Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers 4)

“She’s not going to break,” I say with realization, my gaze fixed on the screen. “Victor…she’s not going to tell him. She’s letting him do this to her…”

Fredrik’s going to kill her.

I burst out of the room, nearly tripping over that stupid rolling chair on my way out, and take off down the stairs.

“IZABEL!” I hear Niklas call out after me.

But I don’t stop. I keep on running until I make it to the third floor, and I run up to the door and punch in the code.

“Izabel! What the fuck are you doing?” Niklas is coming up behind me. “STOP!” his voice booms through the hall.

I rush into the room.

“Fredrik, don’t you fucking kill her!” I scream. “I can’t let Dina die! PLEASE!” Tears pour from my eyes.

He doesn’t even look at me.

Nora shrieks as he cuts her.

“CONFESS!” she cries out just as Niklas, Victor and James burst into the room behind me. “I say nothing until I get my confession!”

Fredrik cuts her again.

I look to and from Victor and Fredrik, my eyes filled with desperation and conflict.

Nora’s body begins to slide downward toward the floor, her bloody hands leaving smears against the brick.

Tears stream from my eyes. Dina…

I feel like I’m going to faint.

“Stop,” I hear Victor’s voice.

A sudden uncanny silence fills the room when Fredrik stops. I’m afraid to look up, afraid to see that Fredrik’s blade finally went across Nora’s throat.

But I look anyway.

And she’s alive.

Nora falls the rest of the way against the floor; her blood staining everything.

Fredrik steps aside and Victor moves closer.

“Confess you sonofabitch,” Nora says, looking right at Victor.

I look at him with confusion, but he looks at no one other than Nora.

“You know I’ll do it,” Nora says, gasping for air. “You know I’ll let them die.”

She will. If she could withstand Fredrik’s torture, the torture the SC-4 inflicted on her, I know she will…

Niklas steps up beside me. I feel his hand hook around my waist so he can hold me up. I didn’t even realize I was on my way to finding the floor, too.

“Wait! What about Dorian?” I call out. “He has to be here—.”

“She doesn’t care if Flynn is here or not,” Victor says, still only looking at Nora. “The only person in this room she cares hears what I have to say…is my brother.”

I look up at Niklas standing next to me and I feel his hand go slack on my waist. He’s looking right at the back of Victor’s head with confusion at rest in his eyes.

“Confess!” Nora says one last time through a heavy breath and with trembling hands.

“I killed Claire,” Victor says with his back to us. “I killed the woman my brother loved.”

Niklas’ hand completely falls away from my waist.

18

Izabel

Unable to speak, or find my thoughts, I look back at Niklas with a look of shock on my face that quickly turns to heartbreak.

Niklas doesn’t move. He just stands there in some sort of incomprehensible void. His arms down at his sides. Is he looking at me? Or is he looking at Victor behind me? Whatever he’s looking at I know he doesn’t see it.

I’ve never felt so guilty being alive.

“Claire was my sister,” I hear Nora’s exhausted and pain-filled voice say. “I loved her. She was my weakness. She was why Solis cut off the tip of my finger, why I was beat to near death for being compromised. I was supposed to be reformed by what they did to me. But it only made me worse, brought out a part of me that not even watching Victor Faust shoot my sister dead, brought out. I was there that night. Six years ago. I was there when Victor arrived before Niklas, and killed Claire and the men who were sent to kill her, before I could save her.”

My eyes dart back and forth between Niklas and Victor. My hands are shaking. My insides feel twisted and sour. I shake my head repeatedly, not wanting to believe what I just heard, hoping to shake the truth from my mind.

Niklas still hasn’t moved.

Victor finally turns to look back at him.

“Nothing I can say will ever make this right, brother,” Victor says to Niklas.

“Then don’t say anything,” Niklas says as he raises his head and his eyes lock on Victor’s, “…brother. Don’t say anything to me, or I’ll kill you myself.”

Victor just looks at him and I’m choking on the tension in the room.

Niklas turns and goes to leave.

“Wait…” I come up behind him, collapsing my hand about his wrist, “Niklas—.”

“Leave me alone, Izabel,” he says calmly, pushing my hand away and then he heads for the door.

James, riddled with the same kind of shock as me, steps out of his way, mostly for fear of Niklas moving him out of the way.

“Will you be needing anything else?” Fredrik asks Victor, uninterested in everything that has transpired.

It takes me a long time to break away from Niklas and my desperate need to run after him, to console him, and finally I look back at Victor and Fredrik and Nora.

Fredrik is standing at the table, cleaning off his tools with a rag and a small spray bottle filled with bleach solution, and then placing the items back inside the briefcase.

Victor looks at Nora.

“Where are they?”

“429 South Padre Drive,” Nora answers. “24 Arlin Avenue is where you’ll find the daughters”—she still has no idea that James’s daughters escaped—“and the old lady—12421 Griffins Street. All of them are here in Boston.”

Victor turns to James.

“Take some men,” he demands. “Go with them and call me as soon as you see them well and alive.” He looks back down at Nora as James is leaving hurriedly out the door.

“That will be all for now,” Victor tells Fredrik even though he’s not looking at him. “But don’t go anywhere. I have another job for you.”

Fredrik nods, takes up his briefcase and walks past us.

He doesn’t even look at me and it cuts me to the bone.

As much as I want to run out after him just like Niklas, I don’t. And right now if I had to choose which one of them to run after, it would be Niklas.

“How does it feel?” Nora asks icily from a puddle of blood on the floor. “To lose someone you love? I told you that I’d get what I wanted either way.”