Nita turned around quickly, unable to look at Fabricio any longer. It wasn’t guilt she felt when she looked at him, because she didn’t feel guilty. He deserved everything that Kovit was doing to him.

But she did feel something, and she didn’t like what it was. It was different than her discomfort when Kovit had made other people scream—though there was still plenty of that too—but looking at Fabricio meant facing her own part in his screams.

It meant facing that she didn’t actually feel bad about what she’d done.

She left the room, and Kovit followed her out, still shivering with Fabricio’s pain, closing the door behind him and sealing Fabricio’s sobs away. Nita gestured toward the reception room of the recording studio so that they could have some privacy away from Gold.

She dodged past the ultramodern reception desk and then hesitated in front of the black leather couches. Finally, she turned to him. “You better sit down for this.”

Worry etched lines in Kovit’s face. “Nita . . .”

“Just sit.”

He sat down, and she stared at him for a moment, struck by the incongruity of the monster she’d seen a moment before, hungry and viciously cruel as he caused pain, and the young man sitting in front of her, patient and concerned. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile that all the different facets of Kovit were the same person.

She sat down beside him, their legs just brushing against each other. She could feel the warmth of his body faintly against her.

She looked down at her hands, and then forced herself to meet his eyes. “It’s about Henry.”

He looked away, hair falling over his eyes. “What about him?”

Nita could still hear the snap of Henry’s neck as Kovit broke it. It was echoed by a snap in Kovit’s soul as he broke something in himself doing it.

“After you came back to him, before he died . . .” She took a deep breath for courage. “He sold your information to INHUP.”

Kovit froze, his whole body so still she wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

“What?” His voice cracked slightly.

“He sent them all the videos. All the pictures. It’s in processing right now, but the INHUP contact said your face would be made public in about a week.”

Kovit was silent for a long moment. His voice, when it came out, was small and shattered. “Why?”

She bowed her head. “The email said he did it to make sure you couldn’t leave again. So you’d be trapped with him. So you’d need his protection to survive.”

Kovit laughed, a tinny, broken sound, and tipped his head back to look at the fluorescents above him. “So this is it, then. This is the end.”