When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,107
particularly care if you forgive me.” He smiled slightly. “You don’t have to like me. Just stop trying to kill me.”
Nita was silent, thinking of everything that had happened to this point. The different faces of Fabricio she’d seen, all carefully created to get himself what he wanted. “You’re a serial liar. How can I trust that you won’t come after me?”
“I’m a liar, it’s true.” Fabricio gave her a bitter smile. “I had to be, to survive. I lied and lied and lied to stay alive. I lied so much that sometimes even I don’t know what’s true anymore.” He closed his eyes for a moment and his smile fell as he confessed, “Sometimes, when I’m alone, I think I could have been a good person. In another life. When I didn’t need to fight to survive. But that’s just another lie. Because no one knows who they really are until they’re tested the way we’ve been—and you and I, we both chose to survive, no matter what the cost. We gave up being good people to be living people.”
She stared at him a beat, then snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a very good person.”
He laughed softly. “Given your upbringing, that doesn’t surprise me.”
Nita’s face fell at the reminder of her mother. The reminder of what she’d done to her mother.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Nita whispered, “if we aren’t all destined to become certain types of people, no matter our upbringing. The girl I was trapped in a cage with, Mirella, is an activist now, working against unnatural trafficking. If she hadn’t been kidnapped, she wouldn’t have that cause. But she always had fire, she was always passionate. So would she have just found another cause?”
Fabricio blinked. “I don’t know.”
“If I hadn’t been kidnapped, I’d still be trapped with my mother. I wouldn’t be a killer.” Nita met Fabricio’s eyes. “But I wonder if it was only a matter of time and opportunity before I rose up against her.”
“Perhaps.” His voice was soft.
“And I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before you betray me again.”
He winced. “I lie to survive—there’s no survival benefit to keeping up this cycle of vengeance with you.” His gaze was steady. “Don’t trust me, that’s fine. But trust my desire to live. I don’t care about you, Nita. I don’t care what you do, or if you live or die. I don’t want or need vengeance. All I want is to be left alone. And if you agree to do that, you’ll never have to see me again.”
Nita watched the police file out of Kovit’s room and down the hall. They were hunched together in a group, whispering, but they didn’t look angry or violent, and there was still a guard posted at Kovit’s door, so Nita imagined the meeting couldn’t have gone too disastrously.
But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t in the future.
Nita’s eyes went back to Fabricio. For so long, he’d been the focal point of her rage. He’d betrayed her over and over and over. She’d done so much to capture him, to kill him, to get her vengeance. Leaving him alive was like leaving a loose end, one more thing that could come back to haunt her in the future. Letting him go went against everything she was.
But Kovit needed what Fabricio was offering. Kovit had so many legal battles to face, so many enemies. The truth was, he wouldn’t survive without a lawyer. If Nita truly wanted Kovit to get through this, she had to accept Fabricio’s offer.
Could she do that? Put her vengeance aside to save him? Could she betray the past version of herself, the desperate frightened girl in the cage who promised herself she’d destroy the one who put her there, to save the person who meant the most to her present self?
She was shocked to find, when she thought about it, that she could.
It wasn’t that she forgave Fabricio—she didn’t think she was truly capable of forgiveness. But the rage that had burned so bright and vicious when she’d discovered his betrayal was only a dull flame, a slowly burning anger she suspected would never fully leave, even if Fabricio was dead and buried.
So, no, she couldn’t forgive Fabricio. But then again, she didn’t need to. She just needed to cooperate with him, to make a deal. Like she’d done with Adair, and like she imagined she’d have to do again in the future. She could be practical.