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)
His tall, powerful build is imposing, even as he tries to blend in with the rest of the guests. His dark suit jacket is open, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, which hints at the defined muscles beneath its neckline. He looks pristinely put together, and also esoterically untamed. Now that I take a longer look at him, I notice that it’s more than his eyes that draw me in. Everything about this man is dangerously enticing. Still, there’s a sense about him that puts off not only a predatory vibe but a protective one as well. He is no doubt dangerous and deadly, but I wonder what else he is, too.
If this guy uses an alias and builds his persona through rumors and whispers, then I bet he’s hiding a mysterious past. My criminal profiling skills haven’t failed me yet, although I have admittedly not crossed someone like this in my professional career before. Most of the criminals that I've tracked and brought to justice have had easily deconstructed and dismantled psyches, but everything about this ghost from my past suggests he is complicated beyond words. To me, that only makes him even more intriguing and likely more of a villain.
The ghost looks through the crowd just as I’d been. It doesn’t seem as if I’m the only one doing the tracking here tonight. Perhaps we’re both stalking each other. When his eyes cut across the courtyard to meet mine, I don’t look away. I hold his stare and watch as his face turns from inquisitive to accusatory. His eyes darken with a stern, silent warning, as if I ought to know better than to be hunting him.
A chill runs up my spine, realizing that I’m playing with fire here and that just because this man spared me once, it doesn’t mean that he’ll spare me again.
“Hey,” Isla’s voice says from beside me.
I hadn’t even noticed her walking up to me. I focused too much on his slate blue eyes and the dark, tousled hair that almost fell in front of them. Isla touches the back of my hand, and it allows me to break my fixed gaze and peel my eyes away from him.
“Are you okay?” she asks with concern in her voice.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I hadn’t even realized that my heart was racing until she asked me that question. Now, I suddenly feel a panic attack coming on without warning. Old trauma has a way of doing that when it’s triggered. It creeps up and then overtakes you all at once.
“Breathe, Elle,” she says as if she can read my mind. “You’re safe here.”
I do as she suggests and take a few minutes just to focus on my breathing until the feeling subsides. A server walks by delivering drinks as I catch my reflection in a wine bottle. I look as pale as a ghost.
“That’s better,” Isla says with a smile once I’ve calmed down and gotten some color back in my cheeks. “Friendly word of advice, I’m not so sure that I would get involved with Nico Vitale.”
“Who?”
“Nico,” she repeats. “The Ghost.”
She whispers that bit of information as if it’s a casual secret shared between friends, and not a bomb with the pin pulled out. So that’s his, the Ghost, the man who kept me alive. Isla must have caught me looking at him, and perhaps she even saw him looking back at me, too.
“He doesn’t really belong here at the wedding,” she says before getting ready to walk back to her husband and rejoin the group conversation that the two of them had been having. “I’m honestly not sure where he belongs.”
After she leaves, I glance back at the corner where Nico was standing, but he’s now gone. My eyes search the rest of the crowd, but once again, it would seem that he’s vanished. For a while, I simply stay in my designated spot and observe the people around me while I think about what Isla just said.
In all fairness, I don’t really belong here either. I have no business being at a mafia wedding, not officially anyway. I’m not involved in the underworld crime syndicate unless you count trying to catch some of their most criminal behavior and bringing in a few of them for questioning. Aside from that, I’m practically on the opposing side of everyone in attendance here—including Valentina.
But once upon a time, she and I shared sleepovers and secret journals. Once upon a time, she was my very first friend, and hell, maybe even my only real one. A part of me still wants to see if Valentina remembers the girl that she used to know. And a part of me wanted to come here to see him again, even if I didn’t know that until just now. Both things left me with no choice other than to accept the wedding invitation when it arrived, hand-delivered and unsigned, no less. I didn’t ask questions; I just said that I’d come. I told myself that I had come here to observe, to profile, and to collect intel. I still think that’s true, but there were other reasons as well. Some of those reasons have to do with finding answers about past trauma and past friends.