“What are you doing here?” I ask, pretending not to know and failing to conceal the nervousness in my voice.
I glance quickly toward the sofa where I’ve hidden a 9mm under a cushion and then near the hallway where a cherry-wood console table hides a .380 in its small drawer. They are among several guns that are placed throughout the house. Every one of them loaded. In this life there’s no such thing as a safety lock.
“Victor didn’t tell you?” he asks, breaking apart the buttons at the wrists of his dress shirt and rolling up his sleeves to his elbows. “I’m to stay with you until he gets back. You keep it incredibly warm in here.” He slides his index finger behind his collar pulling the fabric away from his throat with a look of discomfort.
“Sorry,” I say. “I get cold easily.”
Fredrik smiles and walks past me and into the living room. I follow him, keeping my eyes on his every move. I feel like I’m not supposed to trust him, but the truth is that I do trust him. I’m baffled by my own insecurities.
“You could at least open a few windows,” he suggests.
Fredrik walks around the tawny leather sofa and flips the latches on the tall window behind it. A light breeze filters inside, blowing the long, see-through tan curtain covering it. He does the same to the window next to it.
He’s dressed in a pair of casual dark-brown slacks and a white button-up shirt where I can see the outline of his chest and arm muscles through the thin fabric. A pair of brown leather loafers dress his bare feet. A gun grip peeks from the back of his pants, held firmly in place by his belt.
Maybe that’s what this test is about, if in fact it is a test; more and more I’m unsure of everything, it seems. But it seems out of character for Victor to go out of his way to see if I’ll sleep with another man. Though if that’s the case, what man better than Fredrik, a gorgeous and darkly intriguing specimen of the male form, to tempt me with? But I’m not a sick and demented girl. I find Fredrik’s casual ability to torture and murder not-so-innocent people, rather disgusting and barbaric…OK, so maybe what he did to Andre Costa didn’t disgust me as much as it should have. Maybe I should still be traumatized by what I saw considering it’s only been a few days. Maybe I should be so uneasy around him right this very minute that I feel like I have rocks in my stomach and my hands should be shaking. But I’m perfectly at ease and…OK, perhaps I am a sick and demented girl. Victor must see it. Why else would be choose to tempt me with Fredrik of all people?
“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.