running away.
She’d thought it had to do with leaving INHUP—that was the safe time for the corrupt INHUP agent who’d bugged her phone to sell her information. But she’d left her mother at the same time. And her mother had tried to use the danger of Nita’s location being revealed to force Nita to come back. To weasel her way in, to make Nita flee to her for protection. To put Nita back in her control.
And her mother had guessed Kovit’s existence so easily—if she’d bugged Nita’s phone, she’d know Nita was meeting someone.
The thought made ugly, sludgy emotions rise up in her chest. She remembered how proud her mother had said she was when Nita fended off the black market. Was all that a lie too? A trick to get Nita to come home again?
Nita tried to talk herself out of it—she’d suspected her mother of terrible things before, and she’d been wrong. Her mother hadn’t sold her on the black market, Fabricio had. But the idea had wormed its way into her mind, and no matter how she tried to talk herself away from the thought, it only burrowed deeper.
And the story about Nadya was just too close to what Nita was living.
People never really change. They repeat the same patterns over and over in their lives. And this was not a pattern Nita could risk ignoring.
Nita took a shaky breath as things became clear. She’d been fighting the black market. She’d been fighting INHUP. But the truth was, they were actually the same enemy. She’d only been fighting one person this whole time.
Her mother.
Fury burned in Nita’s stomach, anger searing her soul as everything that had happened started piling up, her mother’s list of crimes growing longer and longer. All of this to force Nita back, to return to her mother’s control.
Fuck her. Nita was going to live her own goddam life.
Nita raised her eyes as she came to a decision, her gaze hard and cool as she looked at Zebra-stripes, supposed victim of her mother and weaver of tragic love stories. He might not be evil. He might even be a better person than her or Kovit. She might even be able to use him more if she kept him alive, his quest for justice might be useful to her plans.
He might even be innocent. She didn’t think so—she was reasonably sure that, in this at least, INHUP hadn’t lied to her. Zebra-stripes was probably her father’s killer.
And if he wasn’t, so what?
If Nita released him, he’d just kill her. Keeping him alive and a prisoner was a liability, and she didn’t think she’d get any more useful information out of him.
More and more, Nita was realizing she didn’t give a fuck about what was right or justified. She cared about herself and the people important to her. And him being alive put her and them in danger.
“Thank you for the information.” Nita’s voice was calm, perfectly calm, despite the emotions that ran rampant through her soul. “That’s all I needed.”
He looked at her, eyes tired. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
“No. Like I said, I don’t forgive.” Nita picked up a scalpel from her pocket. “And I don’t forget.”
She brought the blade down.
Twenty-Six
KOVIT STOPPED BY BRIEFLY, and she sent him away to find them dinner while she dealt with the body. She needed time, time to think, to contemplate her next steps. To internalize what she’d learned.
She also needed time to be alone, just her and her scalpel and the body, to appreciate the peace of dissection, the calm and the clear-headedness she could only truly achieve when she was elbow-deep in a chest cavity.
Before she dissected, she knew she needed to verify some of the things Andrej had said.
She turned to Google. The Wikipedia page for Nadezhda Novikova informed Nita that she was still alive, but hadn’t been seen in public for the past twenty years, which fit with the story.
The internet at large was full of conspiracy theories—she saw a number referencing how young she looked twenty years ago at age sixty, and how many people thought she was some sort of unnatural that had gone into hiding. There were also some that claimed she’d been murdered and INHUP covered it up, which Nita didn’t like. The closer people’s stories were to internet conspiracy theories, the less she trusted them.
She switched tactics, realizing she might actually know what Adair’s photo was from now. She searched for INHUP founders’ images and