The Swan & the Jackal

by J. A. Redmerski

  Her hands move up to the sides of my neck and her touch sends a warm shiver through my body as if I’d just downed a shot of whiskey.

  “But I’m here now,” she says, looking into my eyes with all of her dark passion and love and sincerity—all of the things about her that I’ve hungered for for so long. “I’m here now and we can be together again. We can be like we used to be.” She grasps my shirt tighter with emphasis. “We are a one of a kind pair, Fredrik. There is no one else out there like us. Apart, we’d die alone. Together, the way we were meant to be, we can be happy again.”

  Like the angel on my shoulder telling me to do the right thing no matter how sweet the wrong thing tastes, I see Cassia again. Cassia’s face in front of me speaking with Seraphina’s delicious, poisonous lips.

  And I know that nothing can ever be the way it was.

  Finally, I manage to pull away from her, shaking my head not only at the words coming out of her mouth that I want nothing more than to believe, but at myself for giving them too much thought.

  Her bright brown eyes narrow suspiciously.

  “Who is it?” she asks with acid in her voice.

  Stunned by her sudden change of attitude, I just look at her.

  “Who is what?” I finally say.

  “Was it—”she rears her head back, her eyebrows thickening in her forehead—“was it the old woman? Did you forget about me and replace me with an old woman?”

  “No,” I say with my hands out at her, trying to calm her down.

  But I’m stunned again when instead of shouts and anger and accusations, she cries.

  Seraphina falls to her knees, her face buried in her hands.

  “I’m so sorry, love,” she says in a shuddering, tortured voice. “I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have given myself to that man—I can’t even remember his name.”

  “Marcus,” I say it for her and I’m no less bitter about it today than I was six years ago.

  “It’s my own fault,” she says. “I was afraid of love. I was afraid of you.”

  I kneel on the floor beside her and pull her against me wrapping my arms around her. This isn’t the Seraphina that I remember. This isn’t the woman I fell in love with. Seraphina was strong and proud and the only time I ever saw her cry was that night she killed that woman in my interrogation chair because she thought she was someone else.

  Because she thought the woman was Cassia.

  “Seraphina?” I say softly into her wet hair. I squeeze her tighter and stroke her back. “It wasn’t Greta. I didn’t fall in love with Greta.”

  Seraphina lifts her head from the crook of my arm and peers into my eyes.

  I take her face into both of my hands and lean in kissing her softly on the forehead.

  She appears confused. Worried.

  “I fell in love with Cassia,” I say.

  Her whole body becomes rigid underneath my hands. Her eyes widen and lock in place as if she’d just seen the most traumatizing thing ever.

  Then she shoves me away and jumps to her feet so fast that all I can do is jump back to mine.

  “CASSIA?!” she roars. “You love Cassia?!”

  I reach out grabbing her by her upper arms.

  “YES!” I scream into her enraged face plagued by the worst betrayal. “You are Cassia! Don’t you see?! Please tell me that you understand!” Tears are burning the back of my throat and the backs of my eyes, but I won’t let them fall.

  I shake her again, roughly, as if I could shake Cassia back to the surface again, but I know deep down that I’ve lost her.

  I’ve lost her.

  I’ve lost both of them, every part of the only woman I’ve ever loved or ever will love.

  I’ve lost her…

  “She betrayed me, Fredrik!” Seraphina shoves her body against mine, but I hold her still. “I spent years of my life in a goddamn mental institution because of her!”

  “You are her!” My hands tighten around her arms so harshly that I know I must be hurting her. “You. Are. Cassia!” I want to make her understand. I just want her to be normal, to be…she can never be normal.

  “Don’t do this to me again,” I say through an anguished voice, though I don’t know what I’m saying—it’s my heart talking, not my rational mind.

  She breaks away from me and runs toward the bedroom door, but I grab her around the waist before she gets too far away and I wrench her back into my arms.

  “Let go of me!” she screams.

  “No. Not until you tell me who you are.” I hold her close with her back pressed into my chest, my arms tight around her warm, naked form, my lips near her ear.

  I want to cry.

  “You know who I am! Now let me go!”

  “Tell me your name.” I can’t open my eyes. I just want to savor this moment with her.

  I just want to savor it.

  My hands are shaking. My heart is alive again, but I know not for long. It’s afraid. Afraid of what’s going to happen to it when it knows she’s gone forever, when every part of her is gone forever.

  I squeeze her tighter, clutching her naked body against mine as if it’s the last time I’m ever going to see her again. The tears are burning. Fucking burning!

  “I’m Seraphina! You know me, Fredrik! I’m your wife! The only woman who has ever loved you!” Tears roll through her body and her struggling begins to subside. “Please….”

  Suddenly she melts into me, surrendering not only to me but to the pain my words have caused. The weight of her body begins to drop as she slides down.

  “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 ou
t 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.

  Victor kissed me on the mouth and brushed my hair away from my face with the side of his hand.

  “I understand,” he said. “Now go help him and keep me updated.”

  I nodded.

  And then I left.

  Entering Fredrik’s front door quietly, I peer in around the frame before I step all the way inside. The house is nearly pitch dark, only the faint blue hue of the moonlight beaming through few windows. It’s quiet. So quiet. Not even the dripping of a faucet or the humming of the refrigerator or the central heat can be heard. But I hear my heartbeat, pumping blood anxiously through my heart.

  Two of Victor’s men start to enter the house behind me.

  “Wait,” I say, putting up my hand. “Stay on the porch until I tell you to come in.”

  Stopped in the doorway, they nod and step back outside, leaving the door open partway.

  Walking carefully through the house, I stop in my tracks at the entrance to the den. Fredrik sits on the center cushion of the sofa with his long legs bent and his arms resting against his thighs, his hands dangling between them. His back is hunched over, his shoulders stiff.

  He’s staring at the floor in front of him. I glance over to see that the coffee table has been shoved off to the side, sitting crookedly against a leather chair.

  “Fredrik, I’m here,” I call out to him softly.

  I approach him with caution—my heart tells me that he needs me, but also that’s he’s not in his right mind and he could be dangerous.

  He won’t speak.

  I step a little closer. My heart is breaking for him.

  “I’m here—”

  “I need her out of the house,” Fredrik says without looking up at me or moving a muscle in his body other than his mouth. “And the body in the basement.”

  I want to ask who ‘the body in the basement’ belongs to, but it’s not the right time for that.

  I nod even though he doesn’t see me and call out to the cleaners—men designated to clean up our crime scenes—on the porch, “Come inside! And be quick about it!” Once they’re standing at the den entrance I add, “There are two bodies. One in the basement, the other I don’t know, but just find them and get them out of here.”

  They nod and walk away quickly to follow my orders.

  I turn back to Fredrik, stepping up closer, the light sound of my boots tapping against the hardwood floor.

  Finally, I step all the way up to the sofa, remove my long white coat and set it on the cushion next to me as I sit down. Fredrik still won’t look at me. He won’t speak. He won’t move. And I don’t know what to say because there really is nothing that I can say to make him better.

  We sit quietly for several long minutes while the cleaners move through other parts of the house. Thankfully, they know better than to carry the bodies back through the den and I hear them going outside from a back door, instead.

  I look over Fredrik, as still as a statue, and I feel like I’ve lost my best friend, that his mind is gone because his heart is gone, and it’s devastating to me.

  Will he ever be the same?

  Something tells me the answer is no.

  A sort of darkness has consumed him entirely, inside and out, something so
awful and merciless and unforgiving that it impregnates me with sorrow, and I feel hopeless all over again like I felt when I was imprisoned by Javier back in Mexico. I want to reach out and lay my hand upon his arm, but I’m too afraid.

  Why the fuck am I afraid?

  I do it anyway, relieved that Fredrik doesn’t move his arm or refuse me. But he’s not necessarily accepting of it, either, I know.

  I wonder if he even notices.

  “I would’ve done it for you,” I say carefully. “It didn’t have to be you, Fredrik.”

  He says nothing.

  “You did what had to be done,” I say even more carefully this time because I feel I’m walking a dangerous line with these kinds of words. “You gave that girl peace. I believe that.” I pause and then add, “If it had been me, it’s what I would’ve wanted.”

  “I know I gave her peace,” he finally says, but still doesn’t move.

  Trying to comfort him, I brush my hand across his arm once before resting it in the bend, my fingers tucked into the inner part opposite side of his elbow.

  “I’ll stay here with you,” I say gently, “if you need me to stay. I can sleep here on the sofa.”

  “No.” He shakes his head subtly and finally moves his arm so that my hand will fall away from it. “I’ll be fine. I just needed someone else to remove the bodies.”

  “I understand,” I relent, though I know that Fredrik is anything but fine.

  “Maybe you should go—”

  His head jerks around to the side and finally he looks right at me; the tortured look in his eyes puts me on edge. “I said no.”

  I nod.

  But after a few seconds, I push away the part of me that wants to give in to what he says and I say what I really feel:

  “I know you loved her. Both sides of her—I know. And I know that you feel like you’ll never be able to live with yourself for how it all ended, or that you’ll always be alone because you think there is no one else out there like her. I know.”