It’s not the manager. It’s not the lobby boy or the maid or the guy in charge of bringing up roll-aways to people who call the front desk.
Three large, unsmiling men in black coats shove their way into the room and immediately begin tearing through the suitcase she’s left on her bed. Toiletries, panties, shirts, coats, socks and more socks are all methodically ripped out and thrown to side with no pattern or reason.
Maya stands there not in shock or horror but in blank, unquestioning confusion. The men seem so sure of what they’re doing and what they’re looking for it doesn’t even occur to her to say anything. Part of her even thinks she must have made a mistake. Were these men answering a call she’d put in earlier and then forgotten about? Were they her father’s men? But how had he found out where she was?
With the contents of her bag scattered all over the room, one of the men picks the bag up and turns it upside-down, shaking out anything else, like the way kids picked on by bullies in animated shows are shaken for their lunch money.
The bag is hurled across the room, narrowly missing the bulky, pre-DVD era TV but upsetting a vase of plastic flowers.
“No weapons,” one of them says.
Is he talking to the other two who just performed the search? she wonders. That doesn’t make any sense. They’ve already seen everything.
“Then we won’t have any problems,” a fourth man says, entering the room. “Good thing you didn’t break that TV. What would we have done then?”
The man is tall and extremely wiry. His gray t-shirt, so thin Maya swears it’s a girl’s cut, shows off his small, toned muscles beneath his peacoat. The buckles of his boots clank as he walks into the room, trailing dirty parking lot snow. He dusts off the white brush from the lapels of his coat and turns his pretty, lightly bearded face to Maya. Her heart, racing from the excitement of the last twenty minutes, bursting with the appearance of the three large men, now stops utterly when she sees who her caller is.
“Sorry about the rug.” The man smiles. He has a trace of an Irish accent, worn down by years of living in a foreign country.
Maya says the first thing that pops into her head, which is, “fucking hell.” She recognized the guy the moment he entered her room, but awareness only came later, and response later still. She recognizes him because the guy who’s just waltzed in on a snow midnight is Oren Kroll, Mattias Kroll’s son. Her ex-boyfriend, and bona fide psychopath.
“Do you need some water?” Oren asks. “Water? Coke? Fanta? Something stronger, maybe?”
“What the fuck,” Maya says, still not over the shock of seeing this man, of all men, in her room. “What do you think you’re doing? What—why the fuck are you here?”
Oren ignores her. He walks slowly and with a pronounced limp over to the TV set where he opens one of the bottom cupboards and locates the VHS player. He fishes a battered tape from his coat pocket and slips it inside.
“We’ve got vodka, just a little bit. That’s all for the stronger stuff. I’m going to warn you right now, you really might want it in a second, and this is the only time I’m offering, so—” He turns away from the TV and spreads his hands, giving his arms and coat the look of bat wings. “I am at your disposal, my angel.”
His handsome face is tired and ragged, his eyes rimmed by a lack of sleep or late-night reading. It’s still a beautiful face, she finds herself thinking. Beautiful, not handsome. Airy and graceful, like his movements. Passionate, a little melancholy like what she’d imagine a poet’s to look like. Flawless, maybe even a little tortured, like some great, passionate exclamation was beating against the walls of his expression trying to soak through. In a second, she remembers all the reasons she gave her teenage heart to this beautiful man.
And no sooner than this does she also remember why she claimed her heart back, years later. Because like the bright rings on a poisonous snake, everything about his appearance was meant to entrap, mystify, and conceal the danger that lurked underneath. Because she’d learned that the way he moved and held himself, like he was suspended in air, like he was flying, was not graceful and balletic, but pointed and cruel. Because she’d learned that the soft lilt of the accent she’d adored when she first heard it was the pied piper’s notes luring her to where she knew she shouldn’t go. Because the smart, melancholy expression on his face was meant to ensnare her - body and soul. Because Oren Kroll was a psychopath.
“Kirill’t you dare call me that.” Maya finds the strength to make her voice sound suitably threatening. “I’m not your angel.”
Oren looks at her and parts his lips gently like there was something there he was begging to tell her. Some revelation—a fifth gospel, a truth to equal the wisest deductions of Socrates; the sincerest maxims of Marcus Aurelius—and he could share it with her and only her.
“My bodyguard is outside,” she went on, ignoring the trap of his mouth. “Get the fuck out, or in five minutes you’ll have a bullet in your brain.”
“Your bodyguard isn’t here with you,” Oren replies calmly. “Kirill’t think I don’t know because, my angel, I know all about that. I put a tail on you, case you were wondering. My little kitty-cat.” He smiles, boyishly, and plops down on the bed. The three men go to the bathroom door, window, and front door and stand guard like statues. Oren ignores them, patting the side of the bed and motioning for Maya to come and join him.
“You think this is funny?” she says, a little uncomfortable. None of her words or her threats has had any power, and she has to make herself sound more strong and confident than she’s really feeling. Truth be told: she’s afraid of this man and his boyish, angelic charm. “You know what I can have done to you?”
“Have my eyes pulled out? String me up by my guts? Burn my liver and smash my testicles?” Oren laughs good-naturedly. It’s not at all nervous. It’s not even creepy, which is exactly what makes it so creepy. “Grab a seat before the house fills up. There’s something I want to show you.”
Maya tries to think up another protest but the man standing at the bathroom door gives her back a shove, and she tumbles/lunges for the bed. Oren smiles and winks. He looks, she thinks, scooting herself as far away from him as she can, a little like Titanic-age Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Am I a bat, or a tiger?” Oren grins. His white teeth glisten.
“What?”
“I don’t bite, you know. And I don’t have the plague. And I don’t have cooties. You can sit next to me.”
“Like hell I will.”
He laughs again. “Suit yourself. Sure you don’t want that vodka? Last offer.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Oren shrugs, picks up the remote control and presses the big red button that turns the TV on. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t care about you,” he’s still talking. “God knows I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about you.”
Maya’s forehead shines with beading sweat. Her hands tremble. Her breathing, although she tries to keep herself calm, she’s afraid will permanently expand her ribcage.
Oren presses a few more buttons. The TV flashes to a VHS loading screen: the kind of screen Maya hasn’t seen since she was a kid watching Disney movies. The screen is a paste of white and gray static. Then, suddenly, all goes dark and quiet: the screen shows a black room, and in the center, a shining yellow light illuminating a figure, old and stooped. He’s bent unnaturally in a wooden chair, and his head hangs low, his chin buried in his upper chest.
It takes her another moment to work out all the details through the grimy tape and through its dense, blurred yellow light. When she does, she lets out a little gasp. The figure is Mattias Kroll.
“We took this a few hours ago,” Oren explains. He takes out a Snickers bar from his coat pocket and, after unwrapping it, begins to munch slowly. “There was a bit of an altercation. Regrettable, but unavoidable.”
The camera zooms in closer, revealing Mattias Kroll, offering a better view of the damage. His white shirt is covered with dirt and sweat. A thin trail of blood runs from his nose down the front of his chest. His gray hair is tangled, matted, and dirty. Someone off-camera says his name and Mattias’s head turns up slowly like it was being lifted by a crane. The cheeks are mottled with bruises. His lips and eyes are rimmed with black and red from punches.
“What have you done?” Maya asks softly.
“Given the old man what he deserved is what,” Oren says, taking another bite. “For some reason, he and your father and everyone else who’s been working with them must have thought I wasn’t around to know what’s been going on. What they’ve been planning. Strange that the men who have all their little birdies twittering about don’t recognize it when a birdie from another nest swoops in to take a look at things.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Am I being vague?” Oren frowns. “Forgive me, my angel. Father always told me to speak clearer. The basic fact of the matter is that ever since we talked all those months ago and even before that, I’ve been worrying myself sick about you. I hate being just cut out of someone’s life like that, like a tumor. It’s unfair and cruel. You broke my heart. And I couldn’t just let you go, so I put a few of my men on the case just to keep tabs. Maybe you’ve seen them around the house?”
He turns his eyes to two of his men and gives them a significant glance. Maya follows his eyes with mounting suspicion, still not understanding what he’s getting at. But the two men do in fact look familiar, and she realizes the more she looks that she does know them. Igor and Ikov, her father’s bodyguards.
“We’ve reached a mutual understanding,” Oren continues. “The
Ceallaigh’s and the Russians. Or, me and the Russians, with Mattias’s oversight. That’s what I’m talking about. We’re an established presence, New England regulars. We’ve got money. The Russians are still visitors and need all the help we can give them. I went out of my way and hired some extra eyes.”
Maya listens without comprehending. Her eyes are still fixed to the TV, on the mangled and bloody body of Oren’s father. Someone off-screen is speaking but too softly for Maya to understand. Mattias listens intently, his eyes darting from unseen to form. The fear in his eyes makes her even more nauseous than the sight of all his bruises and blood.
“What does this have to do with me?” she asks in a dead voice.
Oren finishes his candy bar and drops the wrapper to the side of the bed. He smacks chocolate and caramel from the roof of his mouth.
“It has everything to do with you,” he says, looking her squarely in the eyes. “Everything, my angel. Everything I’ve done has been for you. You haven’t been out of my thoughts for a moment, not a single one, not in years. If only you knew how I think about you. That my head is bursting with thoughts of you. Sometimes I don’t know how I can stand it. Sometimes I think it’s too much—that’s it’s impossible for one person to think so much for another. But that’s my reality, you see. Sad and pitiful as it is, I’m your slave and that man—” he spits, indicating with his eyes to the figure of his broken father—“tried to steal you away from me. Tried to turn you into a business deal. It disgusts me. It makes me sick.”
He bares his teeth and sticks out his tongue like he’s trying to get rid of a bad taste in his mouth. “Can you imagine? Maya Butler: a commodity? A trade? The wife of my father? My sister? It disgusts me, maybe even more than it disgusted you.”
The TV exchange stops. Mattias’s chin drops back into his chest. A figure comes from off-screen, but so dark that his body and whatever he’s carrying are like shadows.
“The fact is I love you.” Oren turns to Maya and stretches out a hand. Maya takes it. It’s a thin hand, and cold as ice. “I love you,” he repeats. “I love you. More than anything else in the world, I love you. And I hate anyone who tries to take you away against your wishes. Just thinking of it—thinking of you with anyone else…”
He lifts his arm over his head and covers it like he was trying to protect himself from all the thoughts invading his mind. His hand tightens in Maya’s. He begins to rock back and forth on the bed, making little squeaks.
The figure on screen next to Mattias raises his object to the camera so that she can get a good look. Maya’s heart turns a somersault. The man’s carrying a container of gasoline.
“Oh, God, no,” she whispers. The man gives the container a swish to demonstrate that it’s full. “What are you doing, Oren?”
He unveils his head and turns back to her. His eyes are wet. Maya remembers how she used to love Oren’s sensitive side, thinking it was both cute and strong for someone to show as much emotion as he did.
“It’s all for you, my angel,” he says. His tears begin to trickle. “That man is a criminal. He’s a monster. You know that better than anyone.”
“We’re not getting married,” she says. “I would never... I wouldn’t ever…”
“I know.” He squeezes her hand again. “But the fact that he even tried. That he wanted to make you his whore, and that he thought you would debase yourself to him. And for what? Power and money? He really thought he could control you with that—it just shows how twisted of a man he is to think you could be bought so cheaply.”
“You don’t need to do this.” Maya’s eyes are filling with tears. She doesn’t know if she’s more sickened or terrified by sitting here with a man who was about to demonstrate that he was capable of murdering his own father.
“Yes, I do,” Oren says with conviction. He lets go of her hand and brushes away the tears collected on his cheeks and lips. “To keep him from ever coming near you again. I know—my angel—that you’re too good. You think he is capable of grace and saving, but you don’t know his type like I do. He’s put his mind to having you. He won’t accept anything else. He’s a parasite, a virus: he’ll find a way to worm himself into your life one way or another. He must be eliminated.”
“Oren,” Maya fights to talk. She fights past fear and nausea. Oren hasn’t said it, but she knows she’s the only thing that can possibly save Mattias Kroll from his hideous fate. He can’t be dead—there would be no reason for Oren to come to her if he’d already done the deed. He wants her to bargain with him. That’s what he’s counting on now. “Please, Oren. He’s your father. You can’t do this to him.”
“He’s not my father,” Oren spits. “He’s a scoundrel. He’ll die like a scoundrel.”
The man with the gasoline brings the container back from the focus of the camera. He pops off the lid and begins to pour a thin, glistening stream of liquid onto Mattias’s head. The old man thrashes in his chair, howling.
“Maybe he is.” Maya tries an alternative route. “But you’re not, Oren. You’re not a monster. Only a monster would kill like this. I know you, my heart. I’ve known you too well to know what you’re capable of. My heart… my heart… you mustn’t.”
Oren pauses the screen and turns to her.
“You can’t, my heart,” Maya says, again and again; trying with each repetition to calm him, somehow dispel him from his mad plan. Mattias can’t be dead, she tells herself. Oren wouldn’t be here if he’d already killed him. There’s still a chance. There has to be a chance.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that to me again?” Oren says weakly. His lips are trembling. He takes her hand, laces his fingers with hers, and looks her in the eyes and says, “My love, do you even realize?”
“I’ve been stupid. I’d forgotten about us, my heart. But I know you—you’re not capable of something like this.” She hardly recognizes the words coming out of her mouth. They’re just words to soothe, words detached from anything she’s actually feeling.
“Do you know how I’ve thought about you, my angel? Do you know what it’s done to me, to have to be separated from you?”
“I can only imagine.”
“I can’t go through it again, my love. My only one. It will tear me to shreds. I’ll cease to be. I won’t think. I won’t be anything.”
“I won’t do it again, my heart. Anything you want. What do you want me to do for you, my love?”
Without thinking about it, she begins to stroke his leg. Anything to relax him and work him out of his passion. Oren smiles gently like an old father. He places his hand on hers. Maya swallows and prepares herself, but he doesn’t do what she expected. He doesn’t move her hand over to the bulge in his pants but puts it back on the cover of the bed separating them.
“Not like this, my angel,” he almost coos. “I’m not going to have you like the others want to have you. You will be mine, but soul and body.”
Maya hardly hears any of this. To her, it’s just more words. She knows already what Oren wants. And at that moment if she can save someone else’s life and possibly her own, she’ll do whatever Oren wants her to.
“Did you hear me?” He puts three fingers at the bottom of her chin and tilts her head up so that he’s looking at her eye to eye. “Do you understand, my angel?”
“Of course I do.” Maya forces a crooked smile on her face.
“Forever and ever, my angel. We’ll never have to be parted again. We’ll never have to face the darkness alone. No one in this world will be able to tear us apart.”
“Yes,” Maya says. Her eyes flutter to the TV, to the frozen image of Mattias swamped in gasoline, a cloud of spewed liquid obscuring his face from where he was spitting out. “Never again.”
“Then you accept.” Oren beams and wraps her into a hug. His thin muscles wrap around Maya’s body like the bars to a cage. Oren is small and compact, but his embrace is the strongest she’s ever been trapped in. “Our new beginning starts now. Oh, my angel. You don’t know how happy I am!” He releases her. Maya catches her breath and forces her smile to stay in place. She’s just agreed to marry Oren Kroll. The realization is slow in coming. But she hardly thinks about it—all her attention is focused on the man she’s just saved.
“Everything will be done as soon as possible,” he says. “And then we’ll escape this place together. Put as much distance between these murderers and us as possible. You can’t stay here a second longer—but you know that as well as I do. We need a new life. It’ll all be done immediately. Nothing will hold us down. We’ll never have to see these terrible people, not ever again.”
He cradles her head, wrapping her into his embrace. “No more of this. No more. But wait—” he turns his excited eyes to hers. “What have I been thinking? You don’t even know it yet!”
“Kirill’t know what?”
“The best part!” He smiles and plants a dry kiss on her cheek, which saps her strength like he’d just stuck her with a knife.
The TV resumes at the click of a button.
No. No no no no. He couldn’t have. He can’t.
The shadow flicks open a Zippo lighter and reveals its dancing flame to the camera like he’s showing something indecent. Maya watches in horror as the man inches closer and closer to the broken, gasoline-soaked figure bent over in its chair. Closer and closer: the tiny flames gets smaller and smaller.
And then, an eruption. Piercing screams. Maya opens her mouth to make one herself, but her breath escapes in a soundless gape, and she falls, unconscious, onto the sheets of her hotel bed.