Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers, #4)(20)

“And why wouldn’t he let you keep the baby? His baby?” She appears mortified underneath that creamy skin, but is trying to maintain her dominant place between us by not showing too much emotion.

My only question is why does she seem to care at all?

“Javier didn’t want children running around the compound,” I say. “Many of the girls got pregnant while they were there. The babies were sold, just like the girls were, though to families with money who couldn’t have children of their own and didn’t want to go through the years of waiting for their chance to adopt.” I look off toward the wall, remembering that day I saw my baby being taken out of that room. “Javier said that in our way of life there was no room for children. Not even his own. I wanted to believe that he made sure our baby was sold to a loving family, the best family, but in my heart and because he was as much a cruel man as he was loving at times toward me, I could never convince myself of that. After that birth, I told him no more. I slapped him even. I screamed in his face and I didn’t care what he’d do to me as punishment. But I wasn’t having anymore.”

I stop, my gaze hard and focused, recalling that day.

“What did he do as punishment?”

I look back at Nora, moving only my eyes.

“Nothing,” I say. “At one time Javier loved me. He would never hurt me. This was during that time. Instead, he sent me to a good doctor and I got on birth control pills and he made certain that I was never without them. He never wore condoms, but he started pulling out of me. Not always, but sometimes. I was lucky never to get pregnant again. But the other girls, they continued to give birth. Baby factories.”

“Were they Javier’s babies?”

I shake my head. “No—at least I don’t think so. The girls were often raped by Javier’s guards; some had sex with them willingly. I started secretly giving some of the girls, a few who were closest to me, my birth control pills. I had so many of them that I could spare to help a few for a while. Until Izel figured out what I was doing and she started stealing my pills, leaving just enough for me to get through every month, and there was nothing I could do.”

“What happened to Izel?”

The images of my dark past disappear from my mind and I look back at Nora.

“I’ve told you want you wanted to hear,” I say with venom in my voice. “What are you now, my goddamn shrink?”

She shakes her head and leans away from the table, dropping her unbound hands in her lap.

The legs of my chair screech across the floor as I get up, pushing it back behind me angrily.

“I think we’re done here,” I say, snarling down at her. I press my palms flat against the table and lean toward her with a threatening glare. “Dina better be safe when this is all over, or you can bet your ass I’ll do the things to you that Javier did to Izel later that day after he found her beating me. And then you’ll want me to kill you.”

My hands slide away from the table as I raise upright and go to walk away. Nora remains seated. When I get closer to the door, only then do I will myself to look up at the nearby hidden camera, indicating that they can unlock it now from the surveillance room. I lower my eyes quickly once I hear the lock clicking inside the steel.

“Izabel,” Nora calls out.

I stop and turn to look at her.

“If it means anything, I really am sorry for having to make you relive that.”

“It doesn’t,” I reject her apology.

Then I open the door, the smell of bleach and lemon cleaner from a recently mopped floor, rises up into my nose.

“The answer to your question,” Nora calls out before I step into the hallway, “is yes. My father cut off the tip of my finger.”

After a short pause, I leave her there without another word, and close the door behind me.





7


Victor





I go out to meet Izabel in the hallway as she makes her way back; listening to the sound of her boots tapping against the floor as she gets closer. She rounds the corner at the end of the hall, but she will not look up at me although I know she is aware of my presence. Her long auburn hair is disheveled from the fight, pushed away from her elegant shoulders and laying against her back. There’s a cut on her left leg, just above the top of her boot, and red streaks that might be leftover from Nora’s fingernails, running along her bare thighs. But no matter what Nora did to her physically, I know just by looking at her that what she did to her emotionally was far worse.

I have more than an urge to go into that room and kill that woman myself, but for Izabel’s sake, for the life of Dina Gregory, I cannot.

“Izabel,” I say when she steps up to me, but she looks into my eyes and steals the rest of my words away.

“I’m sorry, Victor.” She starts to walk past me, away from the door to the surveillance room.

I reach out carefully and hook my hand about her elbow.

“I turned off the audio,” I say. “No one heard what you confessed other than Nora.”

It takes her a moment, but finally she turns to look at me, something indecipherable at rest in her bright green eyes. It is not relief, as I would expect, but something else—regret, perhaps?

Moving around to stand in front of her, I reach my hand up and rest it against the side of her face. She closes her eyes momentarily as if she finds comfort in the gesture, her long dark lashes sweeping her face.