KILLING SARAI(62)

When he gives back the control, I peck him lightly upon the lips and then both sides of his jawline.

He watches my face, glimpsing my lips, wanting to taste them.

And then I start to cry.

I always cry when I’m angry.

I’m becoming someone else, that girl lost at fourteen-years-old, forced to live a life of bondage and pain and broken dreams. Flashes of Javier’s face go through my mind erratically. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and it’s spinning so fast, all of the faces of Javier come and go before I can reach out and grab one. I can’t get my hands on just one so that I can beat it to death. And I just cry harder, screaming out into the night and before I realize what I’m doing, Victor has become the face of Javier that I can’t otherwise catch. I swing my fists at him, beating him over and over again on the chest and on his arms and he doesn’t stop me. Because I know only he can understand why I need this moment so desperately.

Yelling into the night, I let it all out. Tears barrel from my eyes.

I collapse on him and he engulfs me in his arms. I can’t catch my breath as I sob into the crook of his neck.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT





Victor





Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn’t sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. I am discipline. Sarai is rage. I am aware of my choices at all times. Sarai’s choices are more aware of her, lying in wait to decide for her based on the severity of her mood with no intention in leaving her any conscious control over it.

I know what I have to do.

I cradle the back of her head in the palm of my hand, my gun resting beside me on the bed in the other. I feel her tears soaking my shoulder, her body wracked by sobs that coalesce into my muscles. And her sweet spot still presses against my cock every time her body tenses. But I leave her there despite the moral need to pull away.

“Sarai,” I whisper against the side of her head, “I am sorry.”

I raise the gun slowly behind her.

She tilts her head and lies her cheek against my chest and I pause, waiting, though I don’t know for what. Her sobs begin to settle, her left hand drawn up near her chin where her fingertips rest lightly against my collarbone.

“I have an aunt in France,” she says softly, distantly. “My mother’s older sister. I know France is a long way, but you don’t have to take me there, just help me get on the plane.”

I raise the gun a little higher, settling the barrel at the back of her head, but not touching it. I don’t want her to be afraid before she dies and although I know she fears nothing, death is something we all fear in our final moment even if only the smallest part of us is conscious of it. I don’t want her to fear it at all and she can’t if she doesn’t know that it’s happening.

“How old were you when you became what you are?” she asks.

Caught off guard by the question and maybe more-so by the shifting of the mood, I hesitate before answering.

“I was nine.”

She sniffles and wipes her eyes with the hand near her cheek.

“You were very young,” she goes on. “I guess in a way like me, you never had a chance to live a life of your choosing. I guess maybe we aren’t really so different from each other.” She pauses. “Except I might be more like your brother than I care to admit. He’s as angry as I am.”

I release my finger from the trigger and slowly, so she doesn’t know, move the barrel away from the back of her head.

“It must’ve been hard growing up with Niklas,” she says.

I set the gun back on the bed next to me and before I know what I’m doing I’m cradling the back of her head in my hand again.

“Yes,” I answer, “considering the unconventional circumstances.”

“Instead of who’s the better baseball player it was who’s the better killer.”

“No,” I say. “Niklas never tried to be better than me, he only wanted to be my equal. We never competed with each other, but he’s been competing with everyone else who has ever been close to me for as long as he’s been alive.”

“Close to you?” she asks.

I nod and lightly comb my fingers through her hair.

“Vonnegut, Samantha, my mother, our father,” I say distantly as I picture these events, staring up at the scaling ceiling. “And now you.”

I hear her sigh, but she doesn’t raise her head.

“You see that you have one thing that I don’t,” she says carefully, though I get the feeling she’s saying it more to herself. “You have someone who loves you and who is loyal to you and who will kill for you.” She raises her body from mine and stands up from the bed. Then she looks down at me. “You are very fortunate to have him, Victor.”

She takes her panties from the end of the bed and slips them on. Then she picks up her shirt from the floor and pulls it over her long, disheveled hair and over her breasts.

“I am grateful,” she says looking back, “for everything you’ve done for me. I guess in the end none of it will really matter, not saving my life, or sparing it. But I’ll always be grateful to you.”