“I know what Victor’s doing.” I warn, crossing my arms and manipulating the inside of my cheek with my teeth. I sit down on the sofa, drawing my bare legs up and onto the cushion that hides the gun. I bend them at the knees and get comfortable, making sure that my short cotton shorts aren’t riding up too far and revealing more of my legs than necessary. “Don’t even waste your time,” I add.

Fredrik tilts his head curiously to one side and walks the rest of the way around the sofa and toward the nearby matching leather chair.

“Waste my time doing what?” He really does appear to have no idea what I’m talking about.

He sits down, propping his right ankle on the top of his left knee, his long arms stretched across the chair arms where the tips of his fingers touch the little golden buttons embedded deeply in the leather.

“I don’t care how attractive you are,” I say, “there’s no way in hell you can seduce me.”

Fredrik laughs lightly, shaking his smiling head. A deep breath expels from his lungs as his shoulders relax.

“I didn’t come here for that, doll.” His smile accentuated by his bright blue eyes framed by almost-black tousled hair. “Victor simply asked that I keep an eye on you.”

“But I don’t need an eye on me,” I say with a soft, yet stubborn tone. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

Fredrik never loses his smile, though now it shows more in his eyes than on his mouth.

“Of that I have no doubt,” he says, “but just the same, Victor asked that I be here. And I apologize, but his requests come before yours.”

I narrow my eyes at him, but I’m hardly offended. I know he’s right, but I’m not giving in that easily.

“What is it with you and Victor, anyway?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on.” He shakes his head, grinning across at me. “You’ve bewitched him. And very easily, I must say. You’re more dangerous than I could ever be. To Victor, anyway.” He flashes a grin.

I feel my eyebrows crinkling in my forehead.

Fredrik laughs softly and gently slaps the palms of his hands down once on the tops of his legs, smoothing them across the fabric of his pants afterwards. He moves them back to the chair arms.

“If you’re implying that I’m trying to seduce him with some kind of false intent, then you’re wrong.” I am offended this time and it shows in my voice.

“I wasn’t implying that at all.” He takes another casual breath and relaxes his back against the seat, slouching a little. “I’ve known Victor for many years, Sarai, and I can tell you—though I probably shouldn’t—that I’ve never seen him the way he has been since he’s met you.”

My stomach flutters for a moment. I push it away. I’m not really the stomach-fluttering type. Or, at least I try not to be, as if it might somehow make me weak. But I can’t deny, either, that when it comes to Victor I find myself ‘pushing it away’, often. I swallow and raise my chin.

And then I change the subject.

“Forgive me if this seems blunt—”

“I like blunt,” he cuts in and flashes me another smile. “Blunt cuts out all of the bullshit.”

I nod.

“Well, do you get off on torturing people?” I ask, as though it’s exactly what I think. “Or murdering people, for that matter.”

Fredrik reaches over to adjust his thick silver watch around his right wrist. He places his hands back down on the chair arms.

“Coming from someone who can’t wait to slit a man’s throat,” he says, grin still in-tact, “that’s a strong accusation. Borderline hypocritical.”

“I thought you liked blunt,” I point out, referring to his dodging of my question.

He catches on fast.

“If you mean ‘get off on it’ in a sexual manner, then no, I do not. But yes, in a retributive manner, I very much get off on it.”

“Retributive?”

“Absolutely,” he says. “People like Andre Costa and his brother, David, deserve what they get. And I’m happy to oblige.” He laughs gently and adds, “Of course, I’m no saint. And when the time comes that the roles are reversed and I’m the one in the chair, then I can live with that. But no one will ever break me…not again.”

I can only wonder what that last part meant. And I get the sense that it had been a comment not meant for me.

Flashes of the needles and cruel images of them being pushed underneath Andre’s fingernails sear through my mind momentarily. I shudder and my skin crawls. The back of my neck dampens and my hands feel clammy.

Squeamishly, I look over the coffee table at him.

“But the…things you do,” I try to shake the image out of my mind. Another shiver rolls up my back. “Why needles?”

A faint smile appears at the corners of his mouth, which I recognize right away as an attempt to soften my image of him and not to gloat inwardly about my discomfort of it.

“The method is very effective, as you saw.”

“Yeah, but…,” I search for the words, “how can you stomach it?”

Fredrik’s smile fades, replaced with a blank expression as he stares out beyond me.

“I really don’t know,” he answers, and I get the feeling that the answer troubles him somehow.

Just as quickly, his smile returns and he’s folding his hands over his stomach, and interlacing his long, manicured fingers.

“How long do you think Victor will be gone?” I ask.

Fredrik shakes his head. “Until the job is done.”

I knew he’d give me the same answer that Victor gave, but it was worth the shot. What I really want to know is more about Seraphina, but I’m too afraid ask. I feel like Victor told me what he did about Fredrik and Seraphina, in confidence. And I don’t want to let Fredrik know about our conversation.

But it’s killing me.

I unfold my legs from the sofa and let my feet drop on the floor. I stand up and cross my arms, looking across at Fredrik who watches me with mild curiosity. I pace once down the length of the coffee table and then stop.

“How did you…well, what made you the way you are?” I ask, carefully tiptoeing around the things I already know and hoping he’ll tell me himself.

He looks at me from the side, cocking his head thoughtfully.

“What you really want to know,” he says, “is how Seraphina made me the way I am. Or, did Victor not get around to telling you about her yet?” He grins, knowing.

For a moment, I can’t look him in the eye. I run my hands up and down the softness of my arms a couple of times and then sit down on the edge of the coffee table, directly in front of him. I bury my hands in the loose fabric of the bottom of my gray t-shirt.

“He told you?” I ask.

Fredrik nods. “He asked me if I minded that he tell you. He respects me enough to ask first. It’s a very delicate conversation.”

“She must’ve hurt you pretty bad,” I say carefully.

“Despite what Victor thinks,” he says, raising his back from the chair and draping his loosely-folded hands in-between his knees, “Seraphina was only part of the reason I turned out like I did. A small part. She was, as my shrink appointed by the Order said, the trigger. The spark in a room full of gas. But I was ruined long before I met her.” He laughs lightly, but I find no humor in it. Something tells me that he really doesn’t, either.

Suddenly, Fredrik gets up and walks toward the opened window behind the couch. I stand up, too, allowing my eyes to follow him to keep him in my sights, but I remain standing by the table. I can’t be sure because his back is to me now and I can no longer see his face, but I sense the mood in the room has darkened significantly. He stands with his arms down at his sides, the light breeze from the window brushing through the top of his dark hair.

But he divulges nothing and I’m left only wondering what terrible images are torturing him, what unbearable memory is haunting him in this moment. And all I can do is stand here and let it run its course.

Fredrik

Twenty-five years ago…

The man with the wiry red hair, whose name I was unworthy of knowing, slapped me across the face so hard that a flash of white covered my vision. I fell against the cobblestone slab, my bare legs so bony and malnourished collapsing beneath me. Blood sprang up in my mouth the moment the tip of his boot connected underneath my chin.

“Foolish boy!” he hissed through spit and hate. “You cost me more than you’re worth! Insolent boy!”

I cried out and doubled over when the pain seared through my ribs.

“What are you doing?” I heard Olaf say sternly from somewhere behind me.

I couldn’t move, other than holding my emaciated arms over my ribs, hoping to guard them from any more blows and trying to stifle the pain. I could hardly breathe. Bile churned in my stomach and I tried so hard to keep from vomiting because I knew, just like before, that it would only make my ribs hurt more intensely.

“You’ll never sell him if you damage him,” Olaf said.

I hated Olaf as much as I hated all of the men who kept me in this place, but I was always glad when he came. He would stop the other men from beating me. From raping me. Olaf also had his way with me, but he was gentle and never hurt me. I hated him and I wanted him dead, just like the rest of them, but he was my only comfort in the hell that was my life.

The man with the wiry red hair spit on the floor beside me, so close that I felt a trickle on my cheek as it lay pressed against the cool stone.

“Then you deal with it,” he barked. “I wash my hands of this one. He is a stupid boy! Not so much defiant as he is stupid. Four months and he has learned nothing!”

I refused to open my eyes. I wanted only to remain on the floor, curled in the fetal position and left alone to die there. I could smell feces and urine and vomit coming from the lavatory down the hall. I could feel the humid breeze from the broken window nearby, filtering against the stones and onto my face. I thought about my mother, though she wasn’t truly my mother. She was a horrible beast of a woman who ran the orphanage that took care of me. The orphanage that sold me to these men three months previous, two days after I apparently turned seven. Like Olaf, I hated Mother. The way she would beat me across the buttocks with the switch until I bled. I hated how she sent me to bed without food three, sometimes four nights in a row. But I would give anything to be back in her care than to be with these men.

“Perhaps it is the teacher,” Olaf accused in a calm voice. “You are too rough on him. He is more fragile than the others. The runt of the litter, as Eskill calls him.”

“He will not eat!” the red-haired man shouted.

I could picture him throwing his hands up in the air around him, his large nostrils flaring with anger, aggravating the scar on the left side of his nose. I could picture the bright red flushing of his cheeks that always looked like a splotchy rash when he’d get angry.

“He cannot hold food down,” Olaf said. “Dr. Hammans looked the boy over yesterday before you got back. He said the boy is emotionally stressed.”