“Try anything and I’ll kill you,” I growl, my lips next to her ear.
She doesn’t try to fight back, but I’m not feeling defeat from her. It’s something else. That confidence about her that I’ve grown to despise. Even though I’m the one sitting on top of her, the one with the knife pressed to her throat, I can’t help feel like she’s still the one in control.
“Where is she?” I whisper harshly against the side of her face.
“Nine years as a sex slave in a Mexican compound,” she whispers back. “Something tells me they didn’t care much for condoms. Did they, Sarai?”
My entire body, every bone, every muscle, solidifies in an instant.
“If you want Dina Gregory to live,” she says, still in a whisper too low for the audio to pick up, “then you and I need to have a talk about the specifics of the relationship you had with Javier Ruiz.”
It feels like an eternity that I sit on top of her, straddling her back, lost in some kind of stunned submission. I can’t find words. Or my heartbeat. And my mind is running away from me.
Then my knife hand begins to tremble and my breathing becomes unsteady.
I slide the knife away from her throat, push her head down forcibly against the tile with the other hand, shoving myself angrily to my feet and off of her. I don’t look at her when she gets up, struggling into a stand with her ankles bound. And I look only at the floor when she shuffles right past me, picking up her black heels along the way, and goes back over to her seat on the other side of the table.
I keep my back to her, unable to move; my eyes beginning to burn from the angry tears pushing their way to the surface. My knife is gripped within my hand firmly, resting down at my side. I feel like using it on myself.
“Shall we begin?” Nora says as calmly as ever, waiting for me at the table. “I’m eager to hear all about your time in Mexico.” She says it in a more audible voice, glancing at a camera.
Raising my head slowly, I look up toward the tiny hidden camera fixed in the vent near the ceiling to my right. I look right at Victor, or at least I hope he realizes that’s what I’m doing, my eyes filled with regret and shame and…sorrow.
A tear tumbles down one cheek, but I don’t have the energy to wipe it away.
My eyes fall away from the camera and look at the floor instead.
Victor
“Turn off the audio,” I instruct Dorian.
Niklas argues, “Wait, we need to leave it on in case—”
“I said turn it off.”
For the first time since I entered this room, I feel the need to sit down.
“Victor, this is a mistake,” Niklas says. “Anything Nora says could be of use.”
“I am aware, Niklas.”
The audio goes dead as Dorian switches it off at the table to my right.
I keep my eyes on the screen. A hidden hatred for Nora begins to make itself known inside of me, seething beneath the surface and growing darker the more she hurts Izabel.
“Victor—”
“Izabel suffered enough,” I cut him off with acid in my voice. I turn only my head to look at my brother. “You have no idea what she went through in Mexico, Niklas—none of us really do. This woman may be forcing her to tell her things I’m sure Izabel wants no one to know, least of all us, or me. But we’re not going to listen in on her confession. Whatever it is, it’s her secret. Her business. And when she’s ready to tell you or me or anyone else, only then will we hear it.”
Niklas relents easily.
Nodding he says, “No, you’re right. Besides, if Nora says anything that Izabel thinks we can use, she’ll let us know.”
I nod and turn back to the screen.
A chip bag rattles behind me in the vicinity of Woodard.
Aggravated by it, I say, “Leave us and see if you’ve gotten anything on this woman’s blood or fingerprints. I want to know who she is before this night is over.”
“Yes, sir,” Woodard says and leaves the room hurriedly.
I stare at the screen, at Izabel’s auburn hair disheveled about her shoulders; the pain in her green eyes, and all I can do is watch as she is forced to relive something she has only ever wanted to forget.
6
Izabel
Absently I reach up a hand and wipe blood from the corner of my mouth, and then tongue the swollen tissue on the inside where my teeth broke the flesh.
“Sit down, Sarai,” Nora says.
“My name is Izabel.”
“Your new name is Izabel,” she says, surprisingly with a little less mockery, “but you can’t bury who you used to be no matter how hard you try. None of us ever can.”
I sheathe my knife and sit—might as well stop fighting the inevitable.
I don’t look at her.
“What the fuck do you want to know…exactly?” I ask icily.
“You already know the answer to that.”
I raise my head and look at her with cold, hooded eyes.