Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(61)

Feeling defeated, I step away from him and look at the floor. “We are a breath away from the end of everything…” I recall his words aloud. But in my heart, they mean something different this time, and I can’t bear it.

“Do not carry that weight on your shoulders, Izabel,” he says, and I raise my head. “It is part of the job. I do not fault you for it. But let me ask you something.”

“Ask me.”

“If it had been me, would you be able to forgive me for sleeping with another woman?”

I swallow.

“Yes,” I answer with truth. “I’d hate it, of course—it would make me crazy. But I’d forgive you because…well, because I knew going into this that things would never be like they are out there in the world of the oblivious.”

Victor nods.

“Then I did not destroy any part of you, Izabel,” he says. “I only made you stronger.”

I start to speak, but he doesn’t let me.

“If I had not done what I did with you and Niklas, do you think you still would have allowed yourself to sleep with Cesara?”

“No,” I answer right away. “I wouldn’t have. But like I said, I didn’t do it for revenge; it only made it that I could do it at all.”

“Then I made you stronger,” he repeats. “So, do not let it weigh on your mind.”

Reluctantly, I nod. But it’ll always weigh on my mind.

“Our relationship has never been conventional,” he says. “It was never going to be. And the sooner you learned that, the better.”

I swallow again, pause, and nervously ask, “So, does that mean you…?” Hell, I can’t even say it out loud.

“No,” he answers. “I have never, but that is not to say I would not have if, for the sake of a job, I had no other choice. Just like you.”

Oh my God, my throat feels like I swallowed a handful of bees, but I suck it up, and fight down the jealousy. Because he’s not wrong in admitting it, and I wasn’t wrong in doing it.

“And did you find Vonnegut?” he asks a second later, already knowing that I didn’t, or he’d know by now.

“No,” I answer with regret. “He wasn’t there. I thought he was a Russian man named Iosif Veselov, but it wasn’t him.” I lower my head momentarily. “But before I killed Javier, he gave me information. Lysandra Hollis. He said this woman works closely with Vonnegut; I’m going after her next.”

“No,” he says. “There will be no more hunting Vonnegut. There will be no more…anything.”

“What do you mean…?”

He turns with pain-filled movements; he can’t look me in the eyes.

“I am…tired, Izabel,” he says, and my heart sinks deeper. “I tried. I tried with everything in me to live this life, to mold and shape the man I have always been, into a man unfamiliar to me—I even asked you to be my wife, a gesture I never thought I would consider in my lifetime being what I am. But I am not that man. I will never be that man.”

“What are you saying, Victor?” I walk toward him; my heart is pummeling my ears. I want to force him to look at me. And finally, he does.

“As you are becoming stronger, Izabel,” he says with a heavy heart, “I am becoming weaker. I have stepped so far out of the only life I have ever known, that I do not know myself anymore. My mind is no longer as sharp as it used to be; I stumble when I walk; I have become blinded to the obvious dangers around me, and that is a fatal mistake for a man like me. I cannot continue to live this way. No matter how much I wanted it, that kind of life with you, I can no longer pretend that it will ever be mine to have.”

I look at the floor again, only this time it’s to hide the pain in my face, the tears forming in my eyes. Not because I know what’s going to happen next, but because…I know he’s right. If I continue to allow Victor to love me, it would be selfish of me. I can’t fight him on this, as much as I want to, because if I don’t let him go; if I don’t let him find himself again before it’s too late, he’s going to die because of me. He will die because of me…

“I sent Iosif Veselov to Mexico,” he admits. “I sent him to watch you.”

I’m shocked, but I can’t be mad about it like I was with Fredrik and Dante. I’m shocked by the information, but not surprised.

Now I know why Iosif was familiar—I must’ve seen a file on him among Victor’s contacts.

“I did it because, like I said, I have become weak. Because Kessler was right. About everything. Because I needed to send him—because I love you. And everything I do—everything I’ve done since the day I met you—is a mistake.”

I swallow; my eyes begin to sting and water, but I hold back the emotion. I’m angry and moved by him at the same time, and the opposite emotions are too much for me to bear.

I’m tired too…I’m tired of being the ‘girl’; I’m tired of being the ‘girlfriend’; I’m tired of men looking at me with a protective brother’s eyes; I’m tired of asking permission to be who I am, who I’ve become. Only problem is, I could never be tired of Victor, and loving him apparently goes hand-in-hand with everything else I want to rid myself of.

“It ends today,” he says one last time.