Devil’s in the Details (82 page)

Dani leaned back to look in my eyes, "Her love for you was never ever a lie. Remember that, Alex." She smiled painfully, stepping away to smooth out the front of her uniform to regain her own composure, "I will continue to find out answers, for you, Alex. I will always keep you safe as long as you live and I promise you, none of these people who did this will live to see the light of another day." She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand as more tears fell, "I have to go."

With that, the redhead spun around and rushed out of the house. Leaving me standing in the kitchen even more heartbroken and confused. I glanced at the flag before catching Victoria's handwriting on the front of the envelope.

I let out a shuddering sigh and reached for the envelope. I pried it open and shook out the contents to fall on the countertop. I recognized them immediately as last will and testament paperwork. I frowned, "Victoria, why?" I sniffled, hating the fact that Victoria seemed to know that this day would come at some point. Her double life demanded it of her to have this sort of preparation, even if it felt like an over orchestrated lie that just hurt me more.

I went to pick up the small folded piece of paper when I heard Holly bark her way into the house, my mom quickly following behind. "I just saw a redhead back out of the driveway, was that Dani?"

I nodded, "Yes. She dropped a few things off." I tucked my arms across my chest, my eyes falling to the flag in the box, "Victoria was buried at sea this morning. Another moment passed where I couldn't tell her the things I needed to." I picked up the wooden box and shuffled to the den where the rest of her Navy things remained untouched. I stood next to the desk looking over her box of medals, her certificates and everything that was that part of her life. I ran my hand over the glass, "Why did this have to happen?" I grimaced at the sinking feeling that I was buying another lie like it was candy.

"Alex? Did you look at this?" My mom rushed into the den holding up the papers from the envelope.

I shook my head, "No, I don't think I want to."

My mom held out the papers, "You should, the girl left you everything she had. This house, her car, her savings and everything imaginable." She then handed over the folded piece of paper when she saw my continued lack of interest, "At least read this."

I frowned taking the note as she rushed back out to the kitchen to read over the paperwork.

My heart skipped when I saw my name in her handwriting, bringing tears I didn't think I had back up.

"Alex,

I will always love you. I'm sorry for everything I did, but I would never go back and change a thing because it led me to you.

The one piece of my heart that made me human.

I love you forever.

Victoria."

I closed my eyes, clutching the paper and slid into the leather chair before resting my head on the desk top.

If I could go back in time and change things, I would. I would go back and tell Victoria it didn't matter what she did for me, that I would love her just as much as I always have.

Maybe if I could, I would have her here with me and not just a flag in a box and a few scribbles on a piece of paper. I would have my heart and soul back.

~Four years later ~

"Yes Stacy, I will stop by later tonight after I drop off the rest of the things I'm donating." I grinned as I held the phone sitting on the floor and sorting out books. "Yeah, I'm finally doing that spring cleaning my mom and you have been hounding me about for the last couple of years." I stood up from the box I had filled with old textbooks.

I rolled my eyes, "Maybe I'll tell you what happened with Diana." I bit my bottom lip, "I think I scared her off, I need to tell her I'm still working on things."

I closed my eyes, listening to Stacy rambling about the latest gossip at the hospital I no longer worked at. How the whole nursing staff had changed and that I should do her a solid and get her a job with me. After another five minutes of her gnawing my ear off, she hung up to take a code call, giving me reprieve from my friend's endless gossiping.

Tucking the phone in the back pocket of my jeans, I looked around the den, smiling at the progress I had made. Holly jogged into the room with a ball in her mouth, plopping it down at my bare feet. I smiled at the dog who was now a far cry from the tiny little girl I first bought four years ago, she was now the same size as Annie and my forever sidekick. "Not now, I still have a few things to do." I picked up the ball and walked towards the patio door, "Go outside and play for a bit and then we can go for a car ride."

Holly barked excitedly, hopping on her back legs as I tossed the ball out the back door, laughing when she took off like lightning to chase after it.

When I closed the door, I caught my reflection in the glass pane. I smiled at myself, brushing my hair that now fell to the middle of my neck, back. I looked better than I had over the years, I was starting to fall into a semblance of happy, or complacent with how my life was now.

I had made a tremendous amount of changes in the last six months as I tried to find a life again. I left the hospital and moved to the Naval hospital at Bethesda to work on my Master's degree in occupational therapy, and move away from the blood and guts of being a trauma nurse. I had lost my desire for it after losing Victoria and couldn't handle seeing patients come in with stab wounds or any type of wound that would throw me back to that night when I lost her.

I went to Ward a few weeks after Victoria's death and asked for him to help me get into Bethesda, he stared at me for a minute before agreeing and when I left his house, he was the hundredth person to tell me how much Victoria loved me. That they all could see it in her eyes by the way they lit up and had no hint of the sadness she carried for so long. His words left me crying in my car for twenty minutes before I finally managed to gain enough composure to drive home.

It had been a hard road to take after Victoria died, I changed and was still trying to find pieces of myself to put back together and live a normal life. She had made sure I was taken care of, leaving me more money than I would ever see in my life. I had the house, the BMW and a few investments that James had investigated and found like her savings, were free and clear of any traces of wrong doing. Victoria had earned her money, and earned it properly. Although I rarely touched most of it, only using some of it for repairs on the house or pay of some bills. It only left me missing her more and more when I saw her name on the joint account heading.

Then there was the fact that I became vigilant in proving Victoria’s death was a hoax. I had spent that first year, hounding James with every little idea I had. I sent Diablo’s sketch all over the internet in hopes someone would know who she was. All I got in return was weird emails of a sexual nature and nothing else. I dug in all of Victoria’s boxes, looking for answers about Voltaire and her past, but there was nothing but painful memories. My family and friends began to wonder about my sanity. I was always discounting them when they would recite the scientific evidence that Victoria had died that night. I would smile and listen to them and take it into consideration. Then I would go back to digging into the deep shadows the woman traveled in. I had uncovered most of the media and news articles about the deaths she was responsible for, proving to me that she might have been a killer for hire, but she was doing the world a service. I was obsessed with proving Victoria was alive somewhere, so obsessed that my mother did an impromptu intervention last year and sent me to a therapist who specialized in PTSD.

I played the game with the therapist, giving her the answers she wanted to hear, but never gave up hope Victoria was alive and faked her death. I still investigated it when I could, only moving it to the basement and in a closet where no one would see it. Digging in the depths of a world that no one even knew existed. A world where people killed to save the rest of us from evils we never knew could exist. In time, I had become a closet expert about contract hits, black ops organizations, the secret missions and recruitment of soldiers during the war, and how the government used them to do very dirty work.

I even went so far to dig in my own incident at the metro station using James stolen login for the entire criminal database system for the country. I found my file, the investigative work Detective Scarlett did and the following investigations. I would spend hours looking at the crime scene photos next to the photos taken of me at the hospital. My bruises and cuts a stark contrast to the utter chaos of blood and death on that platform.

After reviewing the evidence and the case files, Victoria had killed those four men to save me and also saved many others from the havoc they would have caused. Those four men were nothing but pure evil, waiting to strike at whim.

When I was done, I slowly forgave Victoria for what she and I thought she was. She wasn’t a monster. She was a product of her environment. A human bred and trained to kill for her country, but the humanity never left her. It was only buried under a disguise handed to her by Voltaire. I just hoped I could find her, tell her that I was sorry and I believed her.

I moved back to the den sealing up the last box of Victoria's textbooks. I had taken a week off from the hospital right before final exams to finally take on the task of cleaning out the house and clearing away most of the things I had left untouched of hers. It had been four years and it was time. My investigations and leads were rolling to a dead end for the last eight months. Slowly making me believe that maybe I was crazy. Crazy and unwilling to believe what everyone else did, that Victoria had died that night in the alleyway and my adrenaline crafted some creative ideas and visions to compensate for overwhelming grief.

So, it was time to make a change and try to move past the years long mourning I had put myself through. I wasn't trying to get rid of Victoria, I was trying to find a life without her, and the only way I knew how to do that was by packing things up and storing them away. Stacy had told me her therapist mentioned the only way one can move past grief is if they make large changes that force them into living outside of grief.

So I cut my hair, went through the closest and packed up her clothes. Only crying once or twice when I caught a muted scent of her on a buried t-shirt. I missed her, that was the one thing that never changed over the years. I missed the woman I had fallen in love with and was still in love with even as my world shifted.

I put the BMW up for sale and emailed Dani to come over this weekend to take most of Victoria's Navy things to store at her house. I needed to move on in life, I had to or my grief of losing her would amplify the insanity I felt I was on the brink of.

I didn't want to forget Victoria, and I did my best to keep her with me. I had a few pictures in the house and still wore her class ring. I had tried to take that off and throw it in the Potomac, but I never got it off my finger. I would cry and push it back down the knuckle before whispering into the wind that blew in the direction of the Pacific, whispering how much I loved her, hoping somehow she would hear it.

It was only Holly and I living in this house, I would not let anyone that wasn't family in the house. I felt that it betrayed Victoria and the home we had made together. Not even Diana was allowed in the house yet, not until I cleared out some more of Victoria's things. I had to take Holly's lead, she had buried the angry stuffed goat last fall in a mud pile and left it there. I saw it as her way of realizing Victoria would never come home, no matter how long she sat at the front door and stared at it, waiting. Victoria would never walk back through the door.

Diana was an orthopedic surgeon at Bethesda and my way of burying my own angry goat. She was a Navy officer with chestnut hair, light blue eyes, beautiful with a very persistent way about her when it came to me. She was a stunning woman and I maybe latched onto her because she was a Naval officer and had certain familiar characteristics.

It took her a year to get me to take the offered coffee she would bring me on late nights of studying in the hospital library before I started the even later intern rotations with current occupational therapists. I was grateful that the Master's program was keeping my mind busy and active and off of old memories.

Diana continued to be persistent and I finally bent a month ago and had dinner with her. During that dinner I found her nothing to be like Victoria and it was different, new, and she relaxed me. Even taking notice of the ring I still wore, she smiled at me, tapping it before grabbing the bill, "Whoever they were, they are lucky to have you wear their ring. Tradition runs deep and I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes."

I smiled softly, twisting the ring, "I am, I was the lucky one." I tucked my hand away on my lap, looking up at Diana to quickly change the subject away from anything related to my past.

That dinner led to casually dating Diana here and there over the last month. She would drop me off at the house with a polite hug, then a polite kiss on the cheek, that became a very polite, but intense kiss one night. Leaving me mildly breathless and bringing many forgotten sensations back to life inside of me. I had missed human contact and living in general. Then one night, last weekend, we both drank a bit too much and she kissed me on her couch, things grew in intensity and next thing I knew we were in her bedroom, naked.

Although it was great sex, it didn't feel right. I would only close my eyes and try not to cry at the way Diana touched me. It was nothing like the way Victoria touched me. The way she knew exactly where and how to touch me and feel things that went beyond this earthly plane. Sleeping with Diana only brought up more wounds that I thought were buried, and it left me feeling like I had cheated on Victoria. I left her house in the middle of the night while she slept with a smile on her face. I called her in the morning to apologize and ask for a little more time, time to sort out the lingering feelings of a dead girlfriend from four years ago. The girlfriend I loved with everything I was and still did to this day.