Taming Seraphine

SERAPHINE

The woman rattles off an address that I don’t catch, but Miko enters it into his phone and tells me it’s a short way across town. I walk on numb legs, my pulse pounding in my ears. All this time, I imagined Gabriel being held in a darkened room just like me, but that couldn’t have happened if this woman knew where he moved.

I slide into the front seat of the car and stare at the gun.

What if he escaped, found somewhere to live, and started a new life? My throat tightens at the suggestion that he didn’t think that I also needed saving.

“Sera?” Miko asks, breaking through my foggy thoughts. By the exasperation in his voice, it sounds like this isn’t the first time he’s tried to catch my attention.

“What?”

“Put the gun back in the glove box.”

He fires up the engine, and the voice on his phone gives his first direction.

While Miko pulls out, I place the pistol on top of the other one and slide the knife beneath the computer tablet.

“Can I play the zombie game?” I ask.

“Sure,” he replies, his eyes on the road. “Passcode is 1677.”

With the knife nestled between my thighs and the computer tablet, I enter the numbers and open the photo app. Most of the thumbnails look like porn. I scroll further down to the ones with fully clothed people in them and find one of Leroi sitting on a deck chair with a cooler full of beer.

My lips quirk at the memory of him sitting like that in the dark while I dug a grave, but I don’t linger on that memory. Too many weird things are happening at once. Leroi’s father figure, who just happens to be named Anton, coming to the apartment, and finding out Gabriel has a forwarding address, has left me reeling.

The next few images are of a fishing trip with Miko and Leroi at various stages throughout the day.

“What are you doing?” Miko asks at a stoplight.

“I forgot which one was the zombie app, so I’m browsing your fishing photos,” I say.

“Sure you’re looking at the fishing?” he says, his voice hopeful.

He’s probably accusing me of salivating over his dick pics. I’m too preoccupied with recent revelations to comment on something so trivial, so I hold up the tablet with a picture of Miko grinning with a fishing rod.

He smiles. “Leroi always takes us out of town to unwind after a big job.”

“Where do you go?”

“Anton has a house a few miles out of town by the lake. It’s surrounded by woodland, so it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere. He says it’s perfect for clearing your mind.”

“Is Leroi planning another trip there?” I ask, already trying to calculate a way to hunt down Anton. “I can’t imagine killing the entire Capello family and demolishing one half of their mansion being a small job.”

“But it’s not finished,” he replies with a shrug.

I wait for Miko to say more, but the light changes to green, and he steps on the gas. He wouldn’t tell me if there was another reason Leroi wasn’t taking his vacation. He wouldn’t reveal that Leroi doesn’t want me to meet Anton. Miko’s too clever. Besides, if I pressed, he would say Leroi still needs to kill Samson.

My gaze drops down to the fishing photos. Some of them are videos and look like they’re being shot by a third person and not with the camera held on a tripod. I continue scrolling, desperate to see the face of their companion.

I stop at one photo of a large man with long gray hair streaked with black, but it’s shot from behind. It could be Anton the handler, but I can’t be sure. He stopped visiting the basement after I completed the Montesano mission.

Shallow breaths escape my lungs as I click on the next video. The man holding the camera points it at Leroi and asks him what he’s caught so far. I don’t hear Leroi’s response because I recognize that gravelly voice. It’s him. The handler who put the collar around my neck and forced me into a life of degradation and death.

The next photo is of Anton standing in the middle of the lake, wearing waders and holding up a large fish. I zoom in on the picture with my fingers and examine his face. He’s grayer, a little rounder, and smiling, but I could never forget those eyes.

There’s no mistaking it.

Leroi is working with Anton.

Anton is the man who completed Leroi’s first disastrous kill, cleaned up the crime scene, and saved him from death row. He’s the man who trained Leroi to become a professional assassin, the man Leroi considers a father.

I’ve been such a fool.

All this time, I thought Leroi finding me was a lucky coincidence. All this time, I thought he was the enemy of my enemy. I thought he had taken me in out of the need to pay forward a favor he’d received as a teenager.

But I was wrong.

It all makes sense. Only three people could access that basement: Dad, Gregor, and Samson. If Anton never entered alone and always had to be accompanied by one of the twins, how did Leroi get in? Maybe it took Anton all this time to work out how to break through Dad’s security.

My gaze darts to Miko.

He’s one of them, too.

Bile rises to the back of my throat, and I swallow back the bitter tang of betrayal. Betrayal would mean Leroi was an ally who stabbed me in the back.

It can’t be betrayal when he had a plan from the start. Either he and Anton were working together to acquire me for their firm, or Leroi was training me for Anton as some kind of twisted Father’s Day gift.

That’s right. I remember how Anton used to leer at me and make me change into those horrible little outfits as part of my training. If he had been alone, he would have done more than just look.

What if sex with Leroi was part of my training?

A shudder runs down my spine.

Step one would be to train me to have sex with men without wanting to kill them. Step two would be to get me addicted to sex. Step three would be sex with Anton.

I reach beneath the computer tablet, my fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife. Every fiber of my being screams at me to plunge it into Miko’s neck and then hunt Leroi down to make him pay for his lies. I squeeze my eyes shut, take a deep breath, and force myself to stay calm.

Lashing out won’t solve anything. If I stab Miko, they’ll know I’m on to them and their plan. They’ll be prepared for me, and I’ll lose the element of surprise.

I need to be like Leroi and play this smart.

I’ll use everything the bastard taught me to survive this trio, use them to eliminate Samson, and escape them with Gabriel.

“Here we are,” Miko says.

My head snaps up as he turns into a street of two-story pastel-colored houses set within well-manicured lawns. In the distance, a dark-haired man hugs a blonde woman from behind.

As we drive closer, the man’s face comes into focus. It’s Leroi.

My heart rate spikes, but then it crashes when I look at the woman he’s holding.

Her blonde hair is the exact shade that mine used to be before the coffee dye, and it’s styled in a familiar layered bob. I can’t make out her features, since she’s bowing her head, but something about her looks achingly familiar.

My breath hitches. No. It can’t be. When she raises her head, and I catch sight of the blue eyes that have haunted my dreams, only they’re streaming with tears and the rest of her face is twisted with anguish.

All the blood drains from my face and into my thrashing heart.

This can’t be possible, but it’s there before my eyes.

It’s Mom.

Mom is alive.