The Swan and the Jackal (29 page)

I fall against the back of my chair and throw my head back, laughing gently. “Unbelievable.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I fell in love with probably the most mentally fucked up woman on the planet.”

Izabel isn’t laughing, nor is she even smiling at my poor attempt at humor. I guess she was right when she said we can’t hide pain from each other.

“OK,” I say, motioning my hands, “so she’s sick. I knew that already. As a matter of fact, this whole multiple personality thing, in the back of my mind, I knew that’s what it was. But I didn’t want to believe it. I mean it
is
rare, after all. Why did it have to be her? This is ridiculous. I can’t even—.” I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

I drop my hands in my lap and stare at the creased paper in front of me. Izabel remains silent, listening, watching, wanting to say something to make this all better but she knows as much as I do that there’s nothing that
can
.

“So, then I can get her help,” I say, looking across at her. “She’s been fine as Cassia—holy fucking shit, Izabel; Seraphina never actually existed. When I married her in private, when I made love to her, all of the things we did together; she was and always has been Cassia Carrington. Seraphina never existed.” The revelation nearly sends me over the edge, and what’s left of my own mind into oblivion.

“I can get her help,” I repeat, resolved to do just that.

“Fredrik,” Izabel speaks up carefully, “I don’t think there’s anyone or anything that can help her.”

“Why would you say that?” I feel my eyebrows hardening in my forehead.

She glances at the paper in front of me.

“You should read the rest of it.”

I shake my head.

“I’m not going to read anymore. Seraphina is sick. She needs help. And I’m going to get her help.” My voice begins to rise. “What, you think shrinks and doctors just put people like her away because they’re sick? No. They put them through therapy and give them medication—”

“Yes, they do,” Izabel adds with caution and sympathy, “but not the ones who murder innocent people. I’ve read the entire file Fredrik. Her parents may not have been innocent. She killed them and they deserved it. But that boy, Phillip Johnson, he wasn’t the first innocent person who Seraphina killed. There were several others after him. All male.”

And then the innocent blonde women six years ago—there’s no telling how many people Seraphina killed that I never knew about.

“Which side of her did, or
do
you, love more?”

I look up. “I never said I still loved her.”

“You didn’t
have
to say it.”

I look back down.

“I loved Seraphina because she was like me,” I begin, seeing only Seraphina’s face and short black hair and dark makeup in my mind. “I was a different kind of monster when we first met. She was the answer to everything. She helped me control my urges and showed me a way to still be myself without risking getting caught. We were
perfect
together, Izabel. I never prayed and I never dreamed of anything, but she was both the answer to my prayers and a dream come true. She was
everything
to me.”

“And what about Cassia?”

I picture only Cassia now with her long, beautiful blonde hair and natural beauty because she never wore makeup—only now I know why: she couldn’t look into a mirror in order to apply it.

“Cassia gave me something that I never got from Seraphina. She gave me peace. She made me see a light in the darkness that is my life and she made me feel as normal as anyone else.” I lock eyes with Izabel. “She is my light.”

Izabel looks at me for a moment—pain and regret lay in her features.

“You need a whole person, Fredrik,” she says thoughtful and determined. “I have to believe that one day you’ll find her, a love who is both light and darkness, who understands you and fulfills you the way that Seraphina did, but who can also give you peace.” She interlocks her fingers on the table and leans forward. “But you can’t do this with
her
, and you know it. She’s not a whole person. And she’s gone too far—in every way—to ever become one. She could snap and turn at any moment, and you know that, too.”

I look away. I don’t want to hear any of this. Because I know it’s true.

“You’ll find her—”

“No,” I cut in; my eyes boring into hers. “If it can’t be Seraphina—Cassia—then it’ll be no one.” I grind my jaw. “I’m not desperate for the love of a woman, Izabel—you’re entirely mistaken if that’s what you think. I never wanted Seraphina when I first met her. I wanted to be alone and the last thing I needed was her, or any other woman, shadowing my every move. But because she understood me and because I had been emotionally alone all my life, I fell in love with her. That couldn’t be helped. Love betrayed me, just like life did the day I was born in a convenience store restroom to a mother who didn’t want me.” I lean over, pushing myself farther into view so Izabel can see the resolution buried on the surface of my face. “There will be no one after her. There will be
nothing
after her except the shell of a man I was before we met.”

“What does that mean?” She appears worried—for me, no doubt.

I begin stuffing the paper back into the envelope and then shove it down inside my coat pocket.

I stand from the table.

“It means that I might not fit into yours or Victor’s world anymore.”

Izabel stares up at me from the chair; her long auburn hair blanketing the shoulders of her white coat, gathering atop the fuzzy white faux fur around the border of the hood laying against her back.

She rises to her feet, tall in height wearing a pair of tall-heeled bronze-colored boots. Her cheeks are still faintly reddened from the cold outside.

“She helped you kill, didn’t she?”

My heart stops. I glance across the empty room at the barista behind the counter, and then down at the floor.

“No,” I answer. “She helped me find the right people.” I look at her again and continue to speak lowly. “People who were tied to her hits. Those whose death could be covered and accounted for under her Order. They were all people who deserved it and who I knew one hundred percent deserved it.” My eyes fall away from her so maybe she won’t see the shame and guilt hidden within them.

“Who did you”—she looks at the barista once and whispers even lower—“how did you do it before Seraphina?”

My shoulders rise and fall. I sit back down.

“People off the streets,” I say. “Drug dealers. Pimps. Gang members. People few would notice missing. But—.” I stop myself.

“But what?”

Glancing down at my shoes I go on: “A few times—and I mean a few—I’d take an innocent person by mistake. I tortured a man last year. It was around the time you fled Mexico and were on the run with Victor. I…well, like I said, I tortured him. Found out before I killed him that he wasn’t the man I was looking for.” I look straight into her eyes, regret at rest in mine. “I tortured an
innocent
man, Izabel. A father of two daughters. Didn’t even have a parking ticket.”

“But you didn’t kill him. Right?” She looks hopeful.

I shake my head. “No. I didn’t kill him. If it hadn’t been for those instincts of mine—though they kicked in a little late that night because my head was so clouded by need—I never would’ve stopped. I never would’ve listened to him tell me he wasn’t who I thought he was. I let him go and”—I laugh suddenly—“and as if it would make it all better, like slapping a goddamn Band-Aid on a gunshot wound, I gave him half a million dollars—would’ve given him more if I’d had it, but I hadn’t been paid by The Order in three months.”

“But you didn’t
kill
him,” Izabel says with a small smile of urgency.

I’m
not
smiling.

“No, you’re right,” I say. “I didn’t kill
him
.”

Her face falls just as quickly.

“There was one,” I say with reluctance, picturing the victim’s face. “A woman. Not long ago in San Francisco. She was the sister of one of Dorian’s hits.” Her eyes get bigger now that she knows I was the one who killed the woman because no one knew what had happened to her until now. “Long story short, she claimed she was in on the murder that her brother had been involved in. She confessed while I held her captive in the opposite room while Dorian took care of the brother—she wasn’t supposed to be there. I’m sure you remember the report.” She nods. “But I was in desperate need of bloodshed. It had been a month since my last interrogation. She confessed and I obliged.”

“But she was lying, wasn’t she?”

I nod slowly.

“That explains the look on your face when in the meeting with Victor. When Victor showed you and Dorian the information found on the sister.”

“Yes,” I say with a heavy heart. “She
wanted
to die and used me to do it for her. I still wonder how François Moreau all the way in France, seemingly with no ties to these people, knew about me killing her.”

“François Moreau,” Izabel says, “was the client who ordered the hit on the brother.”

Baffled by this information, at first I can’t summon words.

But that isn’t important right now, so I leave it alone.

She reaches into her black purse on the table and retrieves another envelope, placing it in front of me. Leery of it after having just read the news from the first envelope, I only glance at it.

“Anyway, speaking of Paul Fortright and Kelly Bennings,” she says, sliding the envelope closer, urging me to take it but still I don’t, “you were right.”

“About what?”

She nods toward the envelope. “Open it and see for yourself.”

Hesitating at first, I finally do as she suggested. Reading over the paper about Kelly Bennings, it’s really no surprise.

I drop the paper on the table and look at Izabel.

With a shrug I say, “So, why are you showing me this?” finding no connection between it and Seraphina, the reason she brought me here, and quite frankly, the only thing I care about right now.

She glances down at the table, her long fingers tapping against the wood grain seemingly out of slight nervousness. Then she says, “It’s why I asked you if Seraphina helped you to kill. I didn’t know for sure, but from what little I did know, I had a feeling it was Seraphina who helped you with your urges. In some way.”

Still not understanding what’s she’s getting at, I cross my arms over my chest and glance between her and the paper, waiting for her to go on.

“I, umm, well, I thought you might need someone to take your pain out on.” She pauses, unsure either of her words or my coming reaction to them, though probably both. “After what you found out about Seraphina tonight. I
know
this is hard for you.” She’s becoming more confident, more determined to make me understand. “You can pretend that you can handle it, but—”

“You’re offering me a
victim
?” I accuse, having a hard time deciphering her intentions. I know that’s what she’s doing, but what is still unclear is—“Wait…does Victor know about this?”

She doesn’t answer.

And she can’t look at me.

“Izabel,
Jesus Christ
, you’re offering me a victim who’s involved in one of our contracts and Victor doesn’t know about it?” I shake my head and slide the paper back across the table to her, refusing the gesture.

She smacks the palm of her hand down on top of it.

“Look, I’ve never really had a family before,” she argues, “other than Mrs. Gregory, before I met Victor and you—and twist my tits off for saying it, even Niklas.” She pushes the paper back toward me. “You’re family to me and I want to help you. I meant what I said about telling Victor everything. And I
will
. But I’ll tell him when I’m ready. Right now, I want to help you.”

“I don’t need this, Izabel.” I remove my hand from the table completely and stand up. “I can find my own victims. I sure as hell don’t need you putting your ass on the line for me. Victor will
kill
you.”

She blinks, stunned, and rears her head back. “Thought you said he’d never kill me?”

“You know what I mean.” I sigh. “Look, Izabel, I appreciate it. I really do. But I can find my own.”

“I
want
you to kill her,” she hisses through her teeth, as if she had been holding it back the whole time.

I stop in my tracks just as I’m about to leave her sitting there.

“What?”

She stands up beside me.

“I was going to do it myself when I found out what she did,” she whispers harshly. “I was ready to get on a plane last night. I even told Victor I was going to visit Dina—which I would’ve done afterwards so it wouldn’t have technically been a lie, so don’t look at me like that.” She grabs the lapel of my coat and wrenches me closer. “But then James Woodard gave me the information on Cass—Seraphina, and I knew then that killing Kelly Bennings would be a job better off in your hands. You need it more than I do.” She lets go of my coat. “I don’t actually
need
it. I just
want
it.”

“Why do you want it so badly?”

Her nostrils flare briefly.

“Because of what she put her daughter and the client’s daughter through, all for a fucking
man
!” She looks behind me at the barista. A customer enters the store. “That bitch
deserves
to die, or to at least be tortured—who better to do it than you? Any so-called mother who would risk ruining her daughter’s life because of a man, deserves whatever’s coming to her.” She takes her purse from the table and tosses the short strap over her shoulder.

I search her face for what I already know is there: pain for what her own mother did to her, for taking her away at a young age to live with a Mexican drug lord who held her captive for much of her life. Any other day I might mess with her head and accuse her of just using me to do her dirty work, but I know that’s not it. Izabel doesn’t need anyone to do her dirty work. She’s more than capable. And she likes it.

“You need this, Fredrik.” She starts to walk past, but stops in front of me and looks at me with her soft green eyes. “You’re my family,” she says, “and I think you should let me help you the way Seraphina used to. And now after what you said before, about becoming the shell of the man you used to be, I’ll make it my job to help you. Because I refuse to lose any members of my family. Do you understand?” It was more a demand than a question.