Nita planned for a lot of screaming.
Her phone buzzed—not Reyes’ phone, she wasn’t foolish enough to try using it again. She’d snagged an old, slow smartphone on the way out of Adair’s pawnshop and then gone to the store and bought an overpriced data plan for it with the last of Kovit’s cash. Reyes’ phone was safely tucked away in pieces in her bag.
She checked the notification. Payment had gone through, and the game was on.
Nita had officially sold her own location on the black market.
First—and most pressing—problem solved. Now she had some loose cash. Well, cryptocurrency, which she could convert to cash.
More importantly though, it meant that soon the black market associates of the man who’d attacked her on the subway would be on their way to the empty apartment condo she was sitting in.
She swallowed, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeggings. This was her plan. There was no need to be worried. Everything was under control.
“Nita?” Kovit came around the corner from the other room, pausing behind the cream sofa, the only furniture in what Nita assumed was supposed to be the living room.
“Yes?”
“Did they take the bait?”
She nodded. “They’re on their way here now.”
Kovit watched her, his dark eyes unreadable. He had a crease between his eyebrows, and he hesitated a moment before asking, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
She looked away. “Of course.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t sound very sure.”
She sighed. He was right. She wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she didn’t know what else to do.
She’d initially considered turning on Reyes’ phone again and luring every dealer in Toronto into the building and then blowing it to kingdom come. Down they’d all go in one fell swoop. Along with some innocent passersby and Toronto’s air quality.
But she’d decided that blowing up would be too risky. It would be hard to control all those people going in and out, getting the timing for the explosion right would be impossible, and what if the different groups started fighting with each other before she was ready and the police were called? It wasn’t contained, like the market in Peru had been. There was too much uncertainty, too many ways for it to go wrong.
And even if it did go exactly according to plan, a lot of people would die. It was a bit much, even for her. Which, she thought, was practically a good deed. All those people she might have killed but wasn’t going to.
That was how good deeds worked, right?
Yeah, not even you believe that, Nita.
Shut up.
She forced her thoughts away from that. “I’m open to other options.”
Though it would have been nice if he’d mentioned his other ideas before she’d set everything up with this black market group. But she still had time to ditch the building, take the money, and run if he had a different plan.
“How about leaving?” He leaned forward. “Look, we have a safe place to hide. We could lie low for a bit, get out of town, and just forget this. Leave the black market behind. Use the money you just got selling your location online and buy a ticket somewhere.”
“Kovit . . .”
He could hear the rejection in her voice, and his became a little more desperate. “We can live anonymously. Disappear with me,” he pressed, leaning forward, close enough that Nita could feel the heat radiating from his body. “We can vanish. They’ll never find us.”
She shook her head slowly. “They will. The world is too small to hide from the internet.” Nita’s voice was firm. “The black market will still be hunting for me. I can’t just play the victim. I have to do something. Waiting around to be found and killed or hiding for my whole life isn’t an option.”
“I get it. I do.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “But this feels very . . . not you, Nita. Luring people places to murder them?” His mouth curled in a tight smile. “I thought I was the one people were supposed to be afraid of being locked in a room with.”
Nita snort-laughed, even though she knew she shouldn’t, knew exactly how horrifying Kovit could be. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Well, they are coming here to kill me.”
“But you set the bait and the trap.” He frowned, humor vanishing from his face, and something solemn taking its place. “It’s different. It’s not like in the market, where there was only escape or death. Everything there felt like self-defense. This is an attack.”
“I like to think of it as preemptive self-defense,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
Kovit glared. “You know the only place that uses that term is the Dangerous Unnaturals List, right?”
Her smile fell. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” He leaned against the back of the couch, fingers digging into the top of the cushions, and tipped his head up. He was silent for a long moment before he asked, “Did you ever think about making rules? Like I mentioned in the Amazon?”
She hesitated, then looked away and nodded. “Yes.”
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “Did you make any?”
“Yes.”
He watched her, waiting for her to elaborate. But she remained silent, eyes turned away. She didn’t want to tell him her rule.
Because if she told him, he’d realize she’d based it off him. Not based it off the rules he’d made—based it on not becoming him.
Nita was willing to do whatever it took to protect herself, to keep herself safe now and in the future. But she wasn’t willing to become like Kovit, like her mother, hurting others simply for the pleasure of it.
That was the line she’d decided she wouldn’t let herself cross.
She turned away from him, almost afraid he could see that truth in her eyes. More than anything, she never wanted him to see this truth, because she knew it would cut him deep. “I made my lines.”
“And this doesn’t cross them?”
She met his eyes square on. “No.”
His eyes were dark and worried. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the doubt radiating off him as surely as if he’d spoken.
She tilted her head back and let the fluorescents blind her for a moment. “I need to prove to the market once and for all that I’m not someone they should take lightly.”
Kovit was silent, but his chin tilted down, casting shadows across his face.
Nita swallowed and pressed on. “I need them to understand that anyone who messes with me will regret it. I want them to fear me so much they won’t dare hunt me.”
Then, and only then, would they leave her in peace.
Kovit’s hair fell in front of his face, and she willed him to understand. Wasn’t that what he’d done to survive in the mafia? Become so much the monster, played up every one of his misdeeds so that people whispered in terror about him?
“This group is already hunting me, and they’re probably angry I killed one of their own. I need to get rid of them. If I kill them, I can use it as a building block for my reputation,” Nita continued, her sweaty palms slippery on the too-shiny kitchen counter. “El Mercado de la Muerte’s destruction was one block. This will be another.” She swallowed and forced her voice to sound determined, as if making herself sound sure on the outside would make up for all the doubts she had inside. “And I will make as many bricks as necessary to build a wall to protect me.”