The Swan and the Jackal (33 page)

Her head falls back, bobbing unsteadily on her neck as she looks at me. A tiny trickle of blood seeps from one corner of her mouth. I lean in and kiss it away as sobs roll through my chest.

I haven’t cried like this since I was a boy.

“I’m so sorry…I’m
so
sorry it had to be this way,” I say through troubled breaths and a burning throat. “You’re the only death I’ll truly regret until the day I join you.”

She reaches up her hand weakly and touches the side of my face. I do the same, letting my hand leave the knife and touching her cheek instead. Blood smears across her face from my fingertips.

She chokes and coughs up more blood.

“Don’t regret,” she says, but I don’t know which one she is. “You saved me.”

“Cassia?” I can’t see through the tears in my eyes.

She smiles faintly and strokes my bottom lip with her fingers and I know that it’s her. Cassia.

I kiss her bloody lips and embrace her tighter, feeling the handle of the knife pressing against me. Her eyes are getting heavier, her body weaker, her arms limper. I push her wet hair over her forehead where more blood stains her face, but I can’t stop touching her, caressing her, being here with her in her last moment.
Our
last moment.

“I always loved you,” I whisper onto her lips. “Everything about you, Cassia. And I always will.”

Her hand falls away from my face and her head falls back limply on her neck. And when I see her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling I choke on my burning tears and crush her body against me, wailing until my chest hurts.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Izabel

Fredrik’s front door is unlocked when I arrive with the cleaners. I got a call from Fredrik two hours ago.

He wasn’t himself:

“Fredrik, what’s going on?” I asked, surprised to hear from him again so soon.

Silence ensued.

“Fredrik?”

“I need you to come here,” he said in such a quiet, distant voice that I wondered if he was calling me in his sleep.

“Is everything OK?” I said into the phone.

“What’s going on?” Victor asked, rolling over in our bed and draping his arm over my waist.

I pulled my lips away from the phone and turned to Victor. “I don’t know—something’s wrong,” I said quietly and I couldn’t hide the worry and grief in my voice even if I’d tried. “I need to go see him.”

I turned back to the call while Victor was switching on the bedside light.

“Fredrik,” I said with urgency, “I need you to tell me what’s going on. I’ll come there right away, but I just need to know what to prepare for. If anything.”

I felt the bed move as Victor stood up and walked butt naked across the room to our bathroom.

Still not hearing Fredrik’s voice on the other end, I sat all the way up in bed and draped my bare legs over the side of the mattress.

“I killed her,” Fredrik said and my heart stopped—out of shock, but mostly it stopped for Fredrik.

I gasped and shot up from the bed.

Victor was looking right at me as he came back out of the bathroom.

“Tell him you’ll be there soon,” he said with a nod.

I thanked Victor with my eyes and said into the phone, “Fredrik, I’ll be there soon. Just stay where you are. Don’t leave, OK? Promise me you won’t leave.”

Nothing.

“Fredrik?”

My eyes never left Victor’s then and I knew they must’ve been full of worry and fear. Fear only for Fredrik.

The phone went dead.

For a long time I just held it against my ear, thinking maybe he was just being really quiet. Finally, Victor took it from my hand and it pulled me out of my worried and paranoid thoughts—would Fredrik hurt himself? Was he capable of doing something stupid? The thoughts put my nerves on edge.

“Get dressed and go see him,” Victor said softly. “I’ll make a call and have a car meet you there.”

I nodded short and rapidly and then scrambled to get my clothes on. And before I left, Victor came up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “And when you get back, I think it’s time you tell me about Seraphina Bragado being in his basement.”

He knew all along.

I stood there frozen before him, worried about what he was thinking of me, of Fredrik—of me and Fredrik. I was scared. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Maybe because I knew that I could never, no matter how hard I tried,
ever
hide anything from him.

Victor kissed me on the mouth and brushed my hair away from my face with the side of his hand.

“I understand,” he said. “Now go help him and keep me updated.”

I nodded.

And then I left.

Entering Fredrik’s front door quietly, I peer in around the frame before I step all the way inside. The house is nearly pitch dark, only the faint blue hue of the moonlight beaming through few windows. It’s quiet. So quiet. Not even the dripping of a faucet or the humming of the refrigerator or the central heat can be heard. But I hear my heartbeat, pumping blood anxiously through my heart.

Two of Victor’s men start to enter the house behind me.

“Wait,” I say, putting up my hand. “Stay on the porch until I tell you to come in.”

Stopped in the doorway, they nod and step back outside, leaving the door open partway.

Walking carefully through the house, I stop in my tracks at the entrance to the den. Fredrik sits on the center cushion of the sofa with his long legs bent and his arms resting against his thighs, his hands dangling between them. His back is hunched over, his shoulders stiff.

He’s staring at the floor in front of him. I glance over to see that the coffee table has been shoved off to the side, sitting crookedly against a leather chair.

“Fredrik, I’m here,” I call out to him softly.

I approach him with caution—my heart tells me that he needs me, but also that’s he’s not in his right mind and he could be dangerous.

He won’t speak.

I step a little closer. My heart is breaking for him.

“I’m here—”

“I need her out of the house,” Fredrik says without looking up at me or moving a muscle in his body other than his mouth. “And the body in the basement.”

I want to ask who ‘the body in the basement’ belongs to, but it’s not the right time for that.

I nod even though he doesn’t see me and call out to the cleaners—men designated to clean up our crime scenes—on the porch, “Come inside! And be quick about it!” Once they’re standing at the den entrance I add, “There are two bodies. One in the basement, the other I don’t know, but just find them and get them out of here.”

They nod and walk away quickly to follow my orders.

I turn back to Fredrik, stepping up closer, the light sound of my boots tapping against the hardwood floor.

Finally, I step all the way up to the sofa, remove my long white coat and set it on the cushion next to me as I sit down. Fredrik still won’t look at me. He won’t speak. He won’t move. And I don’t know what to say because there really is nothing that I can say to make him better.

We sit quietly for several long minutes while the cleaners move through other parts of the house. Thankfully, they know better than to carry the bodies back through the den and I hear them going outside from a back door, instead.

I look over Fredrik, as still as a statue, and I feel like I’ve lost my best friend, that his mind is gone because his heart is gone, and it’s devastating to me.

Will he ever be the same?

Something tells me the answer is no.

A sort of darkness has consumed him entirely, inside and out, something so awful and merciless and unforgiving that it impregnates me with sorrow, and I feel hopeless all over again like I felt when I was imprisoned by Javier back in Mexico. I want to reach out and lay my hand upon his arm, but I’m too afraid.

Why the fuck am I afraid?

I do it anyway, relieved that Fredrik doesn’t move his arm or refuse me. But he’s not necessarily accepting of it, either, I know.

I wonder if he even notices.

“I would’ve done it for you,” I say carefully. “It didn’t have to be you, Fredrik.”

He says nothing.

“You did what had to be done,” I say even more carefully this time because I feel I’m walking a dangerous line with these kinds of words. “You gave that girl peace. I believe that.” I pause and then add, “If it had been me, it’s what I would’ve wanted.”

“I know I gave her peace,” he finally says, but still doesn’t move.

Trying to comfort him, I brush my hand across his arm once before resting it in the bend, my fingers tucked into the inner part opposite side of his elbow.

“I’ll stay here with you,” I say gently, “if you need me to stay. I can sleep here on the sofa.”

“No.” He shakes his head subtly and finally moves his arm so that my hand will fall away from it. “I’ll be fine. I just needed someone else to remove the bodies.”

“I understand,” I relent, though I know that Fredrik is anything but fine.

“Maybe you should go—”

His head jerks around to the side and finally he looks right at me; the tortured look in his eyes puts me on edge. “I said no.”

I nod.

But after a few seconds, I push away the part of me that wants to give in to what he says and I say what I really feel:

“I know you loved her. Both sides of her—I know. And I know that you feel like you’ll never be able to live with yourself for how it all ended, or that you’ll always be alone because you think there is no one else out there like her. I know.”

I stop, expecting him to have already cut in and told me to shut up and leave, but still, he offers no words of his own and I don’t know how to feel about that. Relieved that he’s listening to me? Concerned that he isn’t? Worried about what’s going on inside his head that’s so all-consuming that I have to be surprised he hasn’t spoken against me either way?

When still he shows no signs of rebuttal, I go on:

“This may sound insane—actually, I know it’s going to sound insane—but I felt that way when I killed Javier.”

Nothing but silence.

“After being with Javier for so long, it didn’t matter that he raped me or kept me prisoner, because he was all I knew. I brainwashed myself into believing that only he would ever love me, that only Javier would ever want anything to do with me. And when I killed him, I felt like I killed the other half of me. If it wasn’t for Victor—”

“One day, Victor Faust will be the death of you, Izabel,” he cuts in and I’m stunned by his words. He looks over, locking his eyes on mine. “If you want to help me, you can by keeping that in the back of your mind. One way or another, you’re going to die because of him,
because
you love him.”

I want to argue, to fight back and tell him that he’s wrong, but I know he’s hurting and I can’t make this about me. I won’t.

He looks away.

“Tell Victor that I’ll accept any sentence he feels fits my offensives.”

“Fredrik—”

“Please just go,” he says looking down at the floor. “I give you my word—I’ll be fine. I don’t want you worrying about me, least of all.”

“But—”

“Please, Izabel!” he snaps.

I stand up and look at him for a moment before taking my coat up from the cushion.

I don’t even bother putting it on as I begin to walk away.

Stopping at the den entrance with my back to him, I say evenly, “I’m going to help you. Just like I did with Kelly Bennings. For as long as it takes.”

Once again, he says nothing, and with a heavy heart I leave the house and step out onto the porch just as the cleaners are making yet another trip outside from the backyard. But all three of us stop mid-stride down the sidewalk when a vociferous
crash
, like glass breaking, fills the night air coming from inside Fredrik’s house. And then more glass. And the sound of furniture crashing against the walls.

I feel the cleaners’ eyes on me, but I can’t tear mine away from the house where Fredrik is feeling the worst pain he’s ever felt, just on the other side of those walls.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fredrik

Every last bit of furniture, I destroy, flinging chairs and shattering tables against the walls as if rejecting its right to exist if Cassia can’t exist. If Seraphina can’t exist. Anything that gets in my way, I move it with violent, resentful force.

I scream at the top of my lungs before grabbing the last standing chair and hurling it through the den and into the television screen. The glass shatters and what’s left of the frame falls over onto the floor sending pieces of glass scattered across the hardwood.

I follow suit, unable to maintain my footing, and fall against the floor on my bottom in the center of the room, surrounded by destruction—destruction of objects, but also the destruction of what was left of a man. Sitting helplessly with my legs bent at the knees, I do the only thing fate will allow me to do in this moment—I cry into the palms of my hands, letting the pain do with me whatever it wants. The same way I did when I was just a boy, after I had been beaten and raped and broken. Only this time, the pain I feel inside is a hundred times more unbearable.

Blackness. All I see is blackness though my eyes are wide open as I look downward at the floor. And in that fucking blackness I can still see her face. Her light brown eyes and plump lips. Her soft, creamy skin and near perfect complexion. Long blonde hair. Short black hair. And I know that she will haunt my soul for the rest of my days, however many of them there are left to suffer.

And I know I deserve it.