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)
Why?
Why would she care to dig up this much stuff on me? I understand she feels like she needs closure and that she demands answers from that night. But some of the research she’s done on this profiling board of hers goes well beyond that. There is information here dating all the way back to the years when I was in the Bratva, information on my time in Moscow. She certainly doesn’t know everything. But that said, Elle has dug up more on me than I thought she would be capable of finding. It’s more than anyone else ever had.
I take some time to look at her things a bit closer and to rifle through some papers on her desk and the files on her computer. She really should be more careful about security. It’s too easy to get into her laptop. Once inside her files, it’s a veritable candy land of profile notes. The professional notes that she’s been keeping are thorough but not surprising. Her attention to detail and the accuracy with which she has evaluated the information she’s collected are impressive. But when I sit down and read through some of her notations, it catches me off guard.
Cold, distant, and detached, which means that Nico likely struggles with vulnerability.
How could she possibly have garnered that just from what she’s learned about me from afar? I don’t care how good a profiler she is or how many psychology degrees she has; she still can’t see inside my head.
Isolated by choice, perhaps stemming from past trauma. Perhaps he’s haunted by something too. Maybe the Ghost has skeletons in his closet relating to past things he’s done—guilt over all the violence? I wonder if he has always been this way, or if Nico experienced a transformative moment that shaped his life.
I sit there stunned as I read through Elle’s profile notes and her personal remarks that are added into the footnotes. I want to hate her. And I want to hate the fact that she is poking around in my life. But it’s hard to hate a woman who seems just about as complicated and possibly even broken as I am. Then there’s the matter of how we both seem to be simultaneously obsessed and suspicious of each other. I can feel a crack forming in my promise to myself of staying emotionally detached from everyone and everything. I should treat Elle as if she were one of my assignments. Protecting her and keeping her away from my life is what I should do. I should continue to throw a wrench in her way so that she drops this wild goose chase and moves on with her life. She’s spent too long already being mentally trapped inside that night. The best way to do that is to walk away from her and let this obsession die a natural death, no matter how long it takes or how frustrated it makes her. I stare at the computer screen and then at her wall of bits and pieces again. I’ve been trailing Elle for days now, studying her, and letting her see glimpses of my presence, like dropping tiny breadcrumbs for her to find. I wanted to see how far she would go before giving up and throwing in the towel. But it’s feeling like she just won’t.
And as much as I know I should walk away and let this all die down—I can’t.
This Elle still reminds me too much of the little girl from the alley—the one who watched her mother die. I’ve been justifying all of this time and energy I have put into watching Elle as a way to make sure she doesn’t get too close or find out too much about the Ghost. I’ve justified stalking her in my mind as just observation. Now I see that the only way to accomplish my goal is for me to leave. If I dropped off her radar and left no trace of myself behind for her to find, then perhaps both of our obsessions would cease. But even sitting here, I know that’s not going to happen. I can’t seem to make myself walk away from this woman.
I stand up from her desk and take one last look around the room before leaving. While giving a quick look over the rest of the apartment, I formulate a new plan in my head, one that can give me the excuse masquerading as a reason to keep following her around. She needs my protection, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Vegas is full of mafia criminals who want her to leave them alone. And her father is a very dangerous man; she just doesn’t know it. That puts Elle in a position of being around both sides of the dangers in Las Vegas—the mafia criminals who don’t have any sort of moral code at all when it comes to killing innocent women and children, and the crooked cop father who would just as easily use his daughter as a human shield if it came down to that. There’s no atrocity that Hale Monroe won’t commit.