It was a brilliant insurance policy, Nita had to admit. If anyone wanted to run the company, they needed either Alberto or Fabricio. It meant that even if he died, his son would stay alive.

It was a touching gesture, even if she had the sinking idea it hadn’t ended well. Fabricio’s father had at least tried.

Fabricio closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “The first few months after they killed my father, Martin and his flunkies pampered me. I stayed in my nice, swanky room in my father’s penthouse. I ate everything I wanted, and anything I asked for, they gave me. But I refused to give them access to anything. And when we had to do updates or change things, I refused to enter the codes on anything unsecured, anything that they could use to steal the passwords I had.”

Fabricio’s voice hardened, his whole body going still. “Then they got mad.”

A chill ran down Nita’s spine at his tone.

“They locked me in a small, dark room. A basement somewhere. They starved me for a while. Occasionally they beat me. They hired a zannie for a few weeks—that’s the real reason I lost my toes.” He smiled bitterly at Kovit. “Sorry, Kovit, you’re not the first one here. I know all the tricks for getting through the pain.”

Kovit gave him a look of horror. “Weeks?”

Fabricio’s smile was broken, and his whole expression looked a little cracked, like he was trying to make a normal expression but didn’t quite know how, it had been shattered into a thousand pieces and he’d taped them back together to try and approximate normalcy. “Twenty-three days. It felt like longer, but I counted the time, the seconds and minutes and hours, one, two, three. I put them to a beat in my head, music helped me focus on things besides the pain.”

Kovit swallowed, eyes wide, and Nita tried to hold back her revulsion at the thought, tried to block her brain from imagining thirteen-year-old Fabricio in the dark day after day, screaming and singing to try and take the pain away.

“On my fourteenth birthday, they finally gave up and let me out.” Fabricio’s gaze turned inward. “I did the bare minimum to keep the company afloat, which was mostly just be alive and make necessary authorizations. I kept the penthouse suite, and no one hurt me anymore. And we all just waited for my eighteenth birthday to roll around, because then I’d have access to all the passwords, even the reset ones—and Martin would have access through me. He could just go to the bank with me, look over my shoulder, and it would all be over. After I turned eighteen, he’d be able to finally get rid of me.”