“Why?” Izabel mumbles—I am confident I made out the word correctly.

“Two reasons,” I say. “One, because it is my duty to know everything about every person in my Order, even you. But secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to know if your painful secret was something I could help you with.”

She looks away from me, angrily.

“Look at me, Izabel, please.”

She refuses.

“Please…”

She relents, and turns her eyes slowly toward me again, but they are still filled with anger and hurt.

“After that day,” I continue, “I began the search. None of my contacts in Mexico have found anything yet, but one of them has a possible lead. I knew it would take time, but…Izabel, I only wanted to find your child.”

“Why?” she asks again, this time with more accusation, disbelief.

And I find myself stuck between wanting to tell her the truth like I claimed, and not expecting to have to tell her this much so soon.

“Because I wanted to help,” I say, trying to sidestep the answer in its entirety.

“Why?” Her face is turning red, her tears have become tears of anger. “Why, Victor? Why?”

I sigh and answer with the truth: “Because…I wanted to…steer you in another direction.”

The tears seem to vanish from her eyes as if my magic; she looks across at me, coldly, unforgivingly, and with eyes that express only the deepest of betrayals, that hold the heaviest of questions.

The guilt, as I knew it would, ravages me.

I do the only thing I can do—answer those questions for her.

I push myself into a stand, thankful that the drug has finally worn off. Then I begin to pace. Back and forth over the stones in my five-by-ten prison cell. I can hear Izabel’s heavy, tremulous breaths; I can sense the resentment in the air. But I do my best to ignore it. Because I know that our time is limited.

“After Nora,” I begin, not looking at her, “after what she put us through—what she put me through—I knew, Izabel, that there was no hope for me; I knew that no matter how much I loved you, that one day my love for you would be the end of me, and my brother, and even you.” I stop, turn, look at her once to emphasize my point, and then go back to pacing. “Kessler opened my eyes to the truth; she infiltrated my Order, outsmarted me and everyone in it, and she turned my brother against me. It was my Awakening, Izabel”—I step over to the bars and look down at her; she glares up at me—“I knew I could never kill you, but I had to do something. And I thought that if I could find your child, that maybe your motherly instincts would kick in and you would want to change your life, leave my Order, give your child the life he or she deserves, and then I…” I avert my eyes from hers; this is so hard to say. “…I could go on with my life with a clean conscience. And I—”

“STOP!” she screams through the gag—it might have also been NO! But either means the same.

“STOP!”

“I am sorry, love…with all my heart, I am sorry.”

SEVEN

I can’t listen to this…STOP, VICTOR!

I tongue the cloth in my mouth until I can no longer feel my tongue; my throat fills up with saliva, choking me. I gag, and my eyes sting and water. I work tirelessly to loosen the rope from my wrists to the point that they too become strangely numb. My knees open and close, open and close, as I try to free my ankles, but like my wrists, I know they’re stuck like that. Indefinitely.

How could you do this, Victor?!

I scream against my gag, my fury intensifying because I can’t say the words I so desperately want Victor to hear. He watches me from behind the bars of his cell, helpless to do anything but let this torturous moment between us run its due course.

The door opens again, and that man, Apollo, re-enters the room. My eyes dart to find the cattle prod on the floor, but I don’t see it.

Because it’s in his hand and—

I think I blacked out.

I know I did.

Where am I?

Where am I…?

“Where was she taken?” I demand, my hands gripping the bars. “Apollo, answer me!”

He has been giving me the silent treatment for fifteen minutes while he sits on the chair reading a magazine.

“Apollo!”

He finally raises his head, very slowly, and makes eye contact with me. He is smiling faintly, more in his dark eyes than on his lips. He places the magazine on his leg propped on his knee, and then stares at me, enjoying this.

“What is it like, Victor,” he begins in a composed voice, “knowing that you’ve ruined so many families? How do you sleep at night? Do you ever think about the people you’ve killed?”—he gestures a hand in front of him—“Do you ever sit around in those expensive suits and expensive shoes and that high-dollar haircut and ask yourself: ‘I wonder what kind of life so-and-so might’ve had if I didn’t take it from them?’ Or, ‘I wonder how many people will never be born because I, singlehandedly, destroyed literally generations of future families.’” He drops his leg from his knee and leans forward, the magazine wedged in his hand. “Tell me, Victor—tell me the truth.”

It will do me no good to continue asking about Izabel.

“Do you really care about any of that, Apollo? Is that why I am here—retribution for being less than a human being, a danger to society? Or is this about you and your notorious family? A family, I should add”—I hold up my index finger—“known for being less than human and a danger to society. He who casts the first stone, Apollo.”

He drops the magazine on the floor and gets up from the chair—he is not smiling anymore.

“My family,” he defends, spitting out the word, “may be known for some heinous crimes; my mom and dad may have been the biggest bastard and bitch this side of the hemisphere”—he grits his stark white teeth and snarls at me—“but my brothers and my sisters, when you came in with your lies and your bullets, never did anything to deserve what they got. I never did anything to deserve what I got!” (A tiny droplet of spittle from his mouth hits my cheek.) “The worst I’d done by that time was rob a liquor store! And I didn’t even kill anybody!”

In a calm voice I respond, “This business is not about eliminating criminals, Apollo. I was not commissioned to kill your family because you were a menace to society. I was commissioned to kill your family because your mother and father were the biggest bastard and bitch this side of the hemisphere. They are to blame for the death of your brothers and sisters, not me—Osiris is to blame. Or have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that things would have been much different if your own flesh and blood brother did not betray you, betray your family name?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he comes back, rounding his chin.

My hands slide away from the bars.

“It seems that you have,” I point out. “You are in league with Osiris again, after all these years, after everything he did to you and your family—yet, I am the one in the cage.” I do not know if my theory is correct, if Osiris is in on this, but it is the only ammunition that I have, as unlikely as it feels.

Apollo’s hands knot into fists down at his sides; his eyes churn with animosity. I see now that maybe things between Apollo and Osiris are not as patched-up as I assumed, after all.

“Where is Osiris, anyway?” I ask, hoping to get some truth myself. I would very much like to speak with him.

Apollo turns his back on me, crosses his arms.

“He’s not here,” he says. “I have better things to do than to keep track of my brother.”

A moment of silence passes between us.

I decide to switch gears, careful not to push too far, in hopes he might open up more if I manipulate him gradually. But this is all very hard to do when all I can think about, all I care about, is Izabel.