My mouth closes.
“I have few regrets in life,” he says, “and one of them—the one that will always haunt me—is allowing my brother to follow me into a life that he never wanted. I knew when we were just boys that Niklas wanted freedom; he has always wanted to be his own person, play by his own rules, live by his own standards, and not in the shoes or the shadow or beneath the gavel or the whip of anyone else. But he gave all that up to stay by my side, because my brother’s love for me knew no bounds. I loved him the same, but I was blinded by my own wants and needs, and by the time I realized my mistakes, it was too late. He was what he was, became what he became, and then I found myself fighting to keep him alive: killing our father; lying to The Order about his abilities, and his…emotional faults. I did what I had to do to protect him, from others and from himself.” He pauses, looks at the floor, then back into my eyes. “And when I look at you, I see Niklas as that boy all over again, and I will not let you follow me into misery the way I let my brother. When I look at you I see someone I care for and love so deeply that I would do anything—anything, Izabel—to protect, not just your physical life, but your humanity and your freedom to choose your life.”
“But I choose you,” I cut in, making myself perfectly clear. “And I choose this life, Victor. And I’m not doing any of this because of you. It’s what I want.”
“I know,” he says; his hands slide from my cheeks to my shoulders, down the length of my arms. “I no longer question or doubt your reasons anymore—I know this is your choice, and it does make me feel better about letting you go through with it. But there is one part of you, Izabel, that you are trying so hard to change, and I will not let you change it.”
“What am I trying to change?”
“Your humanity,” he says. “You feel like you must be as calculating and insensitive as Kessler; you want to be able to stomach torture, to be able to face Gustavsson’s demons as if they were your own; and you want to be as disciplined as I am, even if it means having to set aside your compassion and your ethics the way I do without guilt. You want to be all of these things because you think they will make you a better operative”—he places his hand on my heart—“but deep down you know it is wrong; you are beginning to fight an internal war, your mind wanting one thing, but your heart wanting another…and to be human means to always go with your heart. The moment you betray your heart is the moment you lose everything.”
My gaze finds the wall. I don’t know what to say—that he’s right? I feel like I’m screaming inside of my head and my face is doing too good a job concealing it. I want Victor to be wrong.
“You did well on the mission,” he says, bringing me out of my thoughts. “You have proven you can handle whatever is thrown at you. I was concerned. I will not lie to you; I did not think you would be able to get through it. Tell me,” he says, “what would you have done if Niklas did not step in and save that girl from being killed in front of you?”
“I…don’t know,” I say, “but I wouldn’t have let them kill her. I feel like…I would’ve thought of something—a distraction, maybe—to try and stop it. I wouldn’t have blown our cover, but I know I would’ve thought of something if Niklas hadn’t.”
“You would have put yourself at risk to save her life.”
“Yes. Myself—not Niklas or Nora or our cover.”
He reaches up his hand and brushes my bangs from my face, regarding me, and I can only wonder anxiously what he’s thinking right now. But he doesn’t say anything.
“What is it?” I ask. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
He smiles faintly and then kisses my lips.
“I have something for you,” he says, but I can tell it has nothing to do with the way he was looking at me.
He reaches into his pants pocket and then places his hand over mine, dropping something small and cold into my palm. It’s Dorian’s safety deposit box key. A tear nearly slips down my face, but I fight it back, swallow, and look up to meet Victor’s eyes again.
“I thought you might want to be the one who takes it to Tessa.” He moves over to the table. An extra briefcase is sitting next to Victor’s. “This also belongs to her,” he says. “It is what was owed to Flynn on his last job just before he found himself in one of my cells.”
“Thank you, Victor. I’ll take it to her.”
He passes the briefcase to me, kisses my lips once more and then says, “Tomorrow…if you are up for it, I would like to take you on a small vacation. Our plane leaves at nine.”
I blink, stunned.
“A vacation?” The word itself sounds strange to me. “Like an actual vacation? I don’t get it—what for?”
Victor smiles, cocks a brow. “Well what do people normally do on actual vacations?”