Behind The Hands That Kill (In The Company Of Killers #6)

by J. A. Redmerski

  “W-What do you mean?” I ask. But I already know; still I don’t want to believe it.

  “I mean no, Izabel.” He looks right at me, and the tranquil, yet intense look in his gaze frightens me. “This time it is over. There is no getting out of this one—it is over.”

  I start to throw my hands up in the air until I realize that I can’t, and that pisses me off even more.

  “So you’re just giving up?” I can’t even believe I’m saying this. “You’re just going to accept this and give up? What the hell is wrong with you?” I push myself into his space, glaring at him.

  He remains as calm as ever. And I want to slap him for it.

  “Victor—”

  “I did not finish telling you the truth about Kessler,” Victor interrupts. “You need to know the truth.”

  I suck in sharply, unable to speak, terrified about what he’s going to admit to. I hadn’t forgotten any of this: about Italy, or Nora, or whatever else Victor had wanted to say—I just wanted to forget. Already I feel sick to my stomach, and my heart is withering like a dying flower.

  Anything but that, Victor…tell me anything but what I think you’re going to.

  Victor

  “I knew you would want Kessler alive,” I say. “I wanted her alive even more than you did, but I could not let you know that.”

  Izabel’s chin rears back; a look of confusion crawls over her features—perhaps she thought I was going to say something else; I cannot tell if she is relieved by my confession, or not. But then another look begins to take over, and this one I am quite familiar with: the sting of realization.

  Her eyes narrow; she glares at me in a sidelong manner.

  “You manipulated me,” she accuses.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t give a shit about what Nora did: kidnapping Dina; turning Niklas against you; making me relive the nightmare of my confession when I was alone—or so I thought—in that room with her. You didn’t care about any of that!”

  “That is not true,” I speak out. “At first I wanted her dead as much as everyone else—I was going to kill her myself. And later, I did care about what she did to you.”

  “But not enough to kill her for it!” She struggles with her hands behind her, her shoulders end up making awkward motions for her as her voice blazes at me from just a foot away. “You knew I’d want her to stay so she could train me! But you wanted me to be the one to make the decision because if you did it, after everything she’d done, then I’d know the truth—I’d know you wanted her!”

  “No, Izabel!” I shout back. I move toward her, and she stands her ground. “It is not what you think,” I continue, lowering my tone. “There is not, and has never been, any kind of sexual attraction to that woman. I simply wanted to study her, to know her ways, to learn how she…”

  “How she what, Victor?” She grits her teeth. “How she what?”

  I start to speak, to answer her question, but she stops me, and surprises me with the answer all on her own.

  “You wanted to know how she does it,” she says with accusation and ire. “How she can do what she does without batting an eye, how she can be so heartless and emotionless, how she can be so immune to love—you wanted to be just like her! You wanted me to go off with some kid I never knew and play fucking house, so you could be just like Nora!” She stops long enough to take a breath. “You let me think I was making an important decision in your Order; you let me believe that you believed in me enough to trust my judgment”—she clamps her jaw shut, presumably to stifle an indignant scream—“but the truth was you had already made the decision for me; you had no intention of killing her, whether I wanted her dead or not!” She turns her back to me; her shoulders rise and fall heavily with heavy, deep breaths. “You manipulated me,” she repeats, at last.

  “I am sorry,” I speak softly from behind.

  Silence fills the room again.

  “So am I,” she finally responds, and it catches me off-guard.

  Izabel turns around to face me, and while I am wondering what she could possibly be sorry for, she begins to tell me.

  “In my heart,” she says, “I sided with Niklas when you confessed to Nora what you did to Claire.”

  “But—”

  She shakes her head sharply, in substitution of putting up her hand. “I’m not done,” she says, and goes on. “And while we were in Italy, I was given the opportunity to know the real Niklas, to understand him, and to see through the rough exterior. And do you want to know what I saw?”

  I nod subtly, and with reluctance.

  She swallows, and glances briefly at the floor; when she raises her eyes again she is not looking at me anymore.

  “I saw someone who, although he has done so much harm, still deserved forgiveness; someone who, in a way, is still innocent in all of this; someone who has so much love and compassion in his heart.” Her eyes find mine again and then she says, “I saw a man who…can still be saved.”

  “And you are sorry for this?” I ask, confused.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I feel guilty,” she answers. “I feel guilty because…when I look at you…I don’t see the same.”

  I turn my back to her so she does not see the pain in my face.

  Victor

  I step up to the bars, peer out at nothing, and I think about my brother, about Izabel’s compassion for him. And it does not take me long to think about Italy and why I sent Izabel there.

  Once I vanquish the emotion from my face, I turn to see her again, ignoring the fact that the knife Artemis placed on the floor inside the cell is the same knife I used to slit Artemis’s throat. That is why Artemis said it was familiar. And that is also why I choose to ignore it, the meaning behind it.

  “You are right about my brother,” I admit. “And you have nothing to be sorry for. Izabel, you and Niklas are…the same. You were both forced into this life; you were both against it, and wanted only a normal life; equally you both did what you had to do to survive; and you both followed me when you could have taken another path, a less-traveled road that leads to redemption, and not death. Izabel, like my brother, you are innocent in all of this; you still deserve forgiveness; you can still be saved.” I look beyond her momentarily, my mind captured by my thoughts. “I had hoped you would save him…I had hoped that you would save each other.”

  Izabel

  The light has been stolen from my eyes. I don’t even see darkness anymore, only nothingness, and the two are not the same. No words, spoken or written, have ever hurt me so much, or cut so deeply; no confession or regret or truth could ever do the damage that this has done.

  I feel gravity betray my body and I fall to my knees on the dirty stones; I sense Victor reaching for me, but he backs away when I deny him. “Don’t touch me,” I hear my voice say, but it sounds far off, as if coming from someone else’s mouth. “Don’t…”

  Victor sits down on the floor, rests his back against the bars, draws his knees up and props his arms atop them. I can’t look at him, but somehow I can still see his every movement; even the sadness in his face. I see it. Somehow.

  After what feels like a long time, after I feel in control of my voice again, I raise my head and look at him with tears in my eyes. “That’s why you sent me to Italy,” I say, pain altering my voice. “That’s why you said it had to be Niklas who went with us. It wasn’t because you knew he’d protect me, or that you knew you could trust him with me—you wanted us to be together.”

  Victor sighs. Slowly, he nods.

  “Yes,” he says softly. “I wanted to…save you both.”

  “You wanted to save yourself,” I come back.

  He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “it was not about saving me—it was about you first, my brother second, and then myself last.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  Victor blinks, stunned.

  “I am sorry you feel that way,” he says. “But I am telling you the truth. I
only wanted to save you.”

  “From what?” I ask, with bitterness this time. “From your lifestyle? The dangers at every turn—I don’t believe you, Victor.”

  “I wanted to save you from me,” he answers quickly. “I…wanted to save you from this.” He opens both hands, palms up, indicating this cage, this inevitable predicament.

  And I look at those hands. I look at them, long and hard and symbolically, because in my heart I know they’re the hands that will end my life before this night is over.

  He is telling the truth, after all: he wanted to save me from himself. Victor knew that one day he would have to kill me if our feelings did not change. Just like Marina. Just like Artemis. He is going to kill me…because he loves me. That’s why I’m still in these bonds. That’s why Victor has already told me that I’m going to die tonight. That’s why we are still in this cage together. That’s why…

  Choking back the tears, I try to have some courage in my last moments, instead of cowardice, or feeling sorry for myself. This is all my own fault anyway; I could’ve left a long time ago; I could’ve chosen a different path, a different life, but I didn’t, despite all of the things that I saw and knew—I chose this.

  I have no one to blame but myself.

  I sigh, looking at my feet perched in the nice black shoes, and say, “Then why did you bring me here, Victor?” I raise my head and look at him. “If you were trying to push Niklas and me together, why whisk me away on a vacation, pamper me, and make love to me—why tell me how much you love me—if you didn’t want me anymore?”

  He stands and moves toward me, holding out his hands, and he cups my cheeks within them. “That is what I have not told you yet,” he says, desperation evident in his voice. He pauses, softens his gaze. “I wanted—”

  The door opens on the far side of the vast room. We turn swiftly to see Artemis and Apollo moving through the path of light borrowed from the hallway. They appear eager, worried even, not methodical and patient as they did when they left. It’s obvious something changed in the few minutes they were gone.

  “Let’s get on with this, Victor,” Artemis calls out as she approaches; the sound of her boots moving over the stones echoes throughout the vast space. “You know why you’re here. You know why she’s here”—she stops at the bars, her twin standing behind her—“I want to hear you say it. Tell us all why you’re here, Victor…love.”

  Victor steps away from me.

  My heart picks up its pace, thrashing violently against my ribs; my throat is dry; I feel my palms sweating, my ears pounding, the vein in my throat hammering against my esophagus. My eyes dart between Artemis and Victor. This is it and I know it. I feel it. Then I see it…I see that flickering moment in which Victor reveals for the first time his intentions, the struggle within him that he knows won’t go his way, the downward shift of his gaze, the swallowing of his guilt—his eyes skirt the knife lying on the floor next to his feet.

  Suddenly I can no longer hear their voices, or see their faces; my mind is cruelly carried off to a time that seems so long ago, a time when I barely knew Victor, but loved him enough already in my heart that I was willing to die at his hands:

  He pulls my head back even farther. The gun is pressing into my stomach now.

  “I’ve never been with a man that I wanted to be with,” I say. “I want to be with you. Just once. I want to know what it feels like to be the one in control.”

  He’s conflicted, I feel it in the heat emitting from his skin, in his tense, uncertain movements. In one instance the gun digs deeper into my gut and I feel like my hair is about to come out within his hand. But then he relents, loosening his grip just a little, allowing my neck some reprieve. I can see his eyes now, peering up at me so deadly and yet so seductively even though I know he’s not doing it on purpose.

  “You can’t be in here,” he says, also in a whisper.

  I feel his eyes on me, sweeping over my body, my bare breasts, downward to where my naked thighs are latched loosely around his hips.

  “I don’t care, Victor.”

  His gaze moves back to my face where he studies the curvature of my lips. Then I witness something else flash over his eyes, something frightening that I’ve never seen before in him, and I tense within his grasp. He studies me quietly as if I’m something to be ravaged and then ultimately…killed.

  And despite my growing fear, I still want to be right where I am, trapped in the merciless arms of a killer.

  “SAY IT!” Artemis rips out the words, further proving her worry, and her impatience. “TELL US WHY WE ARE ALL HERE, VICTOR!”

  Victor, standing in all his dark glory, his posture refined, his expression impassive, looks up at the tall ceiling, inhales a calm, steady breath and answers, “You want me to be the one to kill her.” Then he looks at Artemis. “You want me to take her life the same way I took yours years ago. With the same knife. With the same betrayal. You don’t want to go on, living your life, knowing that the man you loved could ever love anyone else more than you thought he loved you.”

  Artemis crouches, reaches into the cell to retrieve the knife from the floor. She rises back into a stand, holds the knife out to him. “I know you don’t fear death, Victor,” she says, now with composure, and no threat or sarcasm. “I know you, what kind of man you are, so don’t for a second think this is a kill-her-or-die scenario.” She places the knife into his opened hand—tears of heartbreak, and anger, roll down my cheeks. “You, Victor, won’t die here tonight, whether you choose to kill her or not.” His fingers collapse around the knife, and Artemis’s hand encloses his. “I know it may be hard to believe, after everything you’ve put me through, after what you did to me, but the truth is, as much as I hate you, Izabel’s right…I still love you.” Now Artemis is the one crying; three tears track down her face.

  Slowly she pulls her hand from his.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” she says. “You know you have to do this, just like you knew when you held me in your arms and drew the blade across my throat—it has to be done; you’ve known this since the day you met her.”

  Victor looks down at the knife in his hand.

  I don’t move. I don’t speak. I don’t tremble or fear or ache anymore. I just am. I am the girl who fell in love with a killer, and the girl who still loves him despite knowing what he’s about to do.

  I accept my fate.

  I am fearless. Bold. And ready.

  I am Izabel Seyfried.

  Victor

  I knew that this day would come. I did not know when. I did not know how. But I knew, and I never really could prepare myself for it. Killing someone you love is not something one can ever prepare for. And in my case, it is not something one can change, either. Whether by my hands, or by the hands of my enemies, Izabel was destined to die too soon—and either way, it is me who ultimately kills her.

  Slowly I look at her, and it does not surprise me that she looks back, unflinching, and unafraid. She has always been the strongest woman I have ever known. Even before she found her true self in her alter ego, long before she escaped Mexico in the backseat of my car, long before she began to learn the ways of an assassin’s life—Izabel has been more powerful than I can ever be, possessing virtues that I never could get right: compassion and love, strength and balance. She—not Nora Kessler—is who I should have always strived to master. Izabel is the me I could never be. And that is why I loved her. Why I love her.

  My hand grips the knife with an uncontrollable force; I feel it burning, the heat from its purpose boring into my bones, traveling up the length of my arm, and shooting into my heart.

  “Just do it, Victor,” Izabel says. She steps up me, presses her lips to base of my throat, and then lays the side of her face against my rapidly beating heart. “I’m ready,” she whispers. “And I…I’ll still love you even in death.”

  Wrapping my arms around her, I do not want to let her go. I grip her tightly, bury my face within her hair; I feel like I am going to break
, that my bones are suddenly glass and I am going to shatter into a thousand pieces around her. I feel my teeth grinding in my mouth. Anger. It rises up inside of me so great that I cannot fight against it to make myself calm. But why anger? Why not regret, or anguish? Oh yes, I know why anger—because I despise the man I am; I am ashamed of my own soul, one forged by vanity and greed, poisoned by weakness, damned by my own demons.

  Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I was not sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. I am discipline. Sarai is rage. I am aware of my choices at all times. Sarai’s choices are more aware of her, lying in wait to decide for her based on the severity of her mood with no intention of leaving her any conscious control over it.

  I know what I have to do.

  I cradle the back of her head in the palm of my hand, my gun resting beside me on the bed in the other. I feel her tears soaking my shoulder, her body wracked by sobs that coalesce into my muscles. And her sweet spot still presses against my cock every time her body tenses. But I leave her there despite the moral need to pull away.

  “Sarai,” I whisper against the side of her head, “I am sorry.”

  I raise the gun slowly behind her.

  I squeeze Izabel ever tighter; the anger, the memory, rendering me powerless, and I find myself turning her around violently in my arms so that her back is against me instead of her heart—I cannot bear to feel her heart beating next to mine!

  “Do it, Victor,” Artemis says, but I cannot look at her; not in this moment of all moments.