My ankles, I realize quickly, are also bound.
I force my eyes open the rest of the way and try hard to focus my vision. I’m sitting in a chair in the center of an enormous dark and dusty room of what appears to be an old warehouse.
I laugh inwardly at myself as I now see Andre Costa’s face in my mind, as it was inside that warehouse back in New Orleans.
What comes around goes around, I suppose. Retribution for every death I caused or have been a part of is coming sooner than I had hoped.
The strange air and the whooshing sound above me I see is coming from a large industrial fan jutting out from the wall near the high ceiling. The walls are made of concrete, the ceiling of metal beams that stretch from one end to the other, held up by tall concrete pillars. The place smells intensely of paint thinner and glue and other lung-damaging chemicals.
My throat is painfully dry. My first instinct is to ask for water, but just like with removing the rope around my wrists and ankles, I know that nothing I ask for will be given to me.
I look down when I feel the tops of my feet burning and I see the skin on my toes has broken, indicating that at some point I must’ve been dragged.
Loud footsteps, like hard, flat soles, echo through the enormous space as Stephens makes his way toward me.
I laugh under my breath at the ridiculousness of the situation.
“What, might I ask, is so funny?” Stephens says in his deep voice, tinged with amusement of his own.
I smile brazenly up at him as he stands over me with his hands folded behind his back.
“I thought you and that sick f**k you work for wanted me dead?” I laugh. “This is a little overkill, don’t you think?” I smirk up at him.
Stephens smiles chillingly and I immediately compare it to the look I saw on Fredrik’s face after he strapped Andre Costa to that dentist chair. Instead of answering, he looks to his right as another man walks over with a chair. The legs hitting the concrete briefly as the chair is placed on the floor echoes through the small space separating us. Stephens sits down, casually straightening his fine black suit, tugging gently at the lapel and then brushing away invisible dust from his leg.
“Seriously?” I say, shaking my head. “Let me guess, Hamburg still wants to get his peep-show. Didn’t get it with me and Victor in his room at the mansion. Didn’t get it with his guard in his office at the restaurant—I’m glad that piece of shit is dead by the way. Was he a friend of yours?” I smirk more evidently.
Stephens’ eyes smile. He crosses one leg over the other and places his hands gently on his lap. It’s incredibly unnerving at how relaxed and unaffected by my words he appears. But I don’t let him know that it bothers me in any case.
“Trust me, Izabel, Sarai, whatever you’re called, if it were up to me, I’d have killed you in that house instead of bringing you here.”
“Of course,” I taunt, “you’re just the lackey, sitting at Hamburg’s feet waiting for his next blowjob.”
The ceiling appears in my vision in an instant as my hair is pulled from behind, my neck forced back so far it cuts off my airflow. Another man is standing behind me, looking down into my widened eyes. I try to swallow, but I can’t. I start to choke and gasp instead.
“Release her,” I hear Stephens say.
My head is forced forward as the man lets go; the weight of my body causes the chair to shake and wobble briefly and then it steadies itself. I’m relieved I can breathe again. I raise my head and glare at Stephens sitting just two feet in front of me. I begin to gaze about the room, looking for a way out, searching for a plan that I know will likely never materialize. Even if I could get out of this room, I don’t know how I’d pull off getting myself out of these bonds. The one around my wrists is so tight that it feels like the blood circulation is being cut from my hands. The ones around my ankles are almost as tight, but I feel like I can move them just a little more, my ankles grinding against the wood of the chair legs. But I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe to Hell very soon.
I’m not afraid of Stephens. I’m not afraid of what he’ll do to me. I’m not afraid of being tortured. I’m just afraid of how long it will last.
“Why don’t you just get this over with?” I lash out at him, hatred and vengeance evident in my voice. “I don’t care what you do to me, or what Hamburg does to me, so just do it.”
“Oh, but you’re not here because of Hamburg.” Stephens flashes a chilling smile. “And no, I don’t want to get it over with.” He leans forward in the chair, pushing his square-shaped jaw farther into my view. I can smell his aftershave. “I hope that you don’t talk for at least a few days because I very much look forward to spending this time with you.”
I swallow down my fear of knowing what his words mean, that he’s going to torture me and for a very long time. I try to play it off, hoping he doesn’t detect the slightest bit of worry in my face.
“What could I possibly know that you’d need to get me to talk at all?” I laugh smugly. “And what kind of aftershave is that? It smells like you’ve been dumpster diving between a crack-head’s thighs.”
Stephens’ eyes dart behind me, narrowing thinly in a way that tells me he just stopped the man from pulling my neck back again, or maybe from hitting me across the face. He ignores my insult.
Stephens pulls away and rests his back against the chair again. And he says nothing. I hate that. I’d rather him talk a cheesy monologue of circles around me than to say nothing at all. And I think he knows how much it bothers me. That smug expression in his eyes tells me so.
“OK, so then if I’m not here because of Hamburg, then why am I here?”
Another pair of footsteps moves through the room behind me. I try to look back, but can only stretch my neck around so far.
Finally, the figure steps around and into my view.
“You’re here because of me,” Niklas says, dropping a cigarette butt onto the floor and snuffing it out with his black leather boot.
I gasp quietly. My entire body freezes solidly against the chair. I hear my mind searching for my breath, desperately trying to regain its control over my body again, but for the longest moment I’m nothing but an unmoving shell.
“Niklas…,” I finally say, but it’s all that I can get out.
Rage churns inside of me, my need to kill Stephens suddenly overshadowed by my need to tell Niklas everything I’ve been wanting to say to him.
Unlike Stephens, Niklas doesn’t smile or grin or feel the need to taunt me with threats. I sense something else within him, something much darker than Stephens, something more threatening than words could convey. Looking up at his tall height and tousled light brown hair, his fierce blue eyes framed by a perfectly round, yet sculpted face, I see someone more attuned to vengeance than I could ever be.
And finally, I’m terrified.
Niklas steps forward to stand directly in front of me, completely undaunted by the short distance. Stephens had kept away from me a couple feet at least, as if worried I might manage to spit on him, or break free and grab him. But not Niklas. I feel like he’s daring me to move. He wants me to make a move.
I swallow hard and raise my chin arrogantly at him and try to remain strong in the face of my fate.
“You know what I want,” Niklas says evenly, the German accent just as I remember it, still evident in his voice. “Or, do we need to discuss it in detail?” He cocks his head to one side.
He looks so much like Victor. I wonder how on the inside he can be so very different.
“You’re gonna have to explain it,” I say. “Is it Victor?” I glance briefly at Stephens. “This piece of shit was just at his house. You already know where to find Victor. And not that it surprises me much, but what are you doing with them?”
I catch Stephens look over at Niklas, but Niklas doesn’t take his eyes off me. He crouches down in front of me, between my opened legs, and looks upon me with a face so calm and dark that it sends a shiver up the back of my neck. I can smell the leather from his slim black jacket and a faint layer of cigarette smoke lingering on his dark gray shirt underneath.
“I’ve been looking for Victor for months,” Niklas begins and I listen closely, keeping my eyes trained on his. “I’m sure he’s told you that he left Order, betrayed Vonnegut and betrayed me—”
My eyes grow wider and my mouth falls open with a quick breath. “Betrayed you?” I cut in with disbelief. “You can’t be serious. You betrayed Victor! You were the one—”
I choke and gasp as his strong hand shoots out and fastens firmly around my throat. I thrash about within the chair, unable to bring my hands up and try to pry his away. My eyes roll into the back of my head as his grip tightens.
He releases me.
I wheeze and pant trying to catch my breath, the corners of my eyes wet with tears of exhaustion and pain. I’m terrified of him, but not enough to cry or beg for my life. I’ll die before I beg for anything.
“My brother betrayed me long before he left the Order,” he says with a little more emotion in his voice than before—resentment. “He betrayed me when he went against everything we stood for to help you. He betrayed me when he lied to me about helping you. He lied, Sarai, because he knew it was wrong.” He pushes up on his toes and is mere inches from my face. “He almost killed me because of you. And he would have if you hadn’t have stopped him. He betrayed me!”
My hands begin to tremble against the arms of the chair. My heart is in my stomach, swirling around inside, lost and frightened. I can’t deny that what Niklas said is the truth.
I can’t deny it…
He pulls away a few inches to where I can no longer smell his toothpaste, but he’s still too close. A mile would be too close.
“Niklas,” I say in a slightly desperate voice, just enough to try to make him listen to me. “Victor was going to kill you only because it was wrong to kill me. Don’t you understand, he would’ve done that for anyone. Not just me.”
A small grin appears on one corner of his mouth and I’m both intrigued and worried by it. He rises to his feet and turns his back to me as he approaches Stephens. And then he turns around again.
“You don’t know my brother as well as you think,” he says. “No, he would not have done that for anyone else. Seems my brother is human after all, with all the falling for you and whatnot.”
I shake my head and my gaze strays from his.
“Why am I here, Niklas? Just get to the reason you brought me here. I’m not going to grace you with my conversation.”
Stephens stands up from his chair, looking like a giant next to Niklas. He is a very tall man, with broad shoulders and a large square-shaped head. “I hate to say it,” he says, “but I agree with the bitch. Let’s get on with this.” He looks down at me coldly. “You’re alive because he needs you first, but when he’s done with you I’ll be putting a bullet in that pretty little head of yours, per my contract with Arthur Hamburg.”