When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,73

the more she wondered if life was just a series of masks you wore. Kovit was a different person with her than with Fabricio than with Henry than with his victims than with his sister. All the masks were him, just not all of him, only a piece.

Nita was the same, behaving differently in different situations. She wondered if it was impossible to be all of yourself at the same time, because yourself was too complicated. So people broke it down into bits and pieces and wore some of them some days and others different days.

“I see what you’re getting at.” He considered. “I can pretend to be good and tragic or whatever. I think. I’ve never really tried before. What do good people do?”

“They feel all angsty and guilty about all the terrible things they did.” Nita grinned a little, voice wicked. “You’re going to have to practice your dramatic brooding, after all.”

He gave her a long-suffering face. “People always look constipated when they brood.”

She laughed, and he started flipping through the files on the phone. “Can you think of a video to use?”

He nodded, eyes glued to the tiny thumbnails. “I know just the one.”

Twenty-Eight

NITA WATCHED THE VIDEO Kovit chose. Or at least, she watched the start of it. He helpfully paused it before it got too dark.

Kovit was young in the video, ten, maybe eleven, but small and round-cheeked enough that he could probably pass for younger if he wanted. Like the other videos, it took place in a room with white walls and white floors and a steel table in the middle with a person tied on it.

The person on the table was young, maybe twelve, a boy with short blond hair and huge blue eyes. His mouth was taped, and he was trying to scream through his bindings, but it wasn’t working.

Kovit walked in, but this time, he was accompanied by Henry, who was clearly visible—Nita was pretty sure that meant this particular video hadn’t been sent to INHUP. It was part of Henry’s personal collection.

It was hard for Nita to watch the rest. Tiny child Kovit refused to hurt the boy, his English broken and heavily accented, a stark reminder of how out of his depth Kovit had been when the Family had taken him in.

Henry hadn’t taken it well.

Nita flinched at every blow to child Kovit and every time his small, broken body jerked from a boot, or his tiny face turned toward the camera, blood covering his features and face swelling and blackening. With every rejection small Kovit gave, and every blow that followed, her heart broke a little.

In the end, Henry gave up and agreed he’d deal with the child himself, but he still forced Kovit to stay in the room while he made the boy scream, skin fluttering to the ground in thin strips as Kovit gasped and rolled on the floor, a combination of ecstasy from the child’s pain and agony from his own.

Nita uploaded the video and sent the links to all her newfound media contacts.

Then she closed the phone and quietly turned to Kovit. “I never realized . . .”

He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with having shared the video. “It didn’t happen often. Henry didn’t bring me more children. He realized I got difficult with them. I think he thought I’d get over it in time. He taught me a lot. He really was a great mentor.” He paused a heartbeat, before clarifying, “Most of the time.”

Nita didn’t argue with him. Kovit had murdered Henry to save himself, and if he wanted to cling to the illusion that his childhood had happy moments instead of acknowledging that it had been ruled by an abusive, controlling monster, then she wasn’t going to break his image.

She wasn’t exactly one to talk.

She tried not to think about the parallels to her own upbringing. Her mother never forced her to torture people. But her mother did leave the bodies of small animals in Nita’s bed when she disobeyed her parents, broke Nita’s body to teach her how to heal it, crushed all her dreams, all her hopes of leaving, created an aura of terror that still made Nita flinch whenever she thought about disobedience.

Kovit closed his eyes. “I can see your face, judging me.”

“I mean, he was pretty awful from what I saw.”

Kovit was silent a long moment. His breathing was deep and slow, and when he finally opened his eyes, he admitted, so softly that she could barely hear him, “You’re