by Cindy Bell
“I don't know what you mean,” Bekki said calmly. She was trying to hide the fact that her heartbeat had quickened.
“I'm sure you do,” he countered as he slid his hands into his pockets. “I heard you talking to Emma this morning. I know that you suspect me. So, ask me anything you like,” he suggested.
“You don't need to answer my questions,” Bekki murmured placidly in return. “If you have a confession you'd like to make the police station would be the right place to go.”
“Is that so?” Victor asked as he watched Bekki edge towards the reception desk. Her phone was all the way on the other side of the room in her purse. “It seems to me that you're the one I need to convince, since no one even knew my name until you got involved.”
“I'm sorry that you feel that way Victor, but I really have a lot of clients due to come in…”
“No you don't,” he snapped in return and glowered at her. “I don't care about your clients. I don't care about anyone who tries to come here, because the door is locked. You seem to have some questions for me, so ask them,” he repeated, his tone becoming more demanding.
“Fine,” Bekki replied abruptly, she was trying to play his game to keep him calm. Her fingertips were inching closer to the telephone. “Why?” she said calmly. “Why would you do this to someone you considered to be your brother?”
“I didn't do anything,” Victor corrected sharply. “You have it in your head that I did. But you're wrong. I'm not the one who did this, all of this is on Bryan's shoulders. But I'm not surprised that you blame me. It's how it has always been when it comes to Bryan. He never gets blamed for anything, but good, old, solid Victor has to take all the responsibility for his mistakes.”
“That must have been very difficult,” Bekki suggested as she edged closer to the phone.
“You have no idea,” Victor agreed, and in a flash his hand was over the phone that Bekki had been reaching for. “Just hear me out,” he requested pleadingly. Bekki nodded and lowered her hand. She was trying not to upset him even more than he already was. Her instincts were telling her that he was going to try to hurt her, but so far he was behaving as if he just wanted to talk.
“So, you and Bryan grew apart,” Bekki encouraged him to speak. “It had to be hard to see him living the easy life while everything was so difficult for you.”
“Bryan got everything,” Victor confessed and swept his hands back through his hair in an attempt to calm himself. “We worked equally as hard. But Bryan went for the flash and attention, while I took the more traditional route. I tried to pull him back from the flashier tricks. He was risking his life left and right, just for a little more money. I just didn't want him to get hurt,” Victor sighed and shook his head.
“I got into this field because I have a passion for it. It was never just about the money for me. Bryan took my warnings the wrong way. He accused me of trying to sabotage him, to try to get the spotlight for myself. We got into a huge fight about it. When we split up the act, I thought Emma would stay with me. We had been spending hours talking about the risks that Bryan was taking. She seemed as concerned as I was. Instead she went with him,” he sighed with defeat as he shook his head.
“Bryan got the success, he got the love of my life, and he got to be a father,” his lips tensed into a stern, thin line. “Even that wasn't enough for him. When I heard the rumors that Emma was pregnant, I was sure that Bryan would finally gain some common sense. I was certain he wouldn't treat Emma and their child as if they were nothing,” he growled deep in his throat as he narrowed his eyes. “But there he was, ready to do just one more escape. Stupid fool. All of it should have been mine. I never would have risked my life if I knew that I had a child on the way. That's how selfish he was. That's how little he valued all of the success he had both as a person and as a performer,” Victor's hands curled into fists as he looked up at Bekki.
“That must have made you so furious,” Bekki suggested, her heart racing. She knew that she wasn't going to get out of the salon without a fight. The least she could do was coax a confession out of Victor. He was lingering too close for her to pick up the phone. She only wished she had kept her cell phone in her pocket instead of leaving it in her purse.
“It did!” he roared and slammed one of his fists hard down against the top of the reception desk. “To have him act like Emma didn't matter, like his success didn't matter!”
“He didn't deserve Emma,” Bekki pushed, her voice strained slightly by the fear that was growing within her.
“All I wanted was the chance to talk to her. I wanted to offer her the opportunity to be with a man who would cherish her. I wouldn't have cared that her baby wasn't mine, I would have raised it like it was,” he closed his eyes tightly and Bekki knew he was about to reveal the truth. His lips tensed and he grew silent.
“It wasn't supposed to happen this way,” Bekki supplied for him. “It was just supposed to be a visit.”
“It was,” he gasped out, his shoulders drooping as he spoke. “But when I went to see her, Bryan saw me first. He insisted that writing me the letter was a mistake, that he understood now that I was in love with Emma, and that I was trying to break them up,” he pounded his fist hard into the palm of his other hand. “He didn't even give me a chance to explain myself. He called me a washed up has been, and told me never to come near either of them again,” his voice trailed off with hurt for a moment, before he spoke up again, with Bekki's eyes riveted to his expression.
“I never would have treated him that way. I was sure if Emma saw him for the man he truly was she never would have chosen him over me. So, I decided that Bryan was the only thing standing in the way of me having a beautiful life with Emma, and her child,” he sighed as he leaned his hands on the reception desk and stared straight forward. “He would have continued to treat her terribly, and then the baby, too. I was determined to see Emma again, so I sneaked in and tried to get to her dressing room. Before I could get to her though, she left the room to check on Bryan. I slipped inside, thinking I would confront her when she came back. I wasn't planning anything, I swear!” he sighed and rubbed his hands over his eyes.
Victor sadly continued, “I saw the dress hanging there. I knew she would have already double checked to make sure the key was correct. I heard voices in the hall, Emma and Bryan, and I knew that I only had moments to make a decision. I didn't really think about it, I just reached out and snatched the key. Then I hooked another key from a different part of the dress in its place.”
Bekki tried to keep her expression from changing, she didn't want him to remember that he would have to harm her after all that he had shared with her.
“So, you switched the keys,” Bekki prompted gently. “You did what you thought you had to do.”
“I did,” he replied in a shaky voice. “But that wasn't going to be enough,” he whispered. “I had to take care of the emergency door on the tank also. I had built the latch myself!” he chuckled and shook his head at the irony of it. “I slipped onto the stage a few minutes before the show. I knew Emma would have already looked it over. I bent the latch so that the door wouldn't release, and then I hid out. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be sure that Bryan paid the price,” he lowered his voice, as his body began to tremble.
“You wanted to see him die,” Bekki gasped out and braced herself against the reception desk.
“I didn't kill him,” Victor insisted again as he looked up at her. Bekki was confused as she wondered how he could still be claiming that. Was he mentally unbalanced? Victor continued passionately. “I trained Bryan to never rely on safety checks. I trained him that moments before he stepped onto the stage, moments before he put his life on the line, he needed to do a last minute check. I called it the triple check. He should have checked the key on Emma's dress, he should have checked the emergency latch on the tank,” he shook his head slowly. “If he had taken the time to show some concern for his safety he wouldn't have died. Don't you see?” he looked up at Bekki
as if expecting her to understand and absolve him of his actions. “It was Bryan who killed himself, not me. And here I am, to be of comfort to Emma to remind her that there is another man who adores her, that would never take such a risk.”
Bekki felt sick to her stomach as his words settled in. Bryan had been set up to die by someone he considered to be his brother at one time in his life, and yet he was still being blamed for his own death.
“She's very lucky,” Bekki managed to push out from between her lips though speaking the words made her even more ill.
“She is,” Victor agreed, his voice softening. “I took away the barrier between us,” he added as he walked to the edge of the reception disk. “Unfortunately, now there's another barrier.”
“No, there isn't,” Bekki said quickly. “I understand what you did, Victor. You did it out of love. I wouldn't want Emma to be alone.”
“Hmm,” Victor nodded a little as he settled his gaze on her. “If only I could believe that was true.”
“It is true,” Bekki insisted, but she was certain that she wasn't going to convince him. She had to get away. She had hoped she could keep him talking until Sammy got back from the bank, but she could see now that wasn't going to happen.
“It's not,” he corrected, his eyes narrowing sharply. “You can't understand because you've never seen someone you love so completely be treated with such disdain. You and your little cop boyfriend, you've got the fairytale. Was it so wrong for me to want it, too?”
“No,” Bekki swallowed thickly. “It wasn't wrong,” she assured him. “And I can talk to Nick about it, I can explain what you just explained to me…”
“No!” Victor barked loudly. “You're a liar,” he growled. “You got yourself involved in business that wasn't yours, and you came between me and Emma. You upset her with those comments you made to her, and then she began to question my loyalty, my love for her. You are more of a barrier than Bryan ever was, and I'm not going to let anything stand between us.”
Bekki lunged for the phone, but Victor was fast. As a trained magician and escape artist he knew how to move his hand and barely be detected while he did it. He snatched the phone off of the desk and yanked it hard enough to disconnect it. Then he hurled it across the room. His eyes were shining with aggression as he glared at her.
“You think you can escape me?” Victor laughed and shook his head as he stepped closer to Bekki. “I am the greatest escape artist. Everything that Bryan did, I could do better, I just didn't risk it! Now I've got nothing to lose, Bekki, you're not going to get away from me,” he warned. Bekki had the suspicion that he was right about that, considering that she was pinned back against the wall with no way to get around him. But what Victor didn't know was that she had studied martial arts to protect herself when she was living in New York City. She could handle her own when she had to, she was confident of that. But Victor was a rather intimidating man, and she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to get past him with him moving that fast.
“Just let me go,” she urged him with a slight smile on her lips trying to win his sympathy. “People will understand what you did to Bryan. You were just looking out for Emma after all,” she pointed out as calmly as she could. “But if you harm me no one is going to understand that,” she promised him, her breath catching in her throat. “You'll go away for a long time for that. And you'll be doing to Nick what Bryan did to you.”
“Oh, you think I'm stupid?” Victor demanded as he glared at her. “You think I don't realize what will happen to me if I do not get rid of your meddling self?” he frowned and shook his head. “Just like Bryan did, you underestimate me, Bekki. I'm not here to worry about how much time I'll get. I'm not going to get any time. Because by the time they find you, if they do that is, I'll be long gone with Emma on my arm,” he paused a moment before adding in a sympathetic tone. “As for Nick, if he truly cared about you he wouldn't let you get yourself into a dangerous situation like this. He would be as protective as I am,” he added in a whisper. “But not all men know what real love is.”
Bekki's lip twitched upward into a sneer, as she longed to come to Nick's defense, but she knew that would only further ignite his rage. She slipped her fingertips beneath the lip of the reception desk. On the shelf just under the desk was an assortment of hairsprays, perfumes, and lotions that she would hand out as a gift to those who purchased the full beauty treatment. She just had to hope she grabbed the right one. She took hold of what she thought would be a bottle of hairspray, and pulled it slowly out of the hidden basket.
“Nick loves me,” she said calmly. “But he knows I can protect myself.” With that she jerked the bottle up into the air and tossed off the cap with her other hand. Unfortunately, she had chosen the wrong bottle. It wasn't hairspray, it was lotion. She didn't hesitate to squeeze the bottle and send a stream of purple lavender scented lotion straight towards his eyes.
Victor had been baffled by what she was going to do with a bottle of lotion, so he didn't anticipate the splash of lotion in his face. When he saw it flying towards him, his eyes widened with surprise, and a good dose of the lotion made it past his eyelashes. It stung, and caused him to take a slight step back. Bekki jumped over the top of the reception desk and headed for the door. But Victor was much faster than she expected and he slammed his body into her back before she could reach it. He pushed her hard against the wall between the reception and the salon area. Bekki managed to twist around so that she was facing him, but Victor had her pinned solidly against the wall with no way to escape. His eyelashes were dripping with lotion, but he could still see, and his mouth was curled into an infuriated grimace.
“You shouldn't have done that,” he growled. “This could have been easier for both of us.”
“Don't hurt me,” Bekki warned as he began to raise his hand into the air. She could see a silver flash in the palm of his hand. It took her a moment to realize that he had hidden a blade in his sleeve, and he had just allowed it to slide free of its hiding place. Her heart began to race as when she had first attacked him, she had no idea that he was armed. She tried to remain as calm as possible to remember her martial arts training, but all she could see was that silvery flash heading in her direction. She lunged to the side just in time to escape the full force of the knife, which then wedged into the wall. Bekki shoved hard against his other arm, which was serving as a barrier for her to get away from the wall. He was knocked off balance slightly, but not enough for her to escape. In fact he shoved back harder than he had before, pinning her to the wall with his forearm pressing against her throat. He stared hard into her eyes as he tugged at the knife that he had wedged into the wall.
“Do you really think you're going to get out of this, Bekki?” he asked with a growl. “Are you that delusional? I am the Great Victor!” he pulled the knife free and swung it high into the air once more. Bekki shoved her knee hard towards his stomach, and luckily it connected. But it did not have nearly the amount of momentum as she hoped for, since she was pinned and couldn't lunge. As he gasped for air, despite the unexpected pain in his stomach, she found herself briefly free of his forearm against her throat.
Bekki suddenly remembered the hairpin she had wound into her hair. She remembered that when she looked at it, she had thought that it could easily double as a weapon. If she could get it free she might be able to use it as just that. She shoved hard against Victor's body again as he was recovering from the blow to his stomach. Once more he was knocked back, but only slightly. It was enough for Bekki to be able to reach up and pull out her hairpin. She just hoped that its fashionable point would be sharp enough to do some damage and allow her to escape. She swung it towards his neck and braced herself as she expected the pin to break. Instead it found a very meaty area and sliced right through, causing Victor to release a high pitched wail. He stumbled backwards, glaring at Bekki as he tried to speak.
“You shouldn't have done that,” he warned her. “I was going to make it easy on you, but now?” h
e drew the pin out of his neck slowly. It looked painful but he didn't seem to mind. He must have trained for years to deaden his reaction to pain. Bekki was close enough to one of the wall hair dryers that she reached for it. It had a long spiral cord that bungeed it to the wall, to keep from losing it. As Victor lunged back at her she tugged the hair dryer free of the mount and hurled it at him. It barely glanced over his shoulder, inspiring a deep chuckle from within him.
“Is that all you've got?” he asked with a wry grin. Bekki behaved as if she had lost her last hope. She let tears form in her eyes, she even began to tremble and shake. But the truth was she had wanted the hair dryer to miss him. Because it was the cord she wanted to use.
When Victor neared Bekki, she reached out abruptly, grabbed the cord that was hovering in midair, and wrapped it quickly around his neck. Then she jumped around him and grabbed the cord of the hair dryer from the other side of his body, causing it to pull tight. She held it tight.
Just as Bekki was about to release the cord and hope that she had held it there long enough to knock him unconscious so that she could get away, Victor proved yet again, that he was very skilled at escaping dire situations. He reached up and yanked the other side of the cord so hard that the entire wall mount tore off the wall, taking some plaster along with it. In the same moment he began to swing the wall mount, which was a metal part, towards Bekki's head. Bekki tried to duck, but he moved so swiftly that she didn't have time. She closed her eyes tightly as she prepared for the pain she expected to feel. Instead of pain however, she just felt a light breeze. She opened her eyes, thinking that the wall mount had whizzed right past her, but what she found was Nick standing between her and Victor. Nick had caught the cord as it swung towards Bekki.
Bekki hadn't even seen Nick enter the salon, and yet when she opened her eyes there he was. He turned quickly and hit Victor over the head with the butt of his gun. He stared as the man crumpled to the ground, finally knocked out. Nick dropped down swiftly and handcuffed him even though he was already unconscious. He had heard enough about Victor’s tricks and escapes that he wasn't taking any chances. He even used a second pair of handcuffs to make sure that Victor wouldn't be able to wriggle free somehow. Then he stood up and turned to look at Bekki. His eyes met hers and she felt a wave of relief at the fact that he was standing there, right before her. She couldn't imagine a more delicious feeling. It made her feel as if everything was right with the world.