Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(60)

“I have somewhere I need to be,” he says, not looking at me.

“Where? Where could you possibly need to be other than this bed after being shot?” There’s no hiding the anger and disapproval in my voice.

“I tried to tell her,” Mozart says from the doorway, “but she…insisted.”

“It is fine,” Victor tells him, and buttons up his shirt. “I need a moment alone with Izabel.”

Mozart nods and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

I turn to Victor immediately.

“If this is about me going to—”

“Everything is about you, Izabel,” he cuts me off, and I flinch. “It just took getting shot to realize it.”

I step back, pause, searching for words. “You…got shot because of me?” I’m not sure that’s what he’s saying, but it feels like it.

Victor sighs; he closes the last button.

“Can you not see what having you in my life is doing to me?”—(I flinch again at his words, dreading the rest of them)—“It ends today,” he says, and my heart sinks.

“What ends today?” Please don’t say it…

He limps over to the chair beside the window where he sits, grimacing with the effort, and attempts to put on his shoes.

I can’t move; I want to help him with that, too, but forcing my body into motion seems like an impossible task right now.

“What ends today?” I repeat.

Raising his eyes from his shoes, Victor looks across the room at me.

“Tell me about Javier Ruiz,” he says.

“What do you want to know? You want me to tell you that I never killed him that night in Texas? That I was going to betray you?” (I just assume he knows all this stuff; and even if not, I had planned to tell him anyway.) “Well it’s true, all of it: I didn’t kill him that night, and yes, I agreed to help him, and I was going to betray you. But you know what”—I move across the room toward him, anger, and guilt, in every swift step—“I didn’t betray you. I didn’t help him. And I was only going to go through with it because of my daughter—you would’ve done the same. And you know what else? I did kill him this time.” I stop in front of him, glaring down into his eyes. “You want me to tell you about Cesara? You want me to admit to sleeping with her. Well I did. I did it only because I had to. I did it for my job, for my life—again, you would’ve done the same. What else do you want to know?”

Victor stands, and I take a step back.

“Where the hell are you going?”

He casually walks past me toward the door, taking his suit jacket from the coat rack on his way.

“Victor!”

He stops; his back is to me.

I feel like I’m about to fall apart, that my whole body is held together by a single thread, and that Victor is about to pull it and unravel me when he walks out that door.

I’m not going to let him.

But I’m not going to beg him, either. I will never beg a man not to leave me. Not even Victor Faust. I love him, more than anything. But I. Will. Not. Beg.

“No—this is about the things I said to you the night you asked me to marry you, isn’t it?” I step right up to him, gritting my teeth, and I grab his arm and turn him around to face me. “I meant every word of it. I needed—I still need—time to live on my own; I need to be my own person; I want to be independent—none of that changes just because you’re threatening to…walk away from me. But I still love you, and I want to be with you, Victor. That’ll never change, either.” I’m scrambling to find the reason for why he’s doing this. And I’ll be damned if I let him use what happened in Mexico as an excuse for facing the truth.

When he still doesn’t say anything—(fight with me, dammit!)—I switch gears. “You betrayed me, too!” I shout into his face. “You gutted me when you tried to pass me off to Niklas! You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve—.” My eyes find his chest; my mouth is incredibly dry. Then I look back at his face, and face my own truth; I tell him what I’ve wanted to tell him since that night. “You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve allowed myself to sleep with someone else, even for the sake of a job.” I said it. I can’t believe I said it. No, I can’t believe I admitted it to myself.

Look at me, Victor! I clench my fists at my sides.

But he doesn’t look at me.

After a moment: “But I didn’t do it for revenge—you need to know that.” I calm myself, and just try to make him understand. “Yes, it’s what I tried to tell myself every time it happened; letting myself believe it was for revenge, that you deserved it because of what you did; it was the only thing that got me through it. But deep down, I only did it because I had to. I did it because there was no other way; I never would’ve made it out of there alive if I didn’t play the role. And I went there for a reason—to find Vonnegut. Because I remember what you said that night, too, Victor, and you were right. About the fate of your Order; about the fate of us all—about the fate of you and me.”

“It is only a matter of time that all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us.”