Chapter Thirty Four, Rest In Peace? Fuck No
The garden of the De Luca mansion was cloaked in shadows, the deep sort of darkness that made the soft glow of the dining room window seem even brighter and made my soul happy.
I crouched low behind a thick hedge, my breaths measured, the faint scent of earth and roses filling my nose. It was enough to make me want to sneeze, but I was not an amateur. A breeze rustled the leaves above me, brushing strands of hair into my face, but I still didn’t move.
I was a ghost now. And ghosts didn’t move for shit unless they wanted to.
Or there was a Ghostbuster, but I mean… that was just my bitch ass brain being pedantic.
Through the window, I could see them all—sitting at the long table, laughing, talking like they didn’t have the weight of the world pressing down on their fragile little shoulders.
Like they hadn’t sat there for hours already, plotting and planning away with whatever their smooth brains could think of.
It was strange, almost surreal, to watch a family like this.
Like something out of a cringe movie that I scoffed at when I bothered to break in somewhere and watch TV. But I knew better.
The De Luca’s weren’t some picture-perfect family. They were chaos and violence wrapped in silk ties and dinner parties, and yet… there was something different about them tonight. Something almost human.
Human enough to make me think, for the tiniest second that my brain decided to be a dick to me, that perhaps I wanted it. To be part of a family. To have other humans care about my well-being and existence.
To have a delicious creature like Francesca De Luca bake me cakes and ask if wanted a fucking hug because whatever generic sports team I liked had lost their match and somehow that made my day bad.
But I wasn’t interested in most of them. Not even Heather, in a pretty blue dress covered in clouds and a matching pair of pumps. No. My eyes focused on one person: Atlas.
He sat near the end of the table, relaxed but alert, leaning back in his chair as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was talking to one of the younger girls, and his lips curved into a rare smile at something she said.
It was a soft smile, almost boyish. And it made something sharp twist in my chest.
It wasn’t the first time I’d watched him. I’d done it every day since I knew he was alive. I’d done it all summer long as I pretended I was hunting Giovanni, just to keep his father’s paycheck. But had spent my nights sleeping in a car or shitty motel, bored and thoroughly… empty. Unsure.
I hadn’t wanted to kill him. Only because he belonged to my brother.
But it had taken me a while to make myself okay with that fact.
Just because I was watching now, didn’t mean I was suddenly soft or weird. It wasn’t my fault that I had nothing better to do. Or that my brain was making me come here. I just didn’t know how to handle the reality of the truth between Atlas and I.
Didn’t know how to feel about the fact my brother had abandoned me.
Didn’t know how to feel about my new reality.
For years, I’d been a ghost—living under someone else’s rules, following someone else’s orders, killing for someone else’s gain. I’d been the perfect tool for The Company, my handlers, my jailers. But I wasn’t their tool anymore.
I’d been freed. A few short, surreal days since I was free.
As far as The Company was concerned, Danika Smith was dead, buried, and forgotten. And I liked it that way. I liked being dead. It was the only thing I’d wanted for as long as I could remember—to disappear, to slip into the shadows and live without chains for the first time in my life.
But freedom, I was beginning to learn, was its own kind of burden.
For the first time, I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do, where to go, or who to kill. For the first time in my life, my life was mine. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to live without a leash.
So I did what I knew best—I drifted. Quietly, invisibly, leaving no trace as I moved where I pleased, always keeping myself in the dark. The world was open, the future full of possibilities…
Yet, I’d ended up here. Watching Atlas. Watching my brother.
I didn’t want to tell him for real. Didn’t want to talk about the picture I’d handed to him. I didn’t even want him to know I was here. What would I even say? How would I begin to share the thoughts burning through my brain?
No. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t the kind of person who knocked on doors and made heartfelt confessions.
And yet… there was something about him. Something that made me linger in the shadows a little longer than I should. Maybe it was the way he carried himself in his new life. The way he seemed okay with his trauma and life filled with the dark.
He seemed… happy.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
The sound of a door creaking open snapped me out of my thoughts.
I tensed, pressing myself lower into the shadows as the back door swung open. A figure stepped outside, briefly illuminated by the light spilling out from the dining room before the door closed behind him.
It was Emilio.
I’d seen him earlier through the window—still just as tall as I remembered, muscular in a bulky way that made me grin, and carrying the kind of tension in his shoulders that suggested he had a thousand problems he didn’t want anyone to know about.
He didn’t interest me much beyond eye candy, but as he stepped farther into the garden, I noticed the phone in his hand.
I also didn’t normally listen when a man spoke, they usually offered nothing of value, but this one was pretty enough for me to fake interest for a minute or so as I held Yakov in my free hand, poking my finger gently into his spikes.
My loyal little cactus was the only thing of Danika Smiths that I’d kept. He was my ride or die. My best friend.
I would have died before I abandoned my fleshy little son. He was all I had left now.
Emilio brought his phone to his ear, his voice low as he answered the call.
I slipped silently through the bushes, moving closer without a sound. I wasn’t planning to stay long—I’d just been here to watch, to see Atlas, to remind myself why I hadn’t disappeared entirely. But curiosity tugged at me because I was many things, but nosy bitch was definitely one of them.
“I don’t care about rumors,” Emilio was saying, his tone clipped. “I need proof. Something solid.”
I crept closer, crouching low behind a row of hedges until I could hear him more clearly.
“The Romanovs aren’t playing,” he said, the name rolling off his tongue with disgust. “I need something I can use. They’ve already locked me into this bullshit arrangement, and I need a way out.”
The name sent a ripple through me. My breath hitched, but I kept still, forcing my body to stay motionless even as my pulse quickened and my finger poked hard enough into Yakov that I pierced my skin.
That name had haunted me for years.
Sergei Romanov was a monster, even by my standards.
He’d worked with my biological father back when they’d been carving out pieces of the underworld for themselves decades ago.
I’d crossed paths with Sergei once as a teenager, and the memory of it still made my stomach turn.
He was known for being cruel, sadistic, the kind of man who enjoyed breaking things just to watch the pieces scatter.
I’d wanted to kill him. I’d tried to kill him, for what he’d done. But I hadn’t been able to do it now. I’d been too weak.
Now, I wasn’t.
I grinned as a plan formed in my mind. Emilio didn’t know it yet, but he’d just become my ticket to Sergei Romanov. A man who’d been in hiding for over a decade.
A man who I could finally find.
The De Luca family didn’t mean anything to me—not really. I didn’t care about their drama, their power struggles, or their petty feuds. But if they were tangled up with the Romanovs, then I cared enough to investigate.
I’d stick around the bland city named Cherry Hill. I’d follow pretty little Emilio De Luca, dig into whatever mess he was caught in, and let him lead me straight to Sergei. And when I found Sergei, I’d finish what I should have started years ago.
I slipped back into the shadows as Emilio turned and headed back toward the house. The grin stayed on my face as I moved through the garden, silent and unseen like every ghost was.
I’d been free for a few days now, unsure of what to do. But now I had a purpose. A target… and it felt fucking brilliant.
Danika Smith wasn’t really dead. She was just a ghost. And the best part of being a ghost? You got to haunt your enemies and drive them insane.
And sometimes, you could do the same to your ungrateful little brother.