My thoughts are stuck in the back of my head, my words, hanging precariously on the tip of my tongue. I struggle desperately to believe what he just told me.

“Victor…but…no—.”

“Yes,” he says and turns his head to face me, looking directly into my eyes. “It is true. I’ve rebelled against the Order, against Vonnegut, and now I’m a wanted man.” He goes back to the other papers on the table. “But I still have to work and so now I work alone.”

I shake my head over and over, not wanting to swallow the truth. The thought of him being hunted by the people who made him what he is, by anyone, sends a hot flash of panic through my veins.

I let out a long breath. “But…but what about Fredrik? What about Niklas? Victor, I…what’s going on?”

He sighs heavily and lets the sheet of paper fall lightly back against the table and then he leans his back into the couch.

“Fredrik still works for the Order. On the inside. He keeps tabs on Niklas and…,” his eyes catch mine briefly, “…he’s been helping me keep you safe.”

Before I have the chance to ask anymore broken questions, Victor stands up from the couch and continues as I sit watching him with my mouth partially agape and both legs drawn up on the cushion.

“As you know, when anyone is suspected of betraying the Order, they are immediately eliminated. But I believe that Niklas has left Fredrik alive and not reported his concerns to Vonnegut for the simple fact that Niklas is using Fredrik to find me. Just as he has left you alive all this time, hoping that one day you’ll lead him right to me.”

It isn’t what Victor said that shocks me the most, it’s more about what he didn’t say that leaves me reeling. I let both of my legs drop from the couch and press my feet into hardwood floor, my hands pushing against the cushions on either side of me.

“Victor, what are you telling me? Are you saying that…Niklas is still with Vonnegut?”

I hope that’s not what he’s trying to tell me. I hope with everything in me that my decision to let Niklas live that day back in the hotel when he shot me wasn’t the biggest mistake of my life.

His eyes stray toward the sliding glass door and I sense a sort of infinite grief consuming him, but he doesn’t let it show on his face.

“I told my brother—you were there—that if he decided he wanted to stay with the Order if I chose to leave it, that I wouldn’t hold it against him. I gave him my word, Sarai.” He walks toward the glass door, folds his hands down in front of him and gazes out at the luminescent blue pool glowing under the night sky. “It is Niklas’ time to shine now and I won’t take that from him.”

“Bullshit!” I shoot up from the couch, my fists clenched down at my sides. “He’s after you, isn’t he?” I grit my teeth and step around the coffee table. “That’s fucking it, isn’t it, Victor? To prove his worth to Vonnegut, he’s been commissioned to kill you. Your piece of shit brother betrayed you. He thinks he’s taking your place in the Order. I can’t fucking believe—”

“It is what it is, Sarai,” Victor stops me, turning around to face me fully. “But right now, Niklas is the least of my worries.”

Crossing my arms, I start to pace, gazing down at the dark and light swirling patterns in the wood beneath my bare feet. My toenails are still painted blood red from two weeks ago.

“Why did you leave the Order?”

“I had to. I had no other choice.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Victor sighs.

“Vonnegut found out about us,” he says and has my undivided attention. “It was Samantha…the night she died. Before I left the Order, I met with Vonnegut in Berlin, the first face-to-face meeting I’d had with him in months. I was in an interrogation room. Four walls. One door. A table. Two chairs. Just me and Vonnegut sitting across from each other with a light blazing in the ceiling above us.” He looks back out the glass door behind him and then goes on:

“At first I thought for sure he brought me there to kill me. I was prepared—”

“To die?” If he says yes, I’ll slap him for it.

“No,” he answers and I feel like I can breathe a little more. “I went prepared. I kidnapped Vonnegut’s wife before I met with him. Fredrik held her in a room, prepared to do…his thing, if it came down to that.”

Immediately I want to ask what Fredrik’s ‘thing’ is, but I skip that for now and say instead, “If Vonnegut intended to kill you, you had his wife as leverage.”

With his back to me, he nods.

“Samantha was being watched by the Order. Probably for a long time.”

“They suspected her of betrayal? Why didn’t they just kill her then, like they did Niklas’ mother, or like they wanted to do to Niklas?”

Victor turns around to face me again. “They didn’t suspect her of betrayal, Sarai, she was…,” he takes a deep breath and presses his lips together.

“She was what?” I walk over to stand closer to him. I don’t like where this seems to be heading.

“She was more loyal to the Order than I ever could have imagined,” he says and it hurts my heart. “As I sat in that room with Vonnegut and the more he spoke, the more I began to understand that Samantha was as much a traitor to me as Niklas has become. Vonnegut told me things that he couldn’t have possibly known. He knew I helped you. Sometime before she died that night, she was able to relay information to Vonnegut about us being there.”

“I don’t believe that.” I slash a hand in the air in front of me. “Samantha died trying to protect me. We’ve already been through this. I don’t believe you, Victor. She was a good woman.”

“She was a good manipulator, Sarai, nothing more.”

I shake my head, still not believing it. “Niklas is the one who told Vonnegut about you helping me. He had to have been. Niklas even knew that you had taken me to Samantha’s house.”

“Yes, but Niklas didn’t know that I made Samantha taste-test our food before we ate that night. I knew the second that Vonnegut brought up how distrusting I still was of her after all the years I had known her, that she had betrayed me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.” I start to pace the floor again, arms crossed, one arm bent upright, my fingers touching the side of my face. “Why would she protect me from Javier?”

“Because she wasn’t loyal to Javier.”

I throw my hands in the air above me, washing my hands of this revelation.

“Can’t trust anybody,” I say, plopping down on the couch again, looking at nothing.

“No, you can’t,” Victor says and I look up, detecting a hidden meaning behind his words. “Now maybe you can understand why I don’t get close to anyone. It’s not just the job, Sarai. People generally cannot be trusted, especially in my profession where trust is such a rarity that it’s not worth wasting the time and effort searching for it.”

“But you seem to trust Fredrik,” I point out, looking up at him from the couch. “Why’d you bring me here, of all places? Didn’t you learn your lesson with Samantha?”

His expression darkens subtly, stung by my accusation.

“I never said I trusted Fredrik. But right now, Fredrik is my only connection inside the Order and for the past seven months he has done nothing to indicate he is untrustworthy. Quite the opposite, he’s done everything to prove that he is.”

“But that doesn’t make it true,” I say.

“No, you’re right, but soon enough I’ll know one hundred percent if Fredrik can be trusted, or not.”

“How so?”

“You’ll find out when I do,” he says.

“Why bother? You just said that trust is so rare it’s not worth the effort.”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. And you don’t answer enough of them.”

“No, I guess I don’t.” He smiles faintly and it melts my heart into a puddle of mush.

I look away from his eyes and swallow down my feelings.

“I’m not safe here,” I say looking back up at him.

“You’re not safe anywhere,” he says. “But as long as you’re with me, nothing will happen to you.”

“Now who’s full of shit?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“You’re not my hero, remember?” I remind him. “You’re not the other half of my soul who could never let anything bad ever happen to me. Trust my instincts first always, and you, if I choose, last. You said that to me once.”

“And it’s still as true today as it was then.”

“Then how can you say nothing will happen to me if I’m with you?”

His expression becomes vacant as if for the first time in his life someone has rendered him speechless. I gaze across the room into his quiet and emotionless face, only his eyes revealing a trace of numbness. I get the feeling that he spoke before thinking, that he expressed something to me that he truly feels but never wanted me to know: he wants to be my ‘hero’, he will do anything and everything in his power to keep me safe, he wants me to trust him fully.

I do.

He walks back over and sits down beside me. The smell of his cologne faint as if he makes it a point to use as little as possible. It makes my head swim with need. I have longed to feel his touch again, to taste his warm lips, to let him ravage me the way he did a few nights before we last saw each other. I’ve thought of nothing but Victor for the past eight months of my life. While sleeping. Eating. Watching television. Having sex. Masturbating. Breathing. Every single thing I have done since he left me in that hospital with Dina, has been with him in mind.

“Do you think Fredrik will tell Niklas where we are?” I change the subject for fear of breaking into him too much too soon.