When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,41
through, she learned more. The conference involved trade ministers and representatives from Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. Since Peru wasn’t a part of INHUP, they were often a haven for black market dealers who took advantage of the different laws to run their trade. The article on the conference said it was a meeting to discuss how to enforce stricter laws against unnatural trafficking and get rid of the pervasive black market influence.
Nita let out a long breath. She wondered if this conference had been sparked by her burning down the big black market on the Amazon, el Mercado de la Muerte. She hadn’t thought anyone would care. The idea that she’d done something that could cause so many ripples, change so many things, was a bit overwhelming. She kind of liked it. It made her feel powerful.
But as she scrolled down, she realized that no, this wasn’t her doing.
It was Mirella’s.
Mirella, the girl who’d been a prisoner at the same time as Nita, who Kovit had tortured, who’d lost an eye to the market, had been using pods of dolphins to disrupt all the trade along the Amazon. According to the article, the protests had gotten so bad and businesses were losing so much money on trade that the governments had decided to do something.
They’d chosen Buenos Aires as neutral ground, since actors from a variety of factions would also be there and didn’t feel safe meeting in a country under the control of the people they were protesting.
An uneasy feeling bubbled to the surface, a thought popping up like a virus, and she immediately checked the attendees roster for the pink-haired girl. But Mirella was still in the Amazon, fighting. She’d made a statement last week that she wouldn’t be attending because the conference refused to guarantee her safety. Apparently assassination attempts had been made.
Nita let out a heavy breath of relief. That was one complication she really didn’t need.
She went to the conference hotel and booked a room for tomorrow night under one of her mother’s more well-known aliases. One that Zebra-stripes was surely familiar with.
Tomorrow morning, she’d check into that room and build a trap.
She smiled to herself. This time, she wouldn’t be rash, she would think ten steps ahead, she would plot and maneuver and make sure she’d examined everything from all angles before she went forward. She wouldn’t let this end up like Toronto. She’d learned, and she would see her enemies destroyed before the end of this.
“What are you up to, Nita?” Kovit rose from the couch where he’d been texting and sat down on a stool by the counter near her. “You’ve got quite the expression right now.”
She gave him a grin, fierce and free. “I’m engineering some destruction.”
He smiled at that, but it fell away quickly, and he sighed and tipped his head back and looked up at the lights. “Do you really think this will work, Nita? That we’ll be able to rob Tácunan Law, take down both INHUP and the black market? It just seems so . . . big.”
“It will.” She set her jaw. “We’ll make it.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
“It’s not confidence.” Nita’s voice was soft as she leaned against the counter beside him. “It’s determination. I will make it work, one way or another. If this plan fails, I’ll try another one. And another, and another and another.” She put her hand on his face and turned it so he was looking her in the eye. “I won’t let INHUP kill you, and I won’t let the black market kill me. We will be feared, and we will be untouchable.”
Then, before she could hesitate or think too hard about what she was doing, she closed the gap, leaning forward and kissing him. It wasn’t a soft kiss, it wasn’t gentle or romantic or sweet. It was hard and firm, full of power and a need to express it.
Nita didn’t know why she’d kissed him before, when Henry died, couldn’t untangle the snarl of emotions inside her. It had felt right at the time, like she was full of emotions and she needed a way to express them, to show him just how much he meant to her, and the only way she’d ever seen those kind of big, complicated feelings expressed was through romance.
But this? This was something different. This was about power. Showing it, sharing it.
Kovit made a small sound in the back of his throat but rolled with it, matching her vicious kiss with