I look up at him standing over me. I never heard him walking up, or noticed his tall form approaching the couch, I was so absorbed.

“Niklas will be here in about twenty minutes,” he says. “You’ll need to stay out of sight. You’ll go in my room and keep the door closed. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

I hate how cold he feels again, just like he felt when I first met him. All traces of empathy and openness that I felt grow within Victor over the time we’ve been together are gone.

“What are you going to do?”

“What I have to do.”

He walks past me wearing a long-sleeved black pullover shirt and black pants. It’s refreshing to see him dressed in something so casual after only ever seeing him in suits. He is attractive in whatever he chooses to wear, I admit to myself.

I follow him to whatever part of the house he’s going.

“Victor?” I call out behind him, but he just keeps walking. “I-I could help you.” I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Have you ever…trained anyone? You know, to be like you?”

Victor stops mid-stride underneath the entrance of some spacious, marble-floored room out ahead.

I see his shoulders rise and fall. Then he turns to me.

“No,” he says, “and I never will.”

He leaves it at that and walks into the room where I continue to follow and once I’m inside, the beauty of it takes my breath away. There are four life-sized statues of Greek women wearing flowing gowns, standing tall in all for corners of this round, dome-shaped room. To my right another wall-sized window overlooks the turbulent ocean and in front of it, sitting proudly on display is the most beautiful piano I’ve ever seen.

I try to tear my eyes away from it.

“But why not?” I ask, coming up behind him. “What else am I going to do with my life? I can’t go back out there. I have no education, didn’t even get to graduate. I have no friends, no family, no work history. Victor, I don’t even have a real driver’s license or a birth certificate and social security card. I have no identity, at least not a legal one.”

He leaves the room with the piano, walking through an exit on the other side and I stay close behind him.

Now we’re in a smaller side room with a ceiling-to-floor bookshelf situated on the back wall, filled to the brim with books—mostly leather-bound—and an antique-looking black lacquer desk on one wall. A leather recliner sits in the center of the room with a small table and lamp beside it.

“You can get those things back,” he says walking toward the table beside the recliner. “It will take some time, but you can get them. As far as an education, you can get a GED, go to a community college.” He glances at me and adds, “It will be hard, but it’s your only option.”

He takes a writing book of sorts from the table and begins flipping through the edge-tattered pages.

“But that’s not what I want,” I say. “I want to…do what you do. I know it sounds ludicrous but—”

“It is ludicrous,” he says, snapping the book shut in his hand. “The answer is no. It will always be no, so do not waste your time or mine going on about it anymore.”

He walks past me again.

And I follow him out again, through the room with the piano and back into the living room area.

He starts to leave me standing here again, but I stop him.

“I want to stay with you.”

With his back to me, he just stands there, quiet and immobile as though my admission stole his movements and voice away. I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but I felt it was the only thing I had left with which to throw at him.

For a long moment, I think he’s going to respond, even if only just to tell me no again and lecture me about how I don’t know what I’m talking about or what I’m asking. But he says nothing. And then finally rounds the corner heading back to his room.

Feeling defeated, I sit down on a barstool in the kitchen and watch the video surveillance television fixed inside the wall to my left; one screen split four ways to show four different areas of the property simultaneously. And each individual square also changes to another camera every few seconds to show yet more areas of the property.

Minutes later, a sleek black car, much like the one Victor had that I hid in when leaving the compound, pulls up to the front gate.

Victor, probably watching the same screen in another room, comes into the kitchen.

“He’s here,” he announces and gestures for me with one hand. “Remember what I said: stay quiet and don’t come out of my room until I tell you.”

I nod nervously.

My stomach is swimming again, my heart already beating twice as hard as seconds ago.

I get down from the barstool and walk quickly into Victor’s immaculate room where there’s, unsurprisingly, another wall-sized window. A massive king-sized bed is pressed against another wall, dressed by black and gray bedding pulled tight over the mattress so that no wrinkles or imperfections can be found. It seems that’s the case in every room I’ve seen thus far: devoid of imperfections and signs of even the slightest disarray.

Victor shuts the door behind me and I try to mentally prepare for what is about to happen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Victor

When Niklas and I were just boys, before we were taken by the Order, he was my best friend. We fought a lot, hand-to-hand, always trying to size the other up, and although we both often came out with bloody noses and once a broken wrist, nothing could make us turn on the other. We would walk off the battlefield, carrying on about what we thought our mother’s would have waiting for us for dinner when we got home. And we’d wake up and attend school the next day with matching black eyes.

The ones I gave him were bigger, of course, but then Niklas would say the same about those he gave me.

After we were taken by the Order, things between us began to change. Vonnegut, although rarely ever making a face-to-face appearance—and that hasn’t changed even today—said that I showed promise. But he said nothing about Niklas. And the first time I saw Niklas’ face when Vonnegut promoted me—younger than any assassin he had ever promoted—to Full Operative when I was just seventeen-years-old, I saw something in Niklas that hardened me against him: a jealous heart.

I knew at that moment that one day I might be forced to kill him.

Niklas is the only family that I have left. And as much as I wish it didn’t have to be this way, that I could be wrong about him and go back to the way things were, I know that’s not entirely possible. The truth is, I have been watching my back where my brother is concerned since last year.

And our father is to blame for that.

I suppose I should’ve listened to him….

I meet Niklas at the front door. He walks in, calm and collective as always except when he’s angry with me for having my own mind and choosing to do things the way I see fit.

I shut the door behind him.

“This is a much nicer place than the last one,” he says, looking up at the scaling ceilings with his hands folded together behind his back.

I find myself privately studying his features, looking for traces of me and our father in him. We have the same eyes, though his are bluer than mine; mine tend to appear more green at times than blue. His face is rounder, mine slimmer. But I think what separates us the most are our accents. Our father and his mother were both German. I was born in France, my mother a French spy for the Order. My father moved us to Germany when I was two-years-old and I did not meet Niklas until I was six. I helped him learn to speak English and French, but he did not have the knack for linguistics that I had and so he never was able to fully lose the accent. But despite the differences we have, I still see only a younger version of me when I look at him. Especially right now as I try to grasp the fact that I’m going to kill him. I don’t want to. I want to walk away from this and forget that it ever happened, but that’s not an option.