Izabel
Mozart is one of the top surgeons in the United States, and while although he performs surgeries on average Americans, he is paid amply to be on-call whenever one of us needs him; and to keep everything he sees and hears and does off the books.
I’ve never personally met him before—only seen him once—and his real name isn’t Mozart, of course.
I pull into the driveway of his modest little house on the lake—really, it’s quite a nice house, with an enormous window overlooking the water, and a koi pond alongside an extravagant mosaic walkway, but for the money this guy makes, anything one-story is considered modest.
Rapping my knuckles on the front door, I feel like he’s taking too damn long to answer when it’s literally only been two seconds, and I start to invite myself in.
The door opens just before my hand touches the knob.
Mozart is standing there looking at me; not a maid or a doorman or anyone else, but Mozart himself—modest.
“Can I help you?” he asks; he eyes me with that look of knowing he’s seen me before but can’t quite remember where.
“I’m Izabel,” I say, “Victor Faust’s…girlfriend.” Wow, I didn’t expect that to feel so awkward. Not that I don’t love being his girlfriend, but the word just feels so…High School; I don’t know why that even bothers me.
“I need to see him.”
Again, I start to invite myself inside, intent on pushing my way past him since he’s taking forever, but again I’m stopped.
“No one can see my patient,” Mozart says flatly; he’s standing with one hand on the door, the other on the doorframe; his body language is casual, but clearly, he has no intention of stepping aside to let me pass. “Doctor’s orders.”
Gritting my teeth, I step up to Mozart, my eyes blazing into his. “Move aside or I’ll move you myself.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Judging his posture and the lackluster tone of his voice, he’s telling the truth. You smug little shit!
Cocking my head to the side, I look him over; he’s a handsome man of fifty-something, with dark salt-and-pepper hair, scrawny build—I could easily take him without a gun, but he’s Victor’s doctor, and that kind of puts me in a tight spot.
“Then tell him I’m here,” I demand sharply. “He’ll definitely want to see me.” The first thing that crosses my mind after that comment is that it’s not because I’m his ‘girlfriend’ he’ll want to see me, but because I have information he’ll want; this hurts a little, like a realization biting me in the ass, but I ignore it.
“Victor doesn’t want to see anybody,” Mozart says, and my heart falls. “Technically, the doctor’s orders came from Victor Faust.”
I can’t speak for a moment; not only because I have no idea what to say to that, but my chest feels heavy, and there’s an ache in my heart, twisting and squeezing the life out of it.
I shove him to the side and push my way past anyway.
When I make it into the room, I expect to see Victor laid-up in a bed with tubes hanging from him, but that’s not what I see at all. Victor is standing near the bed, and he’s putting on his dress shirt, with difficulty. I go over to help him, glad that he doesn’t push me away like I halfway expected him to do. His midsection is bandaged all the way around; over the gunshot wound, blood had seeped through the gauze and dried.
“What are you doing, Victor?” I try to lead him back to the bed, and this time he pushes me away.
“I have somewhere I need to be,” he says, not looking at me.
“Where? Where could you possibly need to be other than this bed after being shot?” There’s no hiding the anger and disapproval in my voice.
“I tried to tell her,” Mozart says from the doorway, “but she…insisted.”
“It is fine,” Victor tells him, and buttons up his shirt. “I need a moment alone with Izabel.”
Mozart nods and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
I turn to Victor immediately.
“If this is about me going to—”
“Everything is about you, Izabel,” he cuts me off, and I flinch. “It just took getting shot to realize it.”
I step back, pause, searching for words. “You…got shot because of me?” I’m not sure that’s what he’s saying, but it feels like it.
Victor sighs; he closes the last button.
“Can you not see what having you in my life is doing to me?”—(I flinch again at his words, dreading the rest of them)—“It ends today,” he says, and my heart sinks.
“What ends today?” Please don’t say it…
He limps over to the chair beside the window where he sits, grimacing with the effort, and attempts to put on his shoes.
I can’t move; I want to help him with that, too, but forcing my body into motion seems like an impossible task right now.
“What ends today?” I repeat.
Raising his eyes from his shoes, Victor looks across the room at me.
“Tell me about Javier Ruiz,” he says.
“What do you want to know? You want me to tell you that I never killed him that night in Texas? That I was going to betray you?” (I just assume he knows all this stuff; and even if not, I had planned to tell him anyway.) “Well it’s true, all of it: I didn’t kill him that night, and yes, I agreed to help him, and I was going to betray you. But you know what”—I move across the room toward him, anger, and guilt, in every swift step—“I didn’t betray you. I didn’t help him. And I was only going to go through with it because of my daughter—you would’ve done the same. And you know what else? I did kill him this time.” I stop in front of him, glaring down into his eyes. “You want me to tell you about Cesara? You want me to admit to sleeping with her. Well I did. I did it only because I had to. I did it for my job, for my life—again, you would’ve done the same. What else do you want to know?”
Victor stands, and I take a step back.
“Where the hell are you going?”
He casually walks past me toward the door, taking his suit jacket from the coat rack on his way.
“Victor!”
He stops; his back is to me.
I feel like I’m about to fall apart, that my whole body is held together by a single thread, and that Victor is about to pull it and unravel me when he walks out that door.
I’m not going to let him.
But I’m not going to beg him, either. I will never beg a man not to leave me. Not even Victor Faust. I love him, more than anything. But I. Will. Not. Beg.
“No—this is about the things I said to you the night you asked me to marry you, isn’t it?” I step right up to him, gritting my teeth, and I grab his arm and turn him around to face me. “I meant every word of it. I needed—I still need—time to live on my own; I need to be my own person; I want to be independent—none of that changes just because you’re threatening to…walk away from me. But I still love you, and I want to be with you, Victor. That’ll never change, either.” I’m scrambling to find the reason for why he’s doing this. And I’ll be damned if I let him use what happened in Mexico as an excuse for facing the truth.
When he still doesn’t say anything—(fight with me, dammit!)—I switch gears. “You betrayed me, too!” I shout into his face. “You gutted me when you tried to pass me off to Niklas! You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve—.” My eyes find his chest; my mouth is incredibly dry. Then I look back at his face, and face my own truth; I tell him what I’ve wanted to tell him since that night. “You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve allowed myself to sleep with someone else, even for the sake of a job.” I said it. I can’t believe I said it. No, I can’t believe I admitted it to myself.
Look at me, Victor! I clench my fists at my sides.
But he doesn’t look at me.
After a moment: “But I didn’t do it for revenge—you need to know that.” I calm myself, and just try to make him understand. “Yes, it’s what I tried to tell myself every time it happened; letting myself believe it was for revenge, that you deserved it because of what you did; it was the only thing that got me through it. But deep down, I only did it because I had to. I did it because there was no other way; I never would’ve made it out of there alive if I didn’t play the role. And I went there for a reason—to find Vonnegut. Because I remember what you said that night, too, Victor, and you were right. About the fate of your Order; about the fate of us all—about the fate of you and me.”
“It is only a matter of time that all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us.”
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.
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.”