“Why would you love her,” she says through uncontrollable tears, “of all the people in this world, why Cassia?”
I hold her tight and we’re both sitting against the floor, her still wrapped in my arms, but now wanting to be here. I stroke her hair and kiss her temple and still the fucking tears are burning.
“Because she is you,” I say softly into the side of her face. “And because you are her. I can help you if you’ll let me, but you have to let her go. You have to let Cassia go.”
Please let her go…
“I killed that woman in the basement,” she says about Greta and even though I had a feeling she did, it’s still difficult to hear her admit it. “I killed her because she wouldn’t set me free.” She sniffles back her tears. “I strangled her with the chain around my ankle. And then I took the key from her pocket to unlock myself.”
“You didn’t have to kill her,” I say calmly, but I am anything but calm inside.
I continue to stroke her hair.
“Yes I did.”
“Why? Why did you have to kill her?”
She turns around, her fingers clutching the sleeves of my shirt.
“Because she kept calling me Cassia.” Her voice is calm and distant as though she’s remembering it. “And because she wouldn’t set me free.”
She looks up into my eyes and it takes everything in me not to break down in front of her.
“I love you, Fredrik. I always have. You’re the only person in this world that I’ve ever loved.”
I choke back my tears and crush her against me. She cries into the side of my neck. I picture the two years that we were together, two short years that felt like forever. How she helped me and molded me and made me a better man and loved me. I picture how she loved me.
“Tell me your name,” I say once more, hoping that this will be it, that she’ll understand. “Just tell me your name and everything will be OK.”
The silence between us seems like an eternity as I wait for her answer. My heart has stopped beating. My breath is caught in my lungs.
Please let her go…
“My name is Seraphina,” she says and my heart fades to black and my breath releases in a long, drawn-out breath of anguish and sorrow.
Reaching for the knife just inches away underneath my bed, and with a heavy black heart, I move it between us and bury the blade in her chest. The burning tears finally burst through to the surface, and I let out a cry I never knew I could make. The warmth of her blood flowing onto my hand and onto my chest, I can feel it but I’m afraid to look at it. For the first time in my adult life as an interrogator and torturer, I don’t want to see the blood because it hurts too much.
Her head falls back, bobbing unsteadily on her neck as she looks at me. A tiny trickle of blood seeps from one corner of her mouth. I lean in and kiss it away as sobs roll through my chest.
I haven’t cried like this since I was a boy.
“I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry it had to be this way,” I say through troubled breaths and a burning throat. “You’re the only death I’ll truly regret until the day I join you.”
She reaches up her hand weakly and touches the side of my face. I do the same, letting my hand leave the knife and touching her cheek instead. Blood smears across her face from my fingertips.
She chokes and coughs up more blood.
“Don’t regret,” she says, but I don’t know which one she is. “You saved me.”
“Cassia?” I can’t see through the tears in my eyes.
She smiles faintly and strokes my bottom lip with her fingers and I know that it’s her. Cassia.
I kiss her bloody lips and embrace her tighter, feeling the handle of the knife pressing against me. Her eyes are getting heavier, her body weaker, her arms limper. I push her wet hair over her forehead where more blood stains her face, but I can’t stop touching her, caressing her, being here with her in her last moment. Our last moment.
“I always loved you,” I whisper onto her lips. “Everything about you, Cassia. And I always will.”
Her hand falls away from my face and her head falls back limply on her neck. And when I see her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling I choke on my burning tears and crush her body against me, wailing until my chest hurts.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Izabel
Fredrik’s front door is unlocked when I arrive with the cleaners. I got a call from Fredrik two hours ago.
He wasn’t himself:
“Fredrik, what’s going on?” I asked, surprised to hear from him again so soon.
Silence ensued.
“Fredrik?”
“I need you to come here,” he said in such a quiet, distant voice that I wondered if he was calling me in his sleep.
“Is everything OK?” I said into the phone.
“What’s going on?” Victor asked, rolling over in our bed and draping his arm over my waist.
I pulled my lips away from the phone and turned to Victor. “I don’t know—something’s wrong,” I said quietly and I couldn’t hide the worry and grief in my voice even if I’d tried. “I need to go see him.”
I turned back to the call while Victor was switching on the bedside light.
“Fredrik,” I said with urgency, “I need you to tell me what’s going on. I’ll come there right away, but I just need to know what to prepare for. If anything.”
I felt the bed move as Victor stood up and walked butt naked across the room to our bathroom.
Still not hearing Fredrik’s voice on the other end, I sat all the way up in bed and draped my bare legs over the side of the mattress.
“I killed her,” Fredrik said and my heart stopped—out of shock, but mostly it stopped for Fredrik.
I gasped and shot up from the bed.
Victor was looking right at me as he came back out of the bathroom.
“Tell him you’ll be there soon,” he said with a nod.
I thanked Victor with my eyes and said into the phone, “Fredrik, I’ll be there soon. Just stay where you are. Don’t leave, OK? Promise me you won’t leave.”
Nothing.
“Fredrik?”
My eyes never left Victor’s then and I knew they must’ve been full of worry and fear. Fear only for Fredrik.
The phone went dead.
For a long time I just held it against my ear, thinking maybe he was just being really quiet. Finally, Victor took it from my hand and it pulled me out of my worried and paranoid thoughts—would Fredrik hurt himself? Was he capable of doing something stupid? The thoughts put my nerves on edge.
“Get dressed and go see him,” Victor said softly. “I’ll make a call and have a car meet you there.”
I nodded short and rapidly and then scrambled to get my clothes on. And before I left, Victor came up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “And when you get back, I think it’s time you tell me about Seraphina Bragado being in his basement.”
He knew all along.
I stood there frozen before him, worried about what he was thinking of me, of Fredrik—of me and Fredrik. I was scared. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Maybe because I knew that I could never, no matter how hard I tried, ever hide anything from him.