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.

The Nita who first met Fabricio would have hesitated to hurt him. The Nita who found out he betrayed her would have made him scream until he died. But this Nita, here and now, understood that the world was give and take, that sometimes you had to let things go, not hold on, because justice for your past wasn’t as important as safety and security for your present and future.

And though she’d never voice it aloud, she’d come to understand Fabricio. She didn’t forgive, but she could understand. And with that understanding came the belief that this deal was probably genuine.

So quietly, and without much fanfare, she let her quest for vengeance slip away, into the dark currents of her memory.

“Yes,” Nita said finally, her voice gentler than she expected. “I want the lawyer.”

Fabricio smiled slightly and rose. “Then it’s a deal?”

Nita nodded. “It’s a deal.”

Forty-Three

FABRICIO INSISTED ON telling Kovit himself, and the two of them returned to Kovit’s room together.

As the guard checked Fabricio for weapons at the door, Nita watched him carefully. “Fabricio?”

“Yeah?”