Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
So far, I’ve only gotten a few flashing glances at them, enough to see their distinctive coloring that looks like a bluish moon on a clear night. I can’t even imagine staring at them for long. I would likely risk being unable to look away. Professional curiosity makes me want to study those eyes up close, though, strictly to look into the man who saved me in all the worst of ways years ago. The eyes are windows into the soul, or something like that, and convincing myself that this is all strictly professional and not personal is likely a lie that will send me straight to hell.
Later that day, he walks into Vincent Moretti’s casino. Not through the main doors, but through the service entrance. So, I take the chance to talk to the famously well-connected bartender. I almost lose Nico, only to catch a quick glimpse of him crossing a sidewalk, almost concealed by a small cluster of tourists visiting the city, but not quite. It almost seems like he wants me to know that he’s watching me too, and I’m not sure whether to take that as a threat. I’ve learned over the years that every mafia-aligned agent is most certainly a threat, and a dangerous one at that. But I still can’t seem to shake off this irrational feeling that Nico is different.
That night, he meets a man in the corner booth of a smoky bar on Fremont Street. I can’t hear their conversation, but I don’t need to. I can read Nico’s body language as clearly as words. Calm. Controlled. The other man fidgets, sweats through his collar, and glances at the door every thirty seconds. Nico barely moves. And when the meeting ends, it’s the other man who rushes out first, leaving Nico behind with an untouched whiskey.
We go on like this for days, he and I, until he must have decided that he’s had enough, because I lose visual on him completely. That makes it a good time to go back to my apartment and compile everything I have and everything that I know about Nico Vitale so that I can create a psychological analysis to work off of.
At night, I sit in my home office with a cup of hot tea and stare at both my notebook and the evidence board on my wall that I’ve made for the Ghost. Everything about him seems deadly and complex. My experience with the mafia, mostly compiling criminal profiles for the police and justice department, and the inside information I received from Valentina when we shared peeks into each other’s lives, shows that these guys are deadly. They’re supposed to kill anyone who sees them doing anything, especially if that “thing” is killing someone in a dark alley.
This is where my analytical profiling skill set comes into play. I’ve noticed a few things already. Nico has a dominant personality; I can tell that by how others react to him, as if he’s someone to be listened to and respected. However, he doesn’t display his dominance in the same way as the other mafia figureheads. Nico seems unwilling to engage or connect with people unless he finds it necessary. He seems to prefer isolation. And he also seems to be morally ambiguous. Just like the night my mom died, he seems to choose his actions with careful intention, and with motives that, although violent and definitely criminal, aren’t necessarily cruel. From what I can tell, he steers clear of dealing with some of the more notoriously wicked mafia bosses, the ones that engage in more than just money laundering or weapons trafficking. Nico doesn’t engage with any of the criminals on the city’s radar who dabble in some of the more horrific crimes. Perhaps the Ghost has a sort of moral code. He did, after all, save my life.
I’ve never really come up against anyone like him before, and I wonder if it’s even possible to be a morally ambiguous assassin, or if being any kind of assassin costs someone their soul. My psychology expertise tells me that the way Nico conducts himself, by being so withdrawn and detached from everyone else around him, might mean that he’s carrying some scars from trauma of his own. I am admittedly fascinated by all of it and by him. If I were to let myself, it might be even a little easy to see some of my own cracks in the Ghost, like the resistance to any sort of connection.
Connection means that you have to allow some level of vulnerability, and that isn’t something that I like to do. It would seem that isn’t something Nico likes to do either. There was a time when I didn’t bottle and hide my emotions, but that time ended when my mom died, and when my dad shipped me off to that private academy. It was then that I saw there are only ever one or two people who truly care about you in the ways that make you feel seen, and mine died that night when my mother was shot.