His hands clenched. “And? You of all people should know better than to judge someone based on their parents.”
Nita flinched as if he’d slapped her. She looked away.
“Tell me, Nita, if we’re judging people by the sins of their parents, who is in more trouble?” Fabricio’s voice was tight. “Me? My father helps monsters save their money. Or you? Your mother kidnaps, murders, dissects, and sells innocent people.”
“I’m not my mother.” But after the events in the market, she wasn’t quite sure anymore. She’d killed a lot of people to escape, guilty and innocent alike. “I helped you.”
“You did.” His shoulders slumped. “And I’m not my father.”
No, you’re much worse.
Nita didn’t reply, just looked at the flower. Fabricio was the same. Beautiful and gentle on the outside, hiding a toxic inside.
Fabricio’s jaw was tight and his gaze angry. “Is this why you’ve been so cold to me? You think I’m just another money-grubbing asshole like my father?”
She shrugged, playing it nonchalant. “I don’t know. I don’t know you.”
“I’m not. I’m nothing like him.” His voice was bitter. “And I never want to be. I don’t want anything to do with him or his business. All it’s ever brought me is pain.”
“And money. I hear someone of your standing lives quite well.”
“I’d rather have my ear back.”
Nita raised an eyebrow. “What does your ear have to do with your father?”
“You didn’t really think your mother kidnapped the child of one of the most notorious men on the black market to sell his body on the internet, did you?”
Nita’s stomach dropped. “What?”
His lips pressed together into a thin line. “Your mother was sending me back to my father, piece by piece, every time he refused a demand.”
Nita swallowed. Fabricio could be lying, but it made sense in a way. Why would her mother kidnap the child of someone so important just to make a few bucks online? No, blackmail was far more her mother’s style.
“Are you even an unnatural?”
He sighed. “I’m exactly what she said I was. Pieces of me would make money.”
Nita nodded slowly. “But?”
“But . . .” He looked away. “I’m more afraid of who I am than what I am. No one would go to all the trouble she did to kidnap me just to sell me. But to blackmail my father? The sky is the limit.”
Uneasiness coiled in Nita’s stomach. She’d wanted power to protect herself—to make Fabricio’s reality hers. Everyone wanted her for what she was, and in order to avoid looking over her shoulder her whole life, she wanted to make them afraid of who she was.
Now she wondered if that was such a great idea.
“Why?”
He blinked. “Why what?”
“Why was my mother blackmailing your father in the first place? I mean, there are far easier targets if it was simply about money.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
No, this didn’t make sense anymore. Something in this picture wasn’t right.
“One good thing that’s come out of all this.” A half smile flitted across his face. “Now I can be a nameless refugee that INHUP will protect. I gave them a fake last name. No one needs to know who I am. I can start over.” He looked at her. “I suppose I should thank you and your mother for that. If no one here knows who I am, no one can leak that information or try and use me for my father’s connections.”
Nita gave him an incredulous look. He was one of those every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining people. She supposed if he were in her shoes, he’d say that her experience in Mercado de la Muerte—“Death Market”—had given her much-needed industry perspective.
Ugh. She hated people like that.
A warm wind slunk through the garden, and Nita realized her nose had started to burn under the hot noon sun, and she healed it before it could progress. She’d been so distracted she hadn’t noticed. She wiped her forehead and jerked her head to Fabricio.
“Let’s go back inside.”
He smiled tentatively. “It’s hot out here. They need air-conditioning for outside.”
Nita didn’t smile back.
As they approached the building, Nita stopped and turned to Fabricio. “Let me make one thing clear.”
He paused, smile falling. “Yes?”
“If you in any way reveal who my mother is, or our connection, I will tell INHUP about your father. You’ll be sent home, and your little escape plan will be ruined.”
His eyes narrowed, flint and steel, and Nita finally caught her first glimpse of the real person beneath the friendly facade. “If you say anything to compromise my protection and put me in danger, I’ll tell them about your mother. And your complicity.”
Nita pursed her lips. “Then we’ll both have to stay quiet, won’t we?”
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment and then, as one, turned and reentered the building in silence.
Nita shoved the floripondio flower in her pocket as she went, a poisonous promise to herself.
Two
NITA RETREATED TO HER ROOM. More white walls, white pillows, white sheets. The only spots of color were the blue blanket and the gray foldout chair in front of a white desk.
She locked the door and looked down at her hands. She’d managed to cut her finger on the stem of the floripondio flower at some point.
Nita concentrated, increasing blood clotting factor, accelerating cell growth. The veins repaired, and the cut closed over. She wiped away a small speck of blood, all evidence of an injury gone.
She flopped down on the bed, which sagged in the middle, and closed her eyes, turning over Fabricio’s words in her mind. She replayed the scene, stalling on the part where he claimed her mother was blackmailing his father. It felt like the truth, but not the right piece of the truth.
No, Fabricio was a master of mixing truth and lies to make himself the most sympathetic person possible. He’d known exactly how to manipulate her into letting him out of her mother’s cage, despite Nita’s sense of self-preservation. He’d let her believe her mother’s lies, because she might have hesitated freeing him if she’d had any inkling he’d been involved in the black market.
And Nita would have hesitated. Any potential stain on his character, and her mind would have supplied her with a million justifications for why it was okay to kill him, take him apart piece by piece like her mother wanted.
So he’d been very careful to act the perfect, tragic innocent.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Nita carefully pulled the crumpled flower from her pocket and turned it around in her hands.
Small and deadly. She could end him in a moment.
But a part of her wasn’t sure that was the best course of action. Wasn’t sure that killing Fabricio would solve more problems than it created.
She tried to put herself in Fabricio’s shoes, figure out why he’d sold her. He didn’t need the money, his father was rich. He was already on a bus to INHUP, so it wasn’t like he needed money to escape either, if he couldn’t access his father’s money.