Nita plugged the memory bank in and gave Fabricio a look. He shrugged and set the device as a backup machine for what was on the computer.

“Most of the information is on servers, which we host here.” Fabricio typed in another password. “But this is the only terminal in the building that can access it all. My father was more than a little paranoid.”

“With good cause, it seems,” Kovit commented.

“Indeed.”

The computer chimed, and then a small window with a loading bar came up. Time until download completed: thirty minutes.

Nita let out a breath and leaned back. Thirty minutes.

Kovit took off his sunglasses and put them on the desk, rubbing his eyes before sitting on one of the couches on the other side of the room and cleaning his switchblade. He made an unhappy noise when the blood didn’t come off. “Is there a sink somewhere I can clean this?”

“The washroom is just down the hall,” Fabricio said.

Kovit rose and slipped away, still trying to rub the blood out of the grooves of his switchblade.

Fabricio sat in the plush leather chair across from Nita, hands in his lap. He turned to her. “Is there any information you want to look at before it finishes downloading?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. INHUP. Anyone associated with it.” She pulled out her phone and showed Fabricio the picture of her mother, Nadezhda Novikova, and Zebra-stripes from an old photo. “Especially anyone from this photo.”

“Are there names to go with that?” He asked, opening a search bar.

Nita listed off several of her mother’s aliases, but none of them came up. Then out of curiosity, even though it didn’t matter anymore, it was over and he was gone and never coming back, she had him search her father’s name.

The hit was instant, and most of the information was older than she was. She scrolled through a case where he got a serial-killing unicorn off on a technicality years before the Dangerous Unnaturals List was put up. He’d covered up evidence in multiple unnatural trafficking cases. He’d helped set up dozens of offshore accounts for various companies to avoid paying taxes.

Nita had known her father wasn’t a good person. He worked with her mother, he helped run the business side of their operation, and he’d never really had an issue killing or selling unnaturals. He’d hidden their money, he’d avoided taxes and the law.

But he’d loved her, and she’d loved him. Even if she was slowly coming to understand that his love hadn’t truly included protecting her from the person hurting her the most.