“A good businessman knows that you can’t just use the stick, you need the carrot too.” He met her eyes. “Hurting people if they fail works better if you reward them if they succeed too.” He smiled slightly. “You need me. But I sure as hell don’t need you.”

“I have fail-safes if you try anything—”

“I know, I know.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “But I’m between a rock and a hard place. Dead either way. If I see an opportunity to run, you really think I won’t take it, cost be damned?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying. For all your posturing, I don’t think you enjoy seeing me hurt nearly as much as you pretend. I think you want to hurt me, you want your vengeance, but actually seeing it makes you ill. So don’t. Stop this. The only one having a good time here is Kovit, and any time a zannie is the only one enjoying a situation, you know something’s gone terribly wrong.” He leaned forward. “Stop this, Nita. Before you break both of us.”

“The only one breaking here is you,” she snapped, and tossed the box of pizza on the floor in front of him, where he couldn’t possibly reach it.

She spun away from him, hating that he was right, that he’d played her again, that this wasn’t the first time she’d tossed food at him and run because she couldn’t face his truths.

Five

NITA CLOSED THE DOOR behind her and leaned against it, taking deep breaths. She tried not to see the parallels to the last time Fabricio had been her prisoner. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t.

But she still felt uncomfortably like it was. Except this time, she was playing her mother’s role.

She tried not to remember how Fabricio had screamed as her mother ordered Nita to cut off his ear. She’d thought he was innocent then, she hadn’t known what he’d do to her. It was natural for her to have been hesitant. It was different now. Now it was vengeance.

And Fabricio was wrong. It wasn’t breaking her to watch him suffer. She liked knowing she was getting vengeance.

But you don’t like seeing it, do you? You just like knowing it happened, not facing the reality, her mind whispered.

Shut up, Nita told it.

She shook her head, forcing Fabricio’s words away. He was trying to manipulate her again. That’s what he did. He crawled into her head with his silver-tongued words and twisted her up until she did what he wanted, not what was best for herself.

He deserved everything that she’d done to him.