt, too. And my left wrist. My bottom lip feels swollen. I taste blood in my mouth. Metallic. Disgusting.
“Why don’t you just talk,” Niklas suggests with an air of surrender. He too is tired of all of this, how long it’s taking. “You can end this right now if you just tell me what I want to know.”
I say nothing.
Niklas sits down on the floor in front of me. He knows I’m too weak to fight him. I tried that already and only made the pain in my ribs and my back, more unbearable.
“I should look at your back,” he says.
“Why the fuck do you even care?” I snap. “Oh, I forgot, because you need what I know.” I push my head toward him, my eyes filled with unwavering hatred. “The truth is, I know everything. I know who Victor is involved with, who’s helping him, where six of his safe-houses are located. I know everything, Niklas, and I’m not going to tell you any of it!”
I wince and cover my ribs with my arms as the pain shoots through my body.
“Very well.” He rises into a stand.
He walks over to the food, placing it all back on the plate—a destroyed sandwich, a pickle and a handful of potato chips—and then picks the bottle of water up from the floor. He walks over and sets it beside my feet.
Then he crouches in front of me.
“He’s not coming for you, Sarai,” he says calmly.
I start to reach out with what little strength I have, to grab him, but I stop cold, wanting to hear what he has to say. It doesn’t matter that I won’t believe him. I still want to hear it.
He softens his blue-eyed gaze.
“I’ve sent my brother two videos of you,” he says. “I’ve given him this location, telling him where you are, giving him a chance to give himself up. To give the information up. But he hasn’t responded.” He opens his hand, palm-up, and motions it about the room while balancing his arms on his legs. “And you see that he’s not here. Two days and nothing.” He drops his hand. “He’s not coming for you. And do you want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Because his job is and always will be first in his life. He will never make the same mistakes that Fredrik Gustavsson made because of a woman.”
I round my chin. “Oh, but that’s not true,” I say disdainfully. “He betrayed you because of me, remember? You said so yourself. He left the Order because of me. He almost killed you because of me. Remember, Niklas?” I rub it in, glaring into his churning eyes while trying to bite back the physical pain.
Niklas smiles slimly. “Yes, he did those things. But I saw in my brother the desire to be free of Vonnegut long before you came into his life. But he’s not with the Order now. He is free from it all, and yes, you were a huge part of it, of why he left. You gave him that boost he needed, I suppose.” He seizes my gaze, a stern look in his eyes. “But don’t you see what hasn’t changed? Think about it, Sarai. Instead of freeing himself from a life of killing, like anyone in their right mind, anyone with a conscience would do, he creates his own Order. He is still all about his job. All about killing for a living. Because it’s all that he knows and it’s all that he will ever know.” He shakes his head at me as if he feels sorry for me, for how ignorant I have been, because I don’t see the things that he sees.
I look away.
A part of me, a shameful, guilty part, can’t help but believe him, after all.
He rises back into a full stand again.
“Believe what you want, Sarai,” he says softly from above, “but you know as well I do that if he was going to come for you, he would’ve been here already.”
He walks to the metal door, knocks twice, and the man on the other side opens it. Niklas walks out and I’m left in darkness again, surrounded by dark walls and a dark ceiling and dark thoughts that are breaking my heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
It doesn’t matter.
If the things Niklas said to me are true and Victor never comes for me, I will still die without telling Niklas anything.
I will die in here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sarai
Day Three
I have refused food and water for nearly sixty-three hours. I only know this because Niklas keeps reminding me. I am weak, physically and mentally exhausted. Stephens hasn’t beat me since Niklas stopped him before. It’s only because of Niklas that I’m still alive. After all, I haven’t given him any information yet. Only that he’s a traitorous bastard who doesn’t deserve the air that he breathes. I’ve told him over and over that I’ll die before I give Victor up. I believe he knows that it’s true, that I cannot be broken.
Except…maybe by my thoughts.
My thoughts are all that I have in this dark, dank prison of a room which shuts out all light, night or day, having no windows and only a single metal door that doesn’t allow even a slither of light beneath it. That voice inside my head, the one that you never listen to until you have nothing left with which to shut it out, has been very cruel to me. Niklas is right, and you know it, the voice tells me. It’s been three days, and if what Niklas said about Victor knowing where to find you is true, then why hasn’t Victor come? Why, Sarai, hasn’t Victor given himself up for you and told Niklas what he wants to know, in order to save your life?
I scream at the top of my lungs into the empty, confined space, gripping my head in my hands. Tears of anger stream from the corners of my eyes. My hair is drenched with sweat. My shorts and tight black top feel glued to my skin. My bare knees are bruised, my legs covered in filth. My back burns whenever I position myself the wrong way and the scabs forming over my wounds break apart and start bleeding all over again. I stay lying on the floor either on my side or my stomach.
I hear the grating echo of the metal door open behind me, but I don’t care to roll over to see who it is.
“If you won’t drink,” I hear Niklas say standing over me, “then I’ll force water into you.”
I’m hoisted off the filthy concrete floor into his arms and carried out of the room. I don’t fight against him. I don’t look up at him as he walks with me down the hallway, but the fluorescent light running along the ceiling above me is so bright I wince and quickly shut my eyes. Quietly, I bask in the comfort of the new air as it hits my skin. I feel my legs draped over Niklas’ arms, his left arm fitted underneath the back of my neck. We turn left and then right and then descend a set of metal stairs.
In moments, my head is being forced underneath water and held there.
My instincts betray me and I open my mouth to scream, taking even more water into my lungs. My body thrashes violently, my arms flailing wildly, trying to press against the thick plastic rim of the container I’m being held in. But I’m too weak to push myself out of the water, Niklas easily holding me under. Water burns my throat and my lungs even after I manage to close my mouth and hold my breath. And just when I think I’m about to drown, that finally I’m going to die and be at peace, Niklas pulls my head from the water and holds me above it.
Betraying me yet again, my first instinct is to gasp desperately for air and to cough up the water in my lungs. I’d really rather just die and get it over with, but my body has a mind of its own, another one that I can’t seem to control. My heart beats so powerfully that I can feel my chest rocking against the plastic rim of what I recognize as a fifty-five gallon barrel. Droplets of water constantly fall from the ends of my hair and the tip of my nose and my chin and my eyelashes into the water just inches beneath my face. Plop. Plop. Plop-plop. It’s eerie how it’s the only thing that I hear.
“Who is working with my brother?” Niklas’ voice is composed.
I say nothing.
His hand tightens a little within the back of my hair.
“You were seen with Fredrik Gustavsson in Santa Fe,” he goes on. “What is his and my brother’s relationship? Are they plotting against my Order?”
No answer.
A gush of water hits my face as he shoves my head back into the barrel. My nostrils and my esophagus burn like hell as the water is forced into me. I flail again, both arms grasping for anything, finally finding the circular plastic rim, but still not strong enough to push myself against Niklas’ hands and out of the water.
I choke and gasp for air when he pulls me out again.
“Give me something, Sarai. Anything.”
I’m too weak and exhausted even to taunt him anymore, and still, I say nothing even as much as I want to tell him to go fuck himself.
Niklas only gets one thing from me before he carries me out of the room many minutes later; he manages to get that water into me he spoke of before.
Day Four
Thin, dust-filled beams of sunlight stream from the windows near the ceiling of the warehouse, casting pools of ivory light on the floor out ahead of me. I’m back in the chair in the larger space, surrounded by concrete pillars and that annoying industrial fan running incessantly high above me. Neither my wrists nor my ankles have been bound this time, but it’s unnecessary as I can hardly will myself to stand on my own anymore. I’m not entirely physically weak. I could walk if I tried. I could throw this chair across the room, although only a few feet maybe, if I wanted to. I just don’t care.
I just don’t care anymore.
Stephens sits in that same chair in front of me as he did so four days ago. One leg crossed over the other, his large hands rest on the top of his knee. A foreboding look in his deep, dark eyes; one that says he’s tired of waiting. That this is the day. That no matter what I say or don’t say, no matter what arrangement he and Niklas have, that he’s going to kill me.
Niklas enters the warehouse through a side door, briefly letting in the bright early morning sunlight. He had gone outside with the other four men that apparently work for Stephens. I heard them talking, something about watching the building for any signs of ‘unwanted guests’. In my heart I’m hopeful it has to do with Niklas having reason to believe that Victor is coming. But that cruel voice in my head shoots my heart down.
We are alone in the vast space. Just the three of us. Me, the Devil and one of the Devil’s henchmen, though truly I don’t know which one of them is which.
I raise my head.
I smile weakly up at them, fixating my attention mostly on Niklas.
“This is your last opportunity,” Niklas announces standing next to Stephens with a gun in his right hand, held down at his side. “I won’t bother with sending my brother another video of you being interrogated. It’s apparent that seeing you in such pain isn’t enough to stir him out of hiding.”
“Kill me,” I say, still with a smile. “It’s what you’re gonna have to do.”
Niklas’ chest rises and falls, but his eyes never leave mine. I gaze into them, searching for whatever I can find left in him that might still be like his brother, the man…I think I’m falling in love with.
The man that I thought, for a brief moment in time, might have felt the same way.
Time seems to stop. There is no sound or movement or air on my face, just an infinite silence suspended in the last moment of my life.
And as I feel my eyes begin to close, in the same frame of motion, Niklas raises the gun out beside him and pulls the trigger. The shot rings out and blood spatters from the other side of Stephens’ head. The chair beneath him falls over onto its side as the weight of his massive body slumps against it.
Stephens falls to the floor. Dead.
I feel the softness of my lashes finally sweep my face as my eyes close and my own body, overwhelmed by relief and exhausted by everything, begins to fall over, too.
Niklas fits his arms underneath mine, catching me before I hit the floor.
“I’ve got you,” I hear him say. “I’ve got you.” His voice seems farther away now, though I can feel myself pressed against his chest and the wind on my face as I’m being carried through the warehouse.
“Give her to me,” I hear Victor say from outside, and it’s the last thing I hear.
Victor
The Plot – Three weeks ago…
Niklas sits across from me at the elongated table covered in scattered paperwork and coffee stains and photographs of future hits. His brown hair is disheveled, and the edges of his eyes are red as he had far too much to drink last night. He moves his hands across the stack of various photos of Edgar Velazco, a notorious Venezuelan gang leader who we’ve been commissioned to kill.
He shakes his head with aggravation and leans his back against the chair, bringing up both hands and running them over the entirety of his face.
“We can’t put this on hold,” Niklas says, looking across the table at me. “We have a location on Andre Costa. We need to deal with it now.”
I don’t look up from scanning the text in front of me.
“Things have changed,” I say evenly. I move a sheet of paper on top of another. “Sarai is my priority. It was unexpected, I know, but I can’t change what she did.” I look directly at him, hoping that he will understand and not argue with me on this. “Niklas, I won’t abandon or compromise what we’re achieving here. The contract on Edgar Velazco will be fulfilled. Before the deadline.”
He sighs again and lowers his eyes for a brief moment. Then he reaches out and removes a cigarette from the pack lying on the table in front of him. Putting it between his lips, he sets the end aflame with a flick of his lighter.
He knows I dislike it when he smokes inside, but I suppose I need to cut my brother some slack, seeing as how he has done so much for me, and for Sarai, in the past several months.
“No disrespect, brother,” Niklas says as smoke streams from his lips, “but what are you going to do about her? You can’t juggle both lives, and you know it. And we can’t use our resources forever for babysitting, not when it’s someone like her who isn’t so easy to keep up with. She’s as reckless as I was at twenty-three.”
I nod. “Yes, you’re right about that,” I say. “She is more like you than I care to admit.”
Niklas grins and flicks his ashes in the little plastic ashtray.
“Oh come on, brother, I’m not so bad, am I?”
I don’t need to answer that question and he knows it.
He takes another short pull from the cigarette and sets it down on the edge of the ashtray.
“So then what are you going to do?” he asks.
He leans his back against the chair again and interlocks his fingers fitted behind his head.
“Are you sure you want to know the answer to that?” I ask.
That seems to have piqued his curiosity.
“Hell yes, I want to know.” His hands come away from the back of his head and he leans over forward, resting the length of his arms across the tabletop. He looks worried. “What have you done?”
I pause and answer, “While at Fredrik’s house, after a lot of pleading, and Sarai threatening me with her safety, I agreed to help train her.”
“What?”
“Yes,” I confirm it for him because he seems to need the confirmation. “She’s adamant about killing Hamburg and Stephens herself. I could do it but—”
“You should do it, Victor.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, “I gave her my word—”
“So fucking what,” Niklas argues. “Victor, it’s suicide. What the hell were you thinking?” He seizes the cigarette back into his fingers and takes a longer pull as if needing the nicotine to calm his nerves. Craning his neck, thick smoke streams from his lips into the air above him.
“It isn’t something I haven’t thought of before,” I admit, “long before she pulled this stunt with Hamburg, long before she gave me the ultimatum. I want her with me, Niklas. I want to teach her. I believe she is capable of succeeding. And she refuses to be babysat. By anyone. Particularly me.”
“And what if she doesn’t succeed?” Niklas looks upon me, sincerity and concern hardening his features. Concern for me and not necessarily for Sarai. “Victor, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of pain. Falling for a woman.” He laughs derisively, though more at himself, I know. “I fell for a woman once—you remember—and you see what it got me. What it got her. She ended up dead and I ended up destroyed because of it.” He shakes his head. “And do I need to remind you what happened when Fredrik fell in love? No, I didn’t think so.”
He stands up, snuffing the cigarette out in the ashtray.
“I’m sorry, Victor, but I think this is a really bad fucking idea.”
“But it’s the only idea,” I say calmly. “And I hope that you will respect it enough that we don’t have a repeat of Los Angeles.”
I knew my words would sting him, using the incident when he shot Sarai in a hotel, an incident that he thought we had gotten past. Niklas looks down at me, resentment and pain in his eyes.
“Really, brother?” he asks with disbelief, propping his hands on the edge of the table and leaning forward. “After everything I’ve done all these months to help protect her? After I gave you my word, as your brother, as your blood, that I’d never do anything to harm her again? If I wanted her dead, I could’ve killed her a thousand times over. You know this, Victor. I thought we were over this.”
I lower my eyes, letting the guilt of my accusation do what it wants with me. Niklas is loyal to me. He always has been. When he shot Sarai in Los Angeles and tried to kill her, it was only because of his love and loyalty to me. Because he knew that the way she had compromised me was going to be my undoing, that it was going to get me killed. And while although I don’t excuse what he did and I will never forgive him for it—and he knows this—I understand why he did it, just the same.
In our kind of life sometimes terrible things must be done to those we love to clear a path for new beginnings. My brother, as intolerable as he may be, is no exception. In fact, he is a prime example of that rule.
And today things are different. He will not kill her, but he will not hesitate to kill for her.
“I do trust you, Niklas,” I say. “I hope you believe that.”
He nods slowly, forgiving me, appearing absorbed in deep thought.
“I’m not asking you to prove it, Victor,” he says, “but there’s something that needs to be done. For the sake of our business. For the sake of our lives.” He begins to pace, back and forth near the length of the table.
“What is it?” I ask, looking up at him from my chair.
He stops at the center of the table, crosses his arms and looks down at me with a look of uneasiness on his face.
“If Sarai is going to be involved in our operations in any way whatsoever,” he begins cautiously, “you know she must be put through the same level of tests that anyone else working for us would be put through. Because you have feelings for her doesn’t make that rule any different.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
I know precisely what he’s saying, but what I really want to know is how far he wants to take this. Niklas has never been known to half-ass anything.
“I’m saying,” he goes on, “that I know you don’t want to go through what Fredrik went through with Seraphina. And I know you don’t want a repeat of Samantha. Sarai’s loyalty to you must be tested. I’m not saying this because I have some kind of underlying vendetta against her, or because I want her to betray you so that I can prove a point.” He puts up his hands. “I only want to know that she can be trusted, that if she’s ever compromised, that she can’t be broken and compromise the rest of us.”
“I trust her,” I say. “I know she wouldn’t betray me. I trust her.”
It doesn’t matter how many times I say those words aloud or in my head. I trust her. I trust Sarai. I trust her. I know that Niklas is right. There is too much at stake. Our black market business, our lives and the lives of the many people who work under us. And with Vonnegut and the Order incessantly in search of me, I cannot take any chances.
“What do you propose?” I ask, accepting the truth.
Niklas nods, relieved by my cooperation and understanding.
He takes a breath and prepares to explain.
“I will approach Hamburg,” he begins. “I will gain his trust by falsely selling you out to him. He’ll believe that I’m just an unforgiving brother who has been commissioned by my own Order to kill you since you went rogue and betrayed us all. All for the sake of one girl. A girl who, it is no secret to people like me, Hamburg wants dead now more than ever.”
I’m already nodding in agreement before he’s done explaining, a vivid image of the scenario playing out in my mind.
“When the time is right,” he continues, “I’ll lead Hamburg’s men straight to Sarai…”
Niklas goes on about the plot to initiate Sarai and at the same time, get Hamburg and Stephens where we want them.
“But I don’t want her hurt,” I say. “If we do this, you have to give me your word that you will not let anyone go too far. That you will not go too far.” I narrow my gaze on him.
“How much can she take?” he inquires.
“She can take a lot,” I say. “She is strong. But before it goes down, I want her to train as much as she can. I can take her to Spencer and Jacquelyn in Santa Fe. The experience will toughen her up some more. Let me prepare her as much as I can in the little time we have before we do this.”
“OK,” Niklas agrees.
“You know she’s going to hate you even more when this is all over,” I point out.
Niklas nods. “Yeah, I imagine she will. But I don’t care how much she hates me. I’m not the one who has to sleep with her.” He laughs lightly. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take for the sake of everything. The real concern is, how much will she hate you once it’s all over?”
I look away, staring off toward the wall. “It’s a risk I’m also willing to take,” I say distantly.
“Maybe she’ll understand,” he says, trying to ease the worried thoughts written all over my face. “If she’s going to be a part of us, to be a part of you, she’ll need to know how and when to separate your working relationship from your emotional relationship.”
“Yes,” I say, “she will need to learn that.”
He slaps his hands gently against the table.
“And if she’s as strong as you say she is, then she’ll understand and be able to get past it.”
I say nothing more.
“So then it’s settled. I’ll head to Los Angeles tonight. I have a meeting with Fredrik, anyway.”
“I take it he still hasn’t mentioned anything about me to you?” I ask.
“Nope,” Niklas says. “The guy is as solid as a Catholic behind a confession booth. He’s not going to betray you, Victor. Why do you still worry that he will?” Niklas grabs his cigarettes and car keys from the table. “He passed your test months ago. How long did they have him in that room for? Six days? Fredrik is loyal. He can’t be broken.”
