“And stupidity doesn’t suit you, Victor—you know why you’re here.”
Yes, I do—revenge for what I did fifteen years ago. Not to mention the substantial bounty on my head.
I push myself into a stand with difficulty, my legs still do not feel like a part of me; my breath is heavy and uneven; my head spins. I reach out and grab the vertical iron bars to steady myself, shaking off the remnants of the drug, but it clings to the back of my eyes and the crevices of my brain like spider webs.
“So how much did they tell you my head is worth?” I’m looking down at my bare feet; yellow straw helps to cushion them against the floor.
“Oh, now let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Apollo scolds, playfully. “I’d like to get the questions about that girl of yours out of the way first.”
“What questions?” I ask, pretending.
Apollo laughs; the darkness illuminates briefly with a soft orange glow as he takes another puff of his cigar.
“You always were the unpredictable type,” he says, takes another puff. His voice draws closer as he steps out of the shadows and into the light of the moon beaming in through three high windows. “OK, so if you’re gonna pretend you don’t give a shit about her, then I’ll just get to the point.” He steps up to the bars—I could reach him if I wanted, but if I do anything stupid, Izabel will pay the price.
Apollo smiles craftily amid his dark skin; smoke floats in a cloud around his head. Dark eyes stare back at me with a sort of sick delight—it looks very much like revenge, despite his claims. Short black hair. Sharp cheekbones. Perfect skin. He looks so much like her—Artemis, his twin sister. It bothers me a half a second longer than I like.
“By all means,” I tell him, urging him to ‘get to the point’. But then I try to do it for him. “Let me guess,” I begin. “You want something from me first. Information. Money. Something you cannot get from Vonnegut. And if I do not give it to you, Izabel will die.” I look him straight in the eyes. “Is that about right?”
He smiles.
“Not necessarily,” he answers, and I detect the satisfaction in his voice—it is not often that I am wrong about these things, and he is enjoying the rare moment.
Apollo drops the cigar on the floor and crushes it with an expensive black dress shoe.
“You really are slipping, Faust,” he says, shaking his head. “It amazes me—never thought I’d see the day; the legendary Victor Faust, Golden Boy of The Order, one of the most dangerous men alive”—he chuckles, shaking his head again—“and now look at you”—he points at me in a disgusted fashion—“in a cage, like an animal, and it all started with that girl back in Mexico.” He turns his back to me and walks away from the cage. “Now I don’t know too many details about when you went rogue from The Order; I don’t even know if the shit that I heard is true: about how you helped that girl and risked your life for her—hell, I even heard you almost killed your brother to protect her.” He turns to face me, something dark and serious in his eyes. “That’s fucked up, bro. You know that saying about blood being thicker than water? It’s true. Family comes first.” He should know—Apollo was betrayed by his own flesh-and-blood brother, Osiris. He is still bitter about it, I see.
“Falling in love with someone makes them family too,” I say. “Then it’s just a matter of which family member deserves your defense—my brother deserved a bullet at that time, not unlike your brother fifteen years ago, if I remember correctly.”
Not liking my answer, but unable to argue with it, Apollo tracks back to what he was saying before. “Anyway—I don’t know too much about when you went rogue, but it’s pretty fucking plain to me that you’re here, in this situation, because of that girl. And now you just admitted to being in love with her. Thought I was gonna have to break that out of you.”
I thought he was too—I did not even realize until now that I had said it out loud. So much for pretending Izabel means nothing to me in hopes they will not harm her. Apollo is right—I am slipping. But I knew that already. I have known that for a long time. Only now do I realize just how severely.
Other things are becoming clear to me as well: the real reason I was commissioned for the hit in Caracas.
“I take it you had a big hand in the job here?”
Apollo smiles.
“So then,” I go on, “I was brought to Venezuela under false pretenses just to get me where you wanted me.” I should have sensed something misleading about this job. I hope Apollo does not see that realization on my face, but I get the feeling that he does.