Izabel snarls and shakes her head, leaning away from the bar and dropping her hands in her lap.
“It really pisses me off enough that Victor still thinks I’m some messed up girl traumatized by her past—I’m sick of that being thrown up in my face, Niklas.” Her expression hardens, her jaw tightens. “I’m not afraid of it. I don’t flinch and recoil when Victor touches me because I was raped. I don’t have debilitating flashbacks of my old life when someone says a trigger word around me—maybe I should but I don’t. I’m over it, so why can’t everybody else just get over it?” It was more a heated statement than a question.
The light smell of Nora’s perfume wraps around my head again as she walks back up.
“I’m going to wait in the car,” she says and Izabel passes a set of keys to her. Before she leaves, she steps up beside me and says against my ear, “I look forward to working with you, Niklas. Let’s learn to get along—I’m not the one who betrayed you. Try to remember that.” She walks away through the small crowded bar and clouds of cigarette smoke like a goddess making her way through a crowd of peasants.
“So she’s working for my brother now?” I’m at a loss.
“Like Nora said, it’s a long story, but yes. Niklas, just like with this thing between you and Victor, that’s not what I came here for—I need you on this.”
“You were right,” I say, “I’d rather it burn when I piss.”
Jay walks over to re-fill my shot glass, but Izabel stops him, placing her palm over the top of it. With an uneasy look, Jay walks away.
She leans in closer to me, her darkly painted eyes boring into mine indignantly, her nostrils flaring; she’s fed up with my shit—now that’s the Izzy I’m used to.
I smile to myself.
“Get over yourself, asshole,” she growls and slides the shot glass beneath her palm, away from me. “We’ve all lost people we love. We’ve all done things we regret, things we wish we could take back—every one of us, Niklas.” She leans in even more, closing the space between us so that only I can hear, or probably more-so so that I fully understand the intensity of her words. “But Victor has only ever had his love for you in mind—he killed his father to protect you. And if I remember correctly, before you ever knew about what really happened to Claire, you tried to kill me to protect him.”
She pulls away, but her eyes never leave mine.
Izabel speaks the truth, and I’m not above admitting it, but there’s one thing she fails to understand.
I lean in toward her now, my jaw tightening, my eyes as hard and as cold as hers are.
“My brother wasn’t in love with you yet when I tried to kill you,” I whisper into the small space between our faces, and I see her frown, just a little, enough to show that I’ve already won. “But he knew…he knew I loved Claire when he killed her. He may not admit that to you, or even to himself, but my brother knew and that’s why he killed her—not because she was a job. And nothing he can ever say to me will make me believe otherwise.”
Izabel’s gaze veers from mine and she stares off toward the television behind the bar.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what? For something he did? You’re sorry that she died?” I shake my head and look out ahead of me, having nothing more to say—I’ve said more than I wanted to already.
“I’m sorry that the woman you loved died, and that I didn’t.”
My head snaps around.
At first, I think she’s looking for me to pity her in some fucked up way, but when I look at her and see the gravity of her words all over her face, I can’t help but believe she meant what she said, that her guilt runs so much deeper than I could ever know.
“Niklas,” she continues in a low, angry, pain-filled voice, “I live with the guilt of being alive every single day. So many people have died in my place. And when I think about Claire, I feel guilty that I’m here and she’s not, because you loved her and you deserve to be loved the same way that I love your brother, no matter how much of a dick you are.” She pauses, her small shoulders rising and falling with a breath. “I don’t blame you for hating me. But it is what it is, Niklas, and all I can do is at least try to make myself useful. You could do the same, instead of hanging around here with your whiskey and what’s left of your pathetic life.”
She slides off the bar stool, indignation in her movements.