“Alright, yes, easy is putting it lightly,” I agree and take another sip. “But I’d say taking over three operations in under three months is pretty damn good.”

Victor nods.

“It’s been a group effort,” he says, always giving credit where credit is due. “I couldn’t have done it without the four of you.”

Victor is being modest. I know that, yes, he could do it without us. Very easily, in fact. Without myself, or Dorian Flynn, or his brother, Niklas Fleischer, or even that redheaded spitfire of a woman of his, Izabel Seyfried, who I’ve grown rather fond of in the past year. And Victor may treat us all with respect, but I also know that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of us if it came down to it. Victor Faust is the epitome of ‘iron fist’. I don’t fear him. I fear no one. But I do respect him and I owe him my life.

However, if he were ever to find out about Cassia, he would likely take back the life he saved by getting to me before Vonnegut did a few months ago. Vonnegut is our former employer, head of The Order, which myself, Victor and Niklas were all a part of before we went rogue.

Now there is a heavy bounty on our heads and we’ve been laying low ever since.

“Where are we at now?” I ask. “What are our numbers?”

“Six black market operations are now under our control. Four in the United States. One in Mexico. And one in Sweden. All totaling one hundred thirty-three active members. Aside from what we had before obtaining them.”

“One hundred thirty-three?” I ask, looking at him inquiringly, cocking my head gently to one side.

“One operative was eliminated by Niklas yesterday. He did not pass the final tests. Spilled all of the false information we gave him to Izabel.”

“Ah, I see,” I say, tilting my head back briefly. “And how is Izabel doing in the field?”

“She’s doing well,” Victor says, but offers me nothing more, which strikes me in a curious way.

“It’s not my place to ask,” I say, “but is there anything to worry about?”

Victor looks over at me. He shakes his head. “Nothing you need to worry about,” he clarifies. “My brother, on the other hand, I wonder every day if I’ll get word that she has finally slit his throat.”

I try to force my smile at bay, but it pushes its way to the surface. I shake my head and bring the bottle to my lips again just to attempt to conceal as much of the smile as I can. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Surely, you didn’t think it would.”

Finally, I set the bottle on the table near Victor’s.

“No, I did not,” he says with a faint hint of a smile in his voice. “I doubt they will ever get along. It doesn’t help that Niklas doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. But Izabel…,” he shakes his head with his short brown hair, as if he’s concluding in his mind that there’s no hope in this situation, “…she is just as bad as he is.”

“As long as their…differences, don’t get in the way of our operations,” I say, “then it’s probably best to let them ride it out.” I shrug. “Besides, you know as well as I do that Niklas deserves the shit beat out of him every once in a while. He’s almost…,” I point my index finger up in front of me in emphasis, “…almost as bad a Dorian.”

Victor switches feet, propping his left on his right knee. He drops his arms between the chair arms, leaving his elbows propped on the intricately carved wood, and he interlaces his fingers.

“Speaking of Dorian,” he says, “how did he do in France?”

I sigh, shake my head and glance upward at the ceiling for a moment, expelling a burst of air before dropping my head and looking at him again.

“Like Niklas, Dorian is a train wreck,” I say. “I admit, he gets the job done, and he never makes a mistake, but he shocks even me at times. And, as you know, that’s not an easy thing to do.”

Victor raises an inquisitive brow. “Shocks you?” he says. “Yes, I do find that hard to believe.”

I nod quickly. “Well, yes. He’s trigger-happy.”

“That is his job,” Victor says. “To kill the enemy and anyone who steps in the way.”

“Yes, but,”—I chew on the inside of my mouth in thought—, “he’s quite brutal. Kills without thinking.”

Victor actually laughs, throwing his head back once and laughs. It stuns me for a moment, but I recover quickly.

He picks his beer up from the table and points at me with it in his hand and says before placing his lips on the glass, “You, of all people, accuse Dorian of being brutal because he kills without thinking about it.” His laughter begins to fade but it’s still present in his voice. “Don’t you think that perhaps it shocks you because, unlike you, Dorian doesn’t play with his food before he eats it? He’s your polar opposite. How do you think he felt the first time he witnessed you in the interrogation room?”

He takes one more drink and sets the beer back on the table.

“OK, yes, I do see your point,” I say with a faint smile.

“So, then he’s doing well?” Victor adds, dropping the humor and getting back to business. “I trust that he hasn’t set off any red flags since he became your partner?”

I shake my head. “No, he hasn’t. And so far he has passed all of the tests.” I shake my head again, though this time with a long, deep sigh. “I hate to say it, but I think you were right about him, too.”

I hated to say it because when I first met Dorian Flynn, I wanted to strap him to a chair and pump his veins full of poison. He talked too much. Was cocky, arrogant, and incredibly impetuous. He’s still all of those things. But he is, unfortunately for the sake of my killing him being put on hold probably indefinitely, an excellent operative.

But this poses an important question.

“How long exactly is Dorian expected to be my…partner?” I ask, practically having to scrape that dirty word right off my tongue. “I prefer to work alone. Unless, of course, you’re involved. You I can work with if necessary. Dorian, well, he kind of makes me want to stick the needles into my own veins at times.”

Victor smiles faintly again.

“A few weeks more at the most,” he says. “Just until he helps with the mission in Washington. After that, I’ll put him on his own.”

Then he adds, “I put the two of you together for the same reasons I put Niklas and Izabel together. You all need to learn to work together without killing each other.”

I smirk. “And you just get along with everyone?” I ask with sarcasm, though entirely innocent and Victor knows this.

He simply nods. “I suppose.”

Silence passes between us for the first time since he arrived. I hear Greta moving around in the kitchen—the sound of pans clanking on the stove and then the water running in the faucet as she begins to clean the vegetables. She always leaves the water running when she’s cleaning vegetables.

“Fredrik,” Victor says, breaking the silence.

He looks over at me and I meet his eyes, his painted darkly with concern and questions.

“I hear that you’ve been looking for Seraphina again,” he says. “Is this true?”

I keep a straight face, not letting him know that his question has stirred something dark inside of me.

“Yes, I have,” I answer honestly. “But I’m not letting it interfere with our operations.”

Victor nods, but I get the feeling he doesn’t believe me entirely.

It was just a few months ago, after he helped save my life from an ambush orchestrated by Vonnegut, head of our former Order, to take me out. I came clean and admitted to Victor that I never did kill my ex-wife, Seraphina, like he believed long ago that I had. I couldn’t kill her. She may have betrayed me and tried to kill me, but there was still a part of her that I didn’t want to let go. That in the end even when Seraphina was within reach of me, although I could’ve, I couldn’t force myself to take her life. Seraphina was the first and only interrogation that I could not break. And she was also the first and only interrogation I could not finish.

She escaped—because I let her, and because I let her three innocent women died at her hands. I never saw her again after she set my house ablaze until nearly a year ago in New York. I was watching the nightly news and I saw her walking through a small crowd behind the news reporter.

I’ve been searching for her since.

Victor drops his foot on the floor and leans forward, draping his folded hands between his knees.

“Fredrik,” he says, looking right at me with his head tilted to one side, “you do know that all you need to do is ask and I’ll give you all of the resources you need to help find her.”

“No,” I reject the idea quickly. I shake my head and lean forward, too. “This is on me, Victor. I appreciate the offer, but I have to do this one on my own. Surely you understand.”

He nods a few times more, now looking out in front of him. Then he rises to his feet, straightening his suit jacket.

I stand with him and follow him to the front door.

“Keep me posted on Dorian,” he says. “I’ll send you details about Washington as soon as I have them ready.”

“Will do,” I say.

Victor bids me farewell and heads back to his current residence in Philadelphia.

The second he leaves the driveway, I head into the kitchen to get an update on Cassia from Greta.

Chapter Three

Fredrik


She’s looking right at me, impatiently waiting for permission to speak, the moment I enter the kitchen.

“What is it?” I ask, standing at the entrance.

Drying her hands on a dish towel, Greta says, “Cassia is restless, Mr. Gustavsson.” She sets the dish towel on the black granite countertop. “It’s been three days. Forgive me for saying so, but it would’ve been better if you saw her when you first came back, rather than waiting until this evening.”

I nod gently. “Yes, I know, but I have my reasons.” Those which I don’t feel obligated to explain to Greta. She is my maid and Cassia’s caretaker when I’m gone. Not my mother.

I step up to the counter, my bare feet moving slowly over the cool tile floor, black and shiny like the countertop, and I enclose my hands down in front of me, loosely interlocking my fingers. I notice her throat move as she swallows nervously, her aged blue eyes falling away from me to look downward at something, anything, other than me.

Tilting my head gently to one side, I say, “You’re still afraid of me. After months in my home. Why? I’ve never harmed you.”

Greta hesitantly raises her eyes to me, but can’t hold the contact.

“I am sorry, but you’re the first assignment I’ve ever had who”—she wrings her hands below her pelvic bone—“…does the things that you do. It is not something I’m used to. And probably never will be.”

Greta—and Dorian—became two of our new ‘employees’ when Victor took over one of the black market operations here in the United States almost a year ago. Just like the one that is still—though not for long—run by Sébastien Fournier in France, we killed off the leaders of Greta’s former Order and obtained all of the information on the identities of its operatives. Having this delicate and damning information gives us control over everyone involved. In a way it’s no different than one large company buying another one out and new ownership moving in, making drastic changes and submitting all of the employees on the payroll to extensive background checks and running them through new tests. Most of them really don't care much who their leader is so long as they continue to be paid, but this makes it difficult to separate the loyal from those who would sell us out to a higher payer at the drop of a hat. But Victor Faust knows what he’s doing. And I’ve become one of his key weapons in weeding out the unstable and untrustworthy. Each operation we take control of has had at least ninety or so members. All men and women, assassins and spies and safe-house operators who each go through me and my interrogation chair. If it comes to that, of course. But then again, most never get past Victor and Niklas to be unlucky enough to have to face me. I’m the one they are sent to when even after all tests have been passed, there is still suspicion.

Some of my…victims, as Izabel Seyfried calls them, might say that the way Vonnegut in The Order deals with suspicious employees—killing them quickly at the first sign—is a more humane way. Perhaps she’s right. But there is no such thing as humane interrogation in this business. And besides, if there were, I’d certainly be old school.