Текст книги "Reviving Izabel"

Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Izabel

The footsteps carrying through the hallway are faint as guests walk back and forth every so often. Tall heels. Tasteful dress shoes. Rich voices pretending to be intrigued, overdramatizing the insignificant things in life. Artificial laughter. Classical music—Bach, I believe—plays downstairs, so crisp and elegant and distinguished that it makes me feel like I’m attending a party for the Queen of England rather than sitting patiently in a dark room with my favorite knife in hand. I call her Pearl.

This room smells no different than it did the last time I was here, like too much cologne and sweat and stale potpourri and dryer sheets. A heavy, square marble table sits across the room. I remember that table. I will never forget the way Victor bent me over it, or the disgusting pig who watched as my panties pooled around my ankles.

It’s dark outside, just after nine o’clock, and the moonlight bathes much of the room from the walk-out balcony behind me. I’ve made sure to leave it open so that I can feel the night air on my skin. It’s incredibly warm in these tight clothes. Black from the neck down. Boots dress my feet, much like what Niklas prefers to wear except mine have daggers sheathed within the leather. A gun is holstered to my hip, but it’s only there in case I need it. I like my knife.

I sit in a chair near the center of the spacious room, just out of the soft gray light pouring in from the balcony. My right leg is crossed over the left. My hands rest carefully within my lap, the pearl handle of my knife fitted firmly in my fist. I tap the thin silver blade against my thigh.

Twenty-six minutes have passed since I sat down. But I’m patient. I’m disciplined. As much as I can be, I suppose. I promised Victor that I’d wait. That I’d sit here just like this, practically unmoving, until it was time. I said that I could do it, that I could get through it without marching my way downstairs and taking care of business there. I intend to prove it. Though, I admit it’s hard.

I glance over at Niklas standing in a dark shadow near the balcony doors with his hands folded together down in front of him. He’s grinning at me, taking pleasure in my growing frustration. I smirk back at him and look toward the bedroom door across the room.

Thirty-two minutes.

I hear the voices of the two guards always stationed outside of the room. They’re talking to Arthur Hamburg.

Seconds later, the door opens and a blast of light from the hallway shines into the room. But it doesn’t touch me. And just as quickly, the light is shut out as the guard closes the door after Hamburg steps inside. He doesn’t notice me when he walks past the large bed and then the marble table.

“What do you think of the hair?” I ask.

Hamburg stops cold in his tracks.

I lean over forward in the chair, pushing myself into the path of light.

“Jet black,” I say so casually. “Do you still think I’m stunning no matter what kind of wig I wear?” I reach up with my free hand and touch the short cut carefully to show it off.

The overhead lights in the room come on when Hamburg says, Lights on.

“How did you get in here?” he asks desperately, his gaze bouncing about the room, looking for the answer and for signs of anyone else.

When he notices Niklas and Victor both standing near the balcony entrance behind me, guns in their hands down at their sides, he starts to call out to his guards. But then a loud thud sounds just outside the door. And then another. Hamburg stops feet in front of the door, no longer sure it’s safe to open it.

He looks back at me.

I smile and tap the blade against my leg some more.

The door behind him opens and Fredrik is standing there with two white collars clenched in his hands. He drags the bodies of the guards across the marble floor, releases his grip and their heads hit the marble with a thump.

Hamburg stares at Fredrik, wide-eyed like a fish, his overweight body frozen in the same spot, his sausage-like fingers barely moving against his slacks, nervously, as if he’s absently searching for a weapon that he normally keeps on him and he doesn’t want to believe that it’s not there when he needs it most.

Fredrik shuts the door and locks it. He walks back over to the bodies, taking them up by the collars again and dragging them across the room. There’s no sign of blood on them. He must’ve used his weapon of choice, a needle filled with something deadly and untraceable.

I look at Hamburg.

“Y-Yes…the black looks good on you,” he says uneasily. “W-Why are you here? Willem is missing. I-I don’t know where he is. I swear. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over a week.”

I smile and tilt my head to one side. “That’s because he’s dead,” I say matter-of-factly.

Hamburg looks behind me at Victor. And then at Niklas. And then back at Victor again.

“Look, I-I told him to leave it alone,” he continues to stutter. “I didn’t send him. I-I specifically told him not to look for either of you.”

Sweat beads from his chubby face, glistening on his double-chin. The armpits of his white dress shirt are wet with stains, the moisture spreading quickly across the fabric. The collar of his shirt changes color as it soaks up the moisture like a cheap paper towel.

I stand up. “You’re a liar.” I walk slowly towards him. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not here because of Willem Stephens. I’m here because of you.”

Hamburg takes the same amount of steps backward that I take toward him, his bloated, wrinkled face twisted by trepidation, his thick hands feeling behind him for a door or a wall.

Fredrik steps in front of the door, blocking Hamburg’s path and Hamburg stops. I watch as his throat moves when he swallows. Fear is ever-growing in his eyes.

He keeps looking behind me at Victor and Niklas, always focusing his attention on Victor last.

Victor steps away from the balcony door and stands beside me.

“Look, I held true to my word, goddammit!” Hamburg shouts, the lines around his eyes deepening. He points his fat finger at us, dressed in a thick gold ring. “I never went looking for either one of you after you killed my wife! I kept my word!” He points directly at me. “You were the one who came looking for me! Y-You started all of this!”

I shake my head, smiling across at him, at how desperate and afraid he is. It alone gives me some satisfaction, seeing him squirm, the way he’s begging for his life without outright begging.

I step a little closer.

Hamburg doesn’t move because he can’t. Fredrik is behind him.

“Oh, this has nothing to do with me,” Victor says to Hamburg. “I kept my word. I never came after you. But Izabel, on the other hand,” Victor taunts in his trademark casual manner, “well, you didn’t make any deals with her, unfortunately for you. And I don’t own her. I never did. She’s here of her own accord and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Hamburg looks right at me, the anger shifting in his face to something more pathetic.

“P-Please…I’ll do whatever you want,” he begs, “give you anything you want. My money. My house. Just ask and it’s yours. I’m worth millions.”

I step right up to him and I can smell the stench of his sweat. He stares into my eyes underneath a shrinking gaze, one filled with hatred and horror. His large frame trembles inches from me and I know that if he thought he could get away with it, he’d grab me right now and choke me to death.

Suddenly, his expression changes to better fit his scathing words. “You won’t do it,” he taunts, sneering coldly as he looks straight into my face. “You don’t have it in you, to kill in cold blood. You killed my guard out of self-defense. You won’t kill me. Not like this.” There’s humor in his eyes.

I stand poised in front of him, my index finger fixed against the blade of my knife pressed against the side of my leg. I don’t say anything, I just watch him, smiling with faint, yet obvious amusement, at his wasted attempts to save his own life.

He steps to the left and starts to walk away. I let him.

“I’ll get you all a drink,” he calls out, raising his finger up beside him. He removes his oversized suit jacket and lays it over the back of the leather chair next to the marble table. Then he starts undoing the buttons of his dress shirt.

I’m behind him like a ghost, sliding the blade across his throat before he has a chance to take his fingers away from the last button. A chilling gurgling sound fills the space, followed by Hamburg choking on his own blood. Both of his hands come up as if he were trying to fight his way out of a plastic bag. Red splatters from the side of his throat, and he falls to his knees with his hands pressed over the cut. Blood pours from between all of his fingers and drenches his shirt.

I watch him. I watch him not with horror or regret or sadness, but with retribution. My eyes feel wider as the air from the balcony hits the backs of them. I can’t stop looking. I can’t turn away. But I can feel Victor, Fredrik and Niklas’ eyes on me, watching me revel in the moment of my first official cold-blooded kill.

Hamburg chokes and weeps, tears dripping from his eyes as I move around in front of him and crouch down to his level. I study him, the way his face contorts, the way the blood-red is contrasted so starkly against the white of his shirt. I watch the terror in his eyes, the fear of the unknown overshadowing him so quickly.

A small smile creeps up on one side of my mouth.

Hamburg falls forward onto the floor, his heavy body jerking and convulsing for only moments until it goes completely still. He lies with his cheek pressed against the marble tile, his mouth open as well as his eyes. They stare out at nothing, filled with nothing. Blood pools around his head and his chest, soaking up within his clothes.

Still crouched in front of him, I lean over on my toes toward him, my forearms propped on the tops of my legs.

“That’s how those people felt when you strangled them to death,” I whisper to his corpse.

I rise into a stand and take one step back before the blood pooling on the floor inches its way to my boot. One by one I look at Fredrik, Niklas and then Victor and all of them give me the same silent approval. But it’s in Victor’s eyes that I see so much more. An everlasting bond between us not created by this moment, but by that night we crossed paths in Mexico. Thrust into each other’s lives by a twist of fate and held there by our rare similarities and our need to be together.

We are one in the same.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Izabel

One year later…

Victor comes into the bathroom of our New York house to find me relaxing in a bubble bath. I look up at him casually as he pulls his gun from the back of his pants and sets it on the counter. My hair is pinned to the top of my head in a sloppy bun. I lay against the tub with my arms laid out along the sides, one knee drawn up from the water, partially covered by bubbles. It’s been a long day. I killed John Lansen, the CEO of Balfour Enterprises and rapist extraordinaire, and still have his blood under my fingernails.

I close my eyes and relax.

“Where have you been?” I ask Victor without raising the back of my neck from the tub.

“Cleaning up your mess,” he answers calmly.

Compelled to look at him after his accusation, I open my eyes again to see him looming tall over me.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “It was a clean kill.”

He cocks a brow and looks down at my hands.

“Is that so?” he says incriminatingly. “Clean means no blood at all. No fingerprints. Nothing left behind, not even your scent.”

I sigh and close my eyes. “Victor,” I say, waving my fingers above the side of the tub dramatically. “I didn’t leave anything behind. I cleaned up after myself. Spotless. Ask Fredrik. He was there. He double-checked everything.”

I feel Victor’s body hovering closer as he sits down on the side of the tub.

“But what order did I give you, Izabel?” he asks, as calmly as before. “Before you set out on that mission with Fredrik, what did I ask of you?”

“No blood,” I answer, still with my eyes closed. “Poison the man so that it looks like a heart attack.”

I open my eyes again and look up into his dominant gaze, the green of his eyes darker than usual.

“Poison is Fredrik’s thing, not mine.”

“You defied my orders,” he says, “and it will be the last time.”

I smile at him and drop both of my hands underneath the water just to feel the bubbles on my skin. I know Victor isn’t truly upset with me. This has become a game we play with each other: sometimes I do the opposite of what he says and he punishes me for it. It’s the kind of game we both win. I would never have defied his orders on a mission of importance. John Lansen was just a loose end and another one of my training missions.

“What are you going to do to me, Victor?” I ask with a seductive gleam in my eyes. I bring my left leg out of the water and prop it on the side of the tub, just behind where he sits. “Are you going to punish me?”

With his sleeve already pushed up past his elbow, his right hand moves across the length of my leg slowly and then falls beneath the water. I gasp when his fingers find me.

“I’m taking you out of the field until you learn to control yourself,” he says, two of his fingers slipping between my nether lips.

The back of my neck presses harder against the tub and my legs fall farther apart.

“And what if I can never control myself?” I ask breathily, barely able to concentrate on him talking while his fingers continue to move between my legs like that.

He’s such a bastard. And I fucking love him for it.

Two fingers slip inside of me and my legs begin to tighten and tingle when the pad of his thumb moves in a hard, circular motion against my clit.

“Open your eyes,” he says softly, but demandingly.

I do, just barely, as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to control my lids. I whimper and moan and bite down so hard on my bottom lip that it hurts.

“If you can’t control yourself, then I’ll have no choice.”

“…No choice…than to what?” My bare chest heaves. I reach beneath the water in search of his hand, coiling my fingers halfway around his strong wrist and then trailing them down toward his own fingers as they continue to move in a circular pattern.

Then he stops.

He pulls his hand from the water, stands up and dries his arm off with my towel hanging over the shower door.

I stare up at him blankly.

He walks out of the bathroom and leaves me sitting here, alone, unsatisfied and sexually frustrated.

“Hey!” I shout out to him. “Where the hell are you going?!”

No answer.

“Victor!”

Nothing.

I growl under my breath, shoot up from the water and step over the side of the tub. I grab Victor’s gun into my wet, soapy hand as I storm out of the bathroom and into our bedroom. He’s standing with his back to me next to our king-sized bed, taking off his dress shirt with a casual, uninterested grace, which only frustrates me further.

I step up behind him, soaking wet, water and bubbles dripping onto the floor, and I go to shove his gun into his back. But he’s too fast and he whirls around at me, taking the gun from my hand and shoving it under my chin, all in two swift seconds that pass me by in a blur.

The barrel is cold against my flesh. The intensity in his eyes sends a shot of heat through my body and between my thighs. My breasts are shoved against the hardness and warmth of his chest, his free hand positioned in the center of my back, his long fingers splayed.

“No discipline, Izabel.” He studies my face with a hungry and calculated sweep of his eyes. He licks the side of my mouth and shoves the gun deeper into my throat. “You will never learn.”

I try to kiss him, searching for his mouth with my own, but he refuses me, teasing me with the distance of his lips barely an inch away.

He licks me again. And then he shoves me down on the bed and crawls between my naked legs, still dressed from the waist down in his black slacks. I shudder when I feel his hardness pressing against me through his pants. My body breaks out in shivers as he drags the tip of his tongue upward between my breasts.

He kisses one side of my jaw, and then the other.

“Maybe you should get rid of me,” I whisper onto his lips.

“Never,” he says, kissing me once softly. “You’re mine for as long as you breathe.” His mouth covers mine ravenously.

* * *

That was how I became what I am, a sex slave turned killer. And that was the beginning of not only a love affair between Victor and me, but of a new underground assassination ring that is so secret it has no name.

Four became five six weeks ago, when we welcomed the blond-haired, hazel-eyed devil, Dorian Flynn, into our group. And while although there are many who work for us, spread out over several countries, the five of us are central to the entire operation, with none other than Victor Faust at the head of it all.

Niklas is still an intolerable bastard who loves money and women and pissing me off. Indirectly, of course, but he knows what he’s doing. Even after a year, he and I still pretty much despise each other. Maybe I despise him a little more than he does me, but we manage for Victor’s sake. For the most part we stay out of each other’s way. I still have yet to make things even with Niklas by shooting him. But I’ll get around it. Eventually.

As for Fredrik, the women still love him, but I grew bored with trying to figure him out a long time ago. Why women practically drop their panties when they see him. I figured the only way to know that is to sleep with him, and since that will never happen, I decided to leave it a mystery. But Fredrik is like a brother to me, and, like Victor, I can’t imagine not having him in my life. Without realizing it, he does try to run after me with those damn Band-Aids every now and then, whether it’s after a brutal training session with Victor, or the night I was stabbed in the shoulder while on a mission. I have to remind Fredrik, in my most unforgiving Izabel Seyfried voice, not to treat me like a frail little girl. But deep down, I like that he’s so protective of me. I’ll just never tell him that.

Dina, the mother that I should’ve been born to twenty-four years ago, now lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We set her up in a safe-house as small and humble as her house back in Lake Havasu City had been. Victor tried to get her into something large and immaculate because he wanted her to have the best, but she refused. “I like things simple,” she said that day.

Dina still doesn’t know everything about what we do, but it’s safer that way and she accepts that. And as far as her safe-house, it’s open only to Victor and me. I visit her once a month. But her health is failing. I worry more about her than I do about myself or Victor. But she’s a tough old woman and I think she still has many years left in her.

And as far as Amelia McKinney, Fredrik didn’t kill her. Killing innocent women isn’t his style. He set her up in another safe-house on the other side of the country, somewhere in Delaware. New identity. New everything. But he never visits her. The last thing he wants is for some woman to think he’s interested in something other than sex.

That’s the story of Fredrik’s life.

As promised, after we were done with Hamburg and Stephens, we started devising a strategy to kill Javier Ruiz’s brothers and to free the girls imprisoned in the Mexican compound. I went through six months of grueling training, real training, not being dropped off somewhere to let strangers teach me, before we set out on the mission. Unfortunately, most of the girls at the compound who I had known had already been sold off, or were dead by the time we got there. I killed Luis and Diego Ruiz, slit their throats just like I did Hamburg, after Victor, Niklas and Dorian took out the guards around and inside the compound with a barrage of bullets. I’m not as good with firearms and still have a lot of training ahead of me. Years of it. But I get the job done with my ever-growing collection of blades. And I’m learning more every day.

When the mission in Mexico was over and we saved who we could—a total of six girls who were so broken that although they are free, I don’t expect them to make much of their lives—we went on to the men who did the buying. And still today, just as it will be tomorrow and next year, we seek them out and we eliminate them. It will be a long road, tracking them all down and giving them what they deserve, but I’ll never stop until it’s done.

But more important than anything, to me especially, is taking out the Order. It’ll be a long time before I can truly sleep soundly at night, knowing that there are men looking for Victor every hour of every day. It’s a much more dangerous and complex feat than probably any mission we’ll ever take on.

The Order is massive, with thousands of members and it is one of the oldest assassin organizations in existence. It will take some time. But it will be done if it’s the last thing I ever take part in.

Victor is my life and I will die helping to protect him.

Though that mission will continue to be a difficult undertaking now that Fredrik had to leave because of suspicion, and we no longer have dependable eyes and ears on the inside. We have new moles placed within the Order, but they have yet to prove they’re trustworthy like we know Fredrik had been.

And Victor…Victor is still all business. All cold-blooded killer-for-hire with little to no conscience when it comes to fulfilling a job. He is still seemingly emotionless, ruthless and deadly by all accounts. But behind closed doors, when it’s just me and him alone, he is a different man. He loves me without having to say it. He cherishes me without having to prove it. When he touches me I know what he’s thinking, how he truly feels beneath that mask he wears in the face of others. I’m the only soul he’s ever let into his life completely. And the only one he’ll never let go.

He became my ‘hero’, after all. The other half of my soul who could never let anything bad ever happen to me. I trust him with my life, no matter how often he tells me to always trust my instincts first. The truth is that everything we do is risky. Taking a step out a door. Making a phone call. Eating a bagel in a café. Everyone we come across is a threat until proven otherwise. Either one of us could die at any moment. But at least I know that Victor will always put me first and do everything in his power to keep me safe, just as I will always do for him.

Staying one step ahead of death, it is our way of life. It is my way of life, and I believe it was always meant to be this way. But as strange as it may seem, I feel perfectly safe in the company of killers.