Page 89 of Vicious Behaviors
So it’s no surprise that, half an hour later, I find myself sliding a key into Izzie’s apartment door, one of the perks of owning the building. As I step inside, I see the mattress still lying in the middle of the living room with Izzie fast asleep beneath a duvet, curled up small. I strip off my clothes and slip in beside her, wrapping my arm around her waist, burying my face in her hair.
“You came back,” she whispers, ending my assumption of her being asleep. “Why?”
“Because I needed you,” I admit truthfully. “Needed this.”
She shifts closer, threading her fingers through mine. But then her gaze lands on my hands. The bruises… the blood… Aldo’s dried blood, still etched in the lines of my knuckles.
Her back goes rigid and her breathing shallows when she asks, “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did you hurt someone?”
“Yes.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“Yes.”
“What did they do?”
“They killed an innocent woman. His wife. In front of her baby girls.”
I feel her entire body stiffen in my arms at the horrid images I just planted in her head.
A deafening silence ensues as I wait for her to kick me out of her bed.
“Will he ever be able to hurt anyone else?” she asks instead, her voice barely audible.
“No.”
Only then do her muscles slowly begin to relax. The reaction should surprise me. She’s a federal agent, after all, sworn to uphold the law. But I guess even Izzie has seen her fair share of demons. And tonight, with her now lying in my arms, mine have finally stopped whispering.
“You’ve seen evil too, haven’t you?” I ask, wondering where her head is at after such a confession.
“When I was deployed in Afghanistan, there was this boy…” she starts, wrapping my arm tighter around her. “He was always out in the street with his older brother, bouncing a tennis ball against a wall. One day, when we were patrolling the area, he introduced himself. He said his name was Arsalan. He asked if I wanted to play with him, since his brother no longer had time forhim.” Her voice softens, almost distant now, as if she were still there. “I told him yes. That I could play for a few minutes.” She pauses, takes a breath. “Arsalan loved tennis. He didn’t have a racket, so he used his palms to slap the ball onto a wall instead. We talked a lot during those games. His dream was to move to America and marry Serena Williams after growing up.” She lets out a sad, short laugh. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was already married with kids close to his age. I can still hear his laugh. It was so full of life. Contagious. Before long, everyone in my unit would take turns playing with him when we patrolled his neighborhood. He’d wait for us. Tennis ball in hand. Like we were the best part of his day.”
“What happened to him?” I ask quietly, already sensing the sad ending of this story.
“One day… he wasn’t smiling when we arrived, and his older brother was standing next to him. I knew something was wrong. I could see it in Arsalan’s eyes. He looked at me through the truck window, begging me not to step out of it.” Izzie’s voice grows more strained with each word that falls from her lips. “But one of my guys had already jumped down from the lead vehicle, holding a tennis racket we’d managed to get shipped to the base. Not just any racket, one signed by his favorite tennis player, Serena herself. We even got a red bow to wrap around the handle. I saw the tears in Arsalan’s eyes when the guys walked over to hand it to him—tears because he knew he’d never get to play with it.”
She takes a minute to gather the courage to relive that day, provoking a silence so heavy I can feel it pressing into the space between us.
“Then all I saw was fire. A flash. The truck in front of us exploded, the force lifting ours into the air. I made it out alive that day, but not all of us were so lucky. We lost eight men and ten civilians who were just going about their everyday routine.And Arsalan… Arsalan was gone. The bomb was strapped to him.” She swallows hard, then continues, barely audible. “His brother had been recruited by the Taliban months earlier, and we missed it. Knowing his brother was so genuine and sweet, he used Arsalan to get close to us. The poor kid didn’t even know… he thought he was just making new friends. And once his brother was sure we didn’t see Arsalan as a threat, he strapped his tiny body in enough explosives to kill us all. His own brother didn’t care. Not about blood. Not about innocence. Only the cause.”
I press a kiss to her temple and hug her from behind.
“Devils love to roam free in those who believe they’re too virtuous for sin,” I tell her, though I know it offers her little comfort.
She turns around, eyes shining with tears, and looks up at me. Her usual liquid sunshine-colored gaze now filled with misery cracks something open inside me.
“How can someone kill the person they say they love?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What kind of monster does that?”
“The worst kind,” I confess, getting lost in her eyes.
Izzie’s fingers trace over my bruised knuckles and the dried blood on my skin. Any other woman would be frightened at the sight, but not her.
Not my Izzie.
