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“Oh. Well, Mr. Moretti,” the woman says, “won’t be coming, I’m afraid. He never was coming. I’ve never met him.”
“What do you mean?”
One side of her perfect mouth lifts into a subtle grin; she casually crosses the other leg, and I notice a tiny hummingbird tattoo on her ankle. She takes her precious time to answer, which makes me want to put a bullet between her eyes. I grit my teeth instead.
“You were brought here under false pretenses, Niklas Fleischer. But it had to be that way, or you wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
I lean forward and look her in the eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I have come otherwise?”
“Now you’re interested in knowing who I am, aren’t you?” she says.
“Yeah. Who the hell are you?” I inhale a deep breath, trying my damnedest to keep from exploding. “And why wouldn’t I have come otherwise?”
She leans forward too, as if to match me, to one-up me, still as confident and fearless as she was the moment she walked into the room. Who the hell is this woman?! She reminds me of Nora—the only difference is that Nora doesn’t intimidate me.
“My name is Lysandra,” she says. “And I’m the operative our brother, Victor Faust, was supposed to be in The Order.” She leans forward even farther and stops just inches from my face, daring me, testing me, hoping I make a mistake so she can demonstrate how much higher on the scale she is than I am. “And you wouldn’t have come otherwise because the only person alive in this world you would never betray or risk is the one person in this world that we want.”
“You brought me here for Victor,” I say, and I’m the first one to pull away and lean back against the chair again. “You’re working for Vonnegut, and you kidnapped Jackie. You knew I wouldn’t come for her if it meant using me to capture my brother.” Our brother, seeing as how she is, apparently, our sister.
“Precisely.” She leans against the chair again and crosses her arms. “Letting you believe it was Mr. Moretti who kidnapped your whore, gave you plenty of time to ponder every scenario. You knew what to expect; you were given forty-eight hours to think about what you’d say, what you’d do, who in Mr. Moretti’s family you might use against him. You knew going into this that the Moretti family is powerful, but they’re not operatives. Mr. Moretti himself, although he’s a killer, is just a mafia bully. Any situation involving him you knew you’d be able to get yourself out of.” She cocks her head to one side. “But you never would have shown up if you knew The Order had taken her because you would have known right away why she was taken, and you would have known you couldn’t get yourself out of this under any circumstances. You would have had to accept that your whore, your woman, your friend—whatever you want to call her—was going to die, and there was nothing you could do to prevent it. So, showing up to rescue her would have been pointless. And we wouldn’t have you. Sitting here. Right now. Am I right, Niklas, or have I severely misjudged you?”
I swallow. And I hate this bitch already.
I look at my hands; the gun is still there, but it’s as useful in this place as an umbrella in a flood.
I set it on the table.
“Yes. You’re right,” I admit. “But there is one thing you did severely misjudge, Lysandra.” I smirk at her, then prop my left foot atop my right knee and cross my arms. “No matter how you managed to get me here, there’s nothing you can do or say that’ll turn me on my brother. I can’t give you what you want because I don’t know where he is. But even if I did—”
“Oh yes, Niklas,” she says, “I’m aware of that. I knew going into this that you’d never give him up and that you’d never cooperate with us in helping find him.”
“Then what are we doing here?” I ask. “You may as well kill me and get it over with.” I laugh mordantly under my breath. “Or do you plan to torture me? That’s what people like you usually do to those who won’t talk.” I motion my hands in front of me and scoff. “If you know me as well as you think you do, then you already know I won’t talk.” I lean toward her, darkness in my gaze. “Even if you skinned me alive. So, again, tell me, What. The fuck. Are we doing here?”
Lysandra glances at the orderly guarding the door; he nods and steps out into the hallway but not in view of the elongated window. A few moments later, the door opens, and another orderly walks in with Jackie. Her hands are bound behind her back; there’s a cloth wrapped around her mouth, tied behind her head; her hair is disheveled and bloodied, and mascara is streaked and smeared across her face. She’s still wearing the same clothes she was wearing when I picked her up at the airport.
Her screams are muffled beneath the fabric; the orderly wrenches her arms behind her, and she quietens down, but the tears flow unceasingly from her reddened eyes.
Lysandra takes my gun from the table and walks over to Jackie.
I shoot up from the chair.
She puts the barrel to Jackie’s temple—Jackie’s eyes plead with me to help her.
“NOOO!”
And she pulls the trigger; the shot rings out, temporarily deafening me; the sight in front of me temporarily traumatizes me.
Breath fills my lungs, leaving it in one desperate gasp as Jackie’s body falls to the floor in slow motion. I feel like I’m running toward Lysandra—I even feel her throat crushed in my hands—but I realize I’m still standing in the same spot and haven’t moved. Tears burn the back of my fucking eyes, and my hands are shaking.
Bright red crimson pools on the sterile-white floor. Without looking down, Lysandra steps away from it just before it can reach the heel of her stiletto.
“The example,” Lysandra begins, “was one-half of the reason you were brought here, Niklas.” She nods once more at the orderly standing by the door, and he goes out into the hall. “The other half is the threat.”
The door opens, and another orderly enters the room with another woman, bound the same as Jackie had been. At first, I feel…confused; I shake my head back and forth. It can’t be… But then I feel the weight of reality, the weight of the truth, as it begins to crush me.
The woman is my mother, who I had been led to believe most of my life was dead, killed by The Order for being a spy.
