“I did too,” he admitted. “But my rules were made in captivity, with very strict goals. And they haven’t been working outside of captivity. Killing Henry nearly broke me. I can’t be that fragile. I need to be flexible, not rigid. I need to be able to bend when circumstances change.”

“Like with Fabricio?” Nita hedged.

“It was more than that. After the video of”—he took a deep breath, and then, to Nita’s shock, said the name he’d avoided for so long—“Mirella accusing me came out, I realized that my rules weren’t protecting me anymore. They were keeping me blind to threats. I couldn’t even remember this girl, and now she’s pressing charges against me.”

He looked up and met Nita’s eyes. “Something has to change. I have to change.”

Nita was quiet for a moment, before asking, “Is that why you apologized to Fabricio?”

“Yes. It was . . . an experiment. I knew why he did the things he did. I pitied him, even though what he did to you is unforgivable. But when I pitied him, I started to regret worsening his life even more. I felt bad. So I apologized.” He took a deep breath, then let it out. “I made a mistake. I admitted it. And I didn’t break.”

Nita nodded slowly, understanding more than he was saying. He’d needed to apologize to Fabricio, to bend a rule, to see if he was truly as fragile as he thought, to take that first step into changing the way he worked. She only wished he’d decided to feel bad about Mirella, an innocent victim and Nita’s sometime friend, rather than Fabricio, the liar who betrayed her.

“No, you didn’t break.” She put her hands on his. “You’re stronger than you think, Kovit.”

He smiled slightly at that, and the two of them were quiet for a few moments, just watching the rain fall, glittering in the darkness.

“I imagine you’re happy about my new situation,” he said, looking at her from the corner of his eyes. “Less screaming.”

She winced. “Guilty.”

He was quiet a moment, and then asked, “Why do you stay when it bothers you so much?”

Nita was silent a long moment before she responded, words coming slowly. “I don’t like hearing what you do, but I don’t care if you do it. I’ve never cared that you were evil. I think a part of me even liked it, because I could pretend that you were more evil than I was, and it made me feel superior.” She sighed. “But the truth is, I’m just as evil as you, in different ways. It’s just taken me a long time to see it and admit it to myself.”