Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(62)
And then he turns and walks out of the room.
Frozen in this spot, for a torturous moment my legs won’t carry me forward. I imagine myself running out after him, grabbing his arm to stop him, even jumping on him from behind and beating my fists against his back—I imagine myself begging him, like I told myself I’d never do. But I do nothing. I stare at the open door he just left through, and let my heart continue to sink into the depths of the earth.
When I finally manage to get my head together, and I start for the door to run after him, Mozart steps into the room in front of me. There’s a sheet of paper dangling from his hand. He holds it out for me.
“He wanted me to give this to you,” Mozart says as I take it into my fingers.
Just before he leaves me alone with the letter, Mozart says, “My advice: don’t go looking for him. I know you love him, and that he loves you, but a man like him wasn’t built for love. Don’t go looking for him,” and then I hear his footsteps as he rounds the corner.
It takes several moments before I gather the courage to open the letter, my hands trembling as I read: Izabel,
I am confident that my solo mission to find Vonnegut will be the end of me. I am confident that you will never see me again. But I cannot die without letting you know how deeply my feelings run for you, and always have.
You have been the best and worst thing that ever happened to me. I love you, yet I cannot love you the way I want to. I cannot live with or without you. I cannot let you go, yet to free myself of you, I have never been able to bring myself to kill you, either. I never imagined or believed that I could be compromised the way my love for you has compromised me. I was conditioned in every scenario—especially this scenario—yet love still found a way. I have realized that love always finds a way, and that no amount of training in the world can ever prepare one for it; no one can avoid it; it truly is the most powerful force in life; the Great Destroyer. If my training taught me anything, it was that love is not our friend; it is dangerous, it makes us feel things that never last, things that will one day be torn away from us, because nothing lasts forever. You will die. I will die. Everyone and everything you will ever love will die.
Do not look for me, Izabel. I need to do this alone, without you, of all people. No one, not even my brother will know where to find me. Yesterday I would have told you I am seeking Vonnegut for the same reasons I have sought him these past couple years. But today I only seek him so that I can destroy the man who made me the way I am, the one who destroyed me when I was just a boy. But I would be a fool to think I will be able to do this without getting killed in the process. So, do not look for me. I am no longer yours to seek. Today it ends. Vonnegut. Me. Us. The illusion that was us. Today it ends.
Do what I could not do: stop loving me; put me out of your mind; go on with your life and live in happiness and peace without me.
Do what I could not do…
Victor
When I look up from the letter, I find myself sitting on the chair by the window, but I don’t know how I got here. Looking down at the letter again as it dangles between my thumb and index finger, I’ve never felt weaker than I do in this moment; I’ve never wanted to cry so hard into my hands. He left me. Victor Faust pulled the thread that held me together, and he left me. For a long time, I still don’t believe it.
I—
No. I do believe it. And I accept it. How? Why? Because I’m not weak; because I don’t want to cry.
And because I don’t want him to die.
I walk out of the room, past Mozart, and I stop in the doorway before exiting.
“If you hear from Victor again—”
“I won’t—”
“If you hear from Victor again, tell him one thing for me.”
“I won’t hear from him, but you can tell me if you want.”
I pause, thinking back to a day that wasn’t so long ago, a day when I hid in the trunk of an assassin and escaped Mexico. Was it for love that fate led me to his car? Or was it something else?
I raise my eyes to Mozart.
“Tell him that he was wrong. It doesn’t end this day—it begins.”
Izabel
Two weeks later…
When I went to Mexico, I didn’t exactly get what I went there for, but I brought back with me something I never anticipated—myself. Cesara and Javier; for all of their faults, they helped me realize who I truly am, who I’ve always been, and who I’ll always be.
“I’m so fucking tired of following in the shadows of men.”
While although I’m certainly not some kind of man-hating Amazon, I have accepted in my heart that I’m stronger than any man I’ve ever known, and that as much as I’ll always love Victor, I can move on in my life without him. I don’t want to—but he gave me no choice, so what else am I to do but move on? It’s what I’m doing, though not like Victor wanted. He hoped I would go back to the normal world, to live the typical American life, to get married and have kids and a dog and go on family vacations to places where I won’t get kidnapped and tortured.
I’m sorry, Victor, but I can’t. I will still work as an assassin—for what clients, I have yet to figure out, but I will—and I will still play roles that could lead me right into the grave. Because I like it. I enjoy everything about it: the missions, the different faces I get to wear, the satisfaction I get out of killing people who deserve it.