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)
I can feel the tears threatening to sting at the corners of my eyes, and I fight them back out of sheer rage alone. This is the pent-up anger that I’ve carried around in my chest for years. “I want you to tell me why you saved me but not her.”
As hard as I try, I can’t stop a single tear from rolling down my cheek. “Please, tell me.”
Nico’s face twists ever so slightly, as if he’s wrestling with his inner demons and whatever he isn’t willing to say. I want to force him to talk, as if the more I press and plead, the more it will crack him open somehow and give me my answer—my closure. If this were any other criminal, I wouldn’t care past the point of solving a crime. But this isn’t just any killer. This is the man who watched as my mom died. This is personal.
“Why did you even pull me off the street if you weren’t planning on saying anything to me? Aren’t you going to say anything at all? You know that I’ve been watching you, and I know that you’ve been watching me too. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish or why you’re still keeping tabs on me after all these years,” I say in a last-ditch effort to make him talk. “But I know what I want, and that’s answers from you.”
For a few moments that seem to stretch on forever, Nico and I stand almost nose-to-nose as I wait for him to talk. When he finally does, his ambiguous answer makes me feel even more unsettled than I did before.
“You shouldn’t look for things that you don’t want to find, Elle,” he says in a quiet voice.
I’m just about to open my mouth to ask him what the hell that’s supposed to mean, when he turns and steps back out onto the main street. The way he moves so nimbly makes his named persona fit perfectly. He can come and go as lightly as fog over a graveyard. The Ghost doesn’t even leave the sound of footsteps behind.
It takes less than a couple of seconds for me to step out from between the buildings myself and go after him so I can demand that he answer me. But as soon as I peer out into the street, he’s gone. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
There was no explanation for why he grabbed me. He didn’t even ask me anything at all, so I have no idea what that whole thing was all about. The only thing that I know now for sure is that all this time that I’ve been hunting him, Nico was already hunting me.
CHAPTER 7
NICO
Why didn’t you stop him before he killed my mother?
Her voice still echoes in my head as I slip back into the shadows. Elle’s words weren’t just an accusation—they were a blade, sharp enough to cut through the armor I’d built around myself.
Because I’ve heard them before. Not from her lips, but in my head. For years.
She doesn’t realize that her question is the same one that’s haunted me since the night my brother died. The night I failed him. The night that made me the Ghost.
And just like that, I’m dragged backward into old memories. Back to Moscow. Back to blood, to lessons carved into bone, to the brother who should still be alive.
Seventeen-year-old me wasn’t as emotionally detached as I am now. Building all the walls that it took for me to erect as a means of self-protection took a lot of time and a lot of trauma. But even before all of that, there was the violence.
The Bratva culture creates killers. The training that I received during my formative years crafted me into a weapon, not a well-adjusted man. Being a part of the Bratva alienated me from everyone else around me who wasn’t a part of it, too, and there weren’t many of us. The Bratva only chose the best, most highly skilled, and highly intelligent boys to invest their time and effort. At the time, I thought that meant I was special. I didn’t know that if Moscow’s Bratva considered you “special,” you’d receive lasting emotional scars. It’s easy to let my mind slip back into those days. They were long and laden with the kinds of deeds that will forever haunt me.
“How many times, Nico?” my trainer scolds as I wipe the blood from my chin. “I’ve taught you this move twice already. You should memorize it with only one demonstration required. You’ll never be as agile as you are right now; seventeen is the age of ripening. You must try harder and be better. You are almost a man.”
“Most men require dozens of demonstrations to do what I can do,” I spit back at him. “I required only two. That still makes my combat skills the best of anyone my age in the Bratva.”