The Swan & the Jackal Read online

  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.

  Greta has never been in my chair. I trust her. Sometimes you can tell just by being around a person a few times if they’re trustworthy. Greta is solid. A little skittish around me, though I can’t blame her, but she has had every opportunity to call the police about the woman I keep locked in the basement. She has had ample opportunity to tell Victor or even Dorian. But she’s done nothing. Maybe it’s her fear of me keeping her loyal, which is never a good combination, but only time will tell.

  I unclasp my hands and let my arms drop at my sides.

  “If you’d like to be reassigned,” I say straightening my head out of its tilt, “I can arrange that, but I would need you to keep quiet about Cassia. I will tell Victor on my own time about her. Keeping her here is not a betrayal, it’s simply a choice. One that I will face the consequences of when that time comes.”

  Greta shakes her head gently and momentarily drops her gaze to the floor. “No,” she says, looking back up at me, her hands still clasped together in front of her. “I prefer to stay. I’ve grown to care for Cassia. I would like to make sure she is well taken care of when you’re not here to care for her yourself.”

  “Thank you,” I say and I truly mean it.

  Not only did I not look forward t
o replacing Greta, but I really didn’t want to have to kill her. And I would’ve had to if she chose to take the offer. She is the only other person who knows about Cassia and I can’t let the little birdy leave the roost.

  Greta sighs and unclasps her hands, resting them atop the counter.

  She’s growing nervous again.

  “I have to tell you,” she says and I prepare myself for it, “I truly believe, deep in my heart that she doesn’t know where this Seraphina person is. I’m a pretty decent judge of character, Mr. Gustavsson, and when I look at that girl, I see a girl who is telling you the truth.”

  I bring my hands around clasping them together behind my back and then pace the floor a couple of times.

  “Perhaps,” I say in response, staring off toward the floor-to-ceiling kitchen window overlooking the backyard, “but I believe that in time she’ll have more to tell me.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Greta says with a hint of motherly desperation in her voice. “How can she tell you now or later where a person is whom she claims she doesn’t know? And not that I would ever want you to interrogate her and do the awful things you do to others, to Cassia, but if you believe she’s holding the truth from you, what is sparing her from that?”

  I look right at Greta, disciplining her with only my eyes.

  She blinks nervously and looks downward at the counter, grazing the bottoms of her fingers over the tops of the knuckles on her other hand. She knows better than to question my tactics. Her concerns may hold merit, but my reasons for not torturing Cassia are very personal.

  Silence fills the room.

  “You’re free to go tonight if you’d like,” I say. “I’ll be in town for a few more days.”

  “Thank you, sir, but what about dinner?” She glances over at the fresh vegetables sitting in the strainer inside the sink, and the pans on the stove; one has been boiling for the past few minutes.

  “Leave it,” I say. “You can clean up tomorrow.”

  She bows her head and walks over to turn the fire off the stove. Afterwards, she removes the strainer from the sink and places it in the stainless steel refrigerator.

  After taking up her yellow purse from the chair near the kitchen window and shouldering it, she walks over and places a silver key into my hand.

  “Would you like me here at the same time tomorrow, sir?” she asks.

  “Yes, that’ll be fine,” I reply, dropping my hand to my side with the key confined in my palm behind my curling fingers.

  Greta disappears around the corner and seconds later I hear the front door closing behind her.

  I turn and look toward the hallway, where just at the end of it a door is set in the wall which leads down into the basement. I picture Cassia’s face, so soft and doll-like, her big light-brown doe eyes and perfect, plump lips. And that treacherous little black heart that sits behind my ribs, as always when I think of her, begins to beat to a slow and ominous rhythm, betraying me so cruelly that I wish I could rip it from my chest and be free of it forever.

  Moments later I’m standing in front of that door and sliding the key that Greta gave me into the lock. And without another thought, I head down the dark staircase and toward her. Cassia. The woman who if I let live, will certainly be the death of me.

  Chapter Four

  Cassia

  I love this spot, the way my back almost fits into the corner of the wall. The length of my spine running along the space where one wall meets the other. Sometimes I try to press myself against it so that my spine will touch the cool sheetrock, but my arms and shoulders are always in the way.

  Something is always in the way—the shackle binding my right ankle, secured to a chain that stretches across the length of the room so that I can walk about. The ivory-painted walls unaccompanied by even the smallest of windows. The bottom of the concrete staircase on the farthest side of the room, at least six feet out of my reach. The door at the top of them that I know is always locked from the outside, so even if I could make it out of these bonds, I’d never see the other side of it. But more than anything in the way are the unanswered questions that constantly elude me.

  Answers are the keys to my freedom.

  Freedom to be able to feel the sun on my face whenever I want. To be able to sit underneath the stars and stare into their infinite silence. Or, when I hear the rain pounding against the roof, I’d love the freedom to go outside and dance in it, to splash about the puddles like I used to do when I was a little girl.

  But I happen to like where I am, confined in a sunless, starless, rainless room with only my thoughts for company on some days.

  I guess it’s the price I pay for being in love with the Devil.

  I’m not ready for freedom yet. Fredrik needs something from me that I can’t give him. But I still try. Only when I can will he give my freedom back. And only when I can, will I accept it.

  Fredrik frightens me. But he isn’t cruel. He is an enigma, that man, and I’ve never known another man like him. But then again…I can’t remember.

  I hear the door at the top of the stairs clicking open and I wrap my bare arms around my thinly-covered legs, drawn up against my chest. I’m wearing the sheer cotton white gown that Fredrik bought for me, which covers my legs and doesn’t leave me exposed. He would never leave me exposed. He is kind to me. Most of the time.

  His feet must be bare because I don’t hear the bottoms of his dress shoes tapping against the concrete as he descends the steps. But I can hear the fabric of his dress pants touching as he moves down them, and I see his shadow cast against the wall growing larger. My heart begins to thrum against my ribcage to the composition of desire and fear. Because when it comes to him, the two always come hand in hand.

  “Cassia.” His voice is deep and sensual, like water moving over rocks, all-consuming, yet delicate. “I’ve asked you not to sit on the floor.”

  He steps out of the shadow and into the light before me, his tall height towering over me, casting its own shadow in the small space that separates us. I always feel controlled by his shadow, as if it’s another entity in and of itself, another part of him which watches me when his back is turned.

  “I’m sorry,” I say looking up at him. “I just like it here.”

  He offers his hand to me and hesitantly I reach up and take it, placing my small fingers into his large ones. His hand collapses around mine as he carefully pulls me to my feet, the chain secured to my shackle clanging in the quiet. My slim gown tumbles down to just above my ankles when I stand up all the way. Fredrik looks me over with the sweep of his dark blue eyes, like he always does, searching for imperfections on my clothing or on my skin. I don’t know why he does this. It’s not as if I’m an object of fascination in which he feels some obsessive compulsive need to retain perfection of. He told me once when I asked, that he was making sure no one had tried to hurt me while he was gone. Greta would never hurt me. She’s like a mother to me. I think Fredrik should have more confidence in her.

  Fredrik walks with me toward the bed on the other side of the room, turning me around by the shoulders when we get there and guiding me to sit. Only after my bottom presses against the soft mattress, does he take a seat on the armless chair next to the bed beside me, where he always sits when he comes here.

  “I’ve missed you,” I say softly, placing my hands within my lap. “I was worried something had happened to you.”

  “Nothing will ever happen to me,” he says in an unemotional voice. “Not unless I let it.”

  I smile softly and drop my gaze momentarily.

  “Has Greta treated you well?” he asks, verifying further that he doesn’t fully trust her.

  Nodding once, I look up and meet his eyes. A shiver runs down my spine when I look into the depths of them. I’ll never understand how any man can turn a woman’s insides into warm mush with just a look.

  “She always treats me with kindness,” I say with promise. “I like her very much.”

  Fredrik nods.


  He sits up straight and crosses one leg over the other at the knee, lacing his strong fingers together within his lap. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt with little black buttons down the center and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His feet are bare, just as I suspected, his legs covered by long black dress pants that drop over his ankles. He has strong, manly feet. Large feet. Just like his hands. I don’t know why I’m always drawn to look at them, such a seemingly unimportant part of a man’s body, but I’m always compelled. It’s as if every inch of him was made to perfection and deserves to be admired. Even his flaws are perfect to me; the deep, but thin scar that runs three inches from behind his earlobe and around the back of his head, the larger scar along his abs that dips down into the left side of his rigid oblique. The tiny mole on the back of his neck, just at the top of his spine. They are all perfect. Or, perhaps I’m just besotted for the first time in my life, and I don’t know any better. All women experience nature’s trickery at least once. Whether it’s with the man next door, or the actor one dreams about but knows she’ll never have.

  Mine turned out to be my captor.

  I straighten my back somewhat so that I don’t appear to be slouching. My fingers fumble restlessly in my lap. Fredrik looks at me—he never took his eyes off me to begin with—and I know what’s coming next. The part of his visits that I dread. I sigh and break our eye contact, staring toward the wall far behind him and letting it blur out of focus.

  “Have you remembered anything?” he asks softly.

  I swallow down my nervousness and interlock my fingers together tightly so that I don’t look so afraid.

  Shaking my head gently, I answer, “No. Nothing new, anyway.”