KILLING SARAI(84)

She doesn’t respond.

“Do you think they’ll come after us?” she asks.

I open my door and get out and then move around to her side, opening hers. “Right now, no. He would’ve done it before we left if that was the case.” I reach out my hand to her. She places her fingers into mine and I help her out of the car.

After shutting the door I add, “Hamburg has far too much to lose. But that’s not to say he won’t devise some kind of plan to take revenge on me in some way that he believes he can’t be linked to it.”

“Or me,” she says and looks at me hopelessly. “He could take revenge on me.”

I hit the alarm on the key ring twice and the car beeps, echoing loudly through the parking garage.

This time I don’t respond.

I walk with her to the elevator and up to our room on the top floor. I don’t think much at all about Arthur and Mary Hamburg or what went down tonight. Mostly I think about Sarai and what she went through with me. She didn’t die, but I feel like another part of her did. And it’s one hundred percent my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have taken her there. I am fully aware of my own actions and how inexcusable they are. I came to terms with it the moment Sarai didn’t back out of the last chance I gave her. It should’ve been me, right then, who put a stop to her having anything more to do with it.

I chose a different path.

And I don’t regret it.

There are a few more things that Sarai and I need to talk about and I fully expect the way I touched her in Hamburg’s suite to be among the first. I prepare myself for it, but when we walk into the room and she kicks off her heels, she stuns me when she says, “I want to kill him.” She sits down on the end of the bed and turns her head to look up at me, resolve at home in her eyes. “That man needs to die, Victor. He needs to pay for what he’s done. He needs to pay with his life. Just like she did.”

There is my proof. Sarai has the blood of a killer; there’s no mistaking it anymore. I know I didn’t make her that way. Life did that, not me. But I know I’m the one who ultimately pulled the shroud from her eyes to make her see it.

“It’s only a matter of time before a hit is ordered on him too,” I say.

I take off my jacket and tie, draping them over the back of a chair.

“We should’ve done it when we had the chance,” she says.

Breaking apart the buttons of my dress shirt, I glance over at her sitting there, staring off at the wall, and I wonder in what way she’s imagining she’s killing Hamburg. It’s bloody. It’s vengeful. I’m sure of it.

I lay my shirt over the chair with my jacket and walk toward her, stepping out of my shoes on the way.

“If we did it tonight,” I say, sitting down on the end of the bed beside her, “we wouldn’t have made it out of there alive. It wasn’t part of the mission. Every mission must be planned precisely. Stray from any part of it and you triple your chances of exposing yourself or getting yourself killed.”

We sit in stillness, both looking out ahead, both married to our thoughts. I wonder if hers are about me. I can’t help but for mine to be about her.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT





Sarai





I never want Victor to leave me. I couldn’t bear the thought of it before, but now…now things are so much different. Our souls have become intimate, whether he wants to admit it to himself or not. We are one in the same and I don’t want to imagine being on my own without him. Ever.

“Sarai, I’m sorry for what I did.”

I look over. I know what he means, but I’m not sure yet what to say in return.

“I hope you believe me when I say I got nothing out of it. It was merely for show. I hope you understand that.”

I do believe him. I know I couldn’t look a normal person in the eye and tell them what happened without them thinking I’ve lost my mind, or that I’ve succumbed to Stockholm syndrome. But Victor could’ve had his way with me many times over. He could’ve raped me. He could’ve given in to me the few times I’ve shown an attraction to him. But he never did and he always pushed me away. Up until a few nights ago when I slipped into his bed. He didn’t push me away then, but I know deep down that he was more attuned to the rage I was feeling in that moment than even I was.

Without looking at him, I ask in a quiet voice, “If he hadn’t of put in the access code to the room sooner…would you have f*cked me?”

I notice him glance over but I don’t meet his eyes.

“No,” he answers in a quiet voice to match mine. He sighs. “Sarai, I couldn’t force him to open the room. He might’ve punched in a panic code and alerted the guards in the house, or—”

I look at him finally, locking my eyes with his. “But would you have wanted to?”

He becomes quiet. I watch the struggle shift in his face.

“Not there,” he says. “Not like that.”

I lift my dress over my head and drop it on the floor.

“Will you now?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, but I’ve learned by now that the only way to get what I want from him is not to relent.

I get up from the bed and move to stand in-between his legs. Both of his hands move up my thighs slowly and he tucks his fingers behind the elastic of my panties. His lips touch my belly, the tip of his tongue grazing the skin between my ribs so softly it raises chills all over my body. I run my fingers through his hair as he slides my panties over my hips and down my legs.