Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
GHOST
I watch the floor number slowly increase with a growing sense of impatience building in my chest.
“This has to be the slowest elevator in the entire damn city,” I grumble.
Alessio chuckles, tilting his head back a little to join me in watching the creeping ascent.
“Nah, that’s in Salvatore’s building,” he says. “You’re just impatient.”
“Can you blame me? Taking out the Reapers is my life’s work, and it’s so damn close now I can taste it.” I absently drag my tongue along my bottom lip, actually tasting the lingering flavor of Alessio’s lips rather than the destruction of the Sleepless Reapers. Still pretty good either way.
I tap my foot and reach into my pocket to pull out a hard candy, shoving it into my mouth right as the doors finally slide open.
“Fucking finally,” I mutter, and Alessio laughs again.
The layout is similar to Alessio’s building, with Xaviaro and Sparrow’s apartment being the only one on this floor.
“You haven’t robbed them, have you?” he asks as he raises his fist to knock on their door.
“Not that I recall.” It’s hard to remember every single penthouse I’ve broken into over the past few years, but this building didn’t look particularly familiar from the outside.
“I doubt there would have been much worth stealing anyway, other than a baggie of freezer-burned fingers and some bondage ropes.”
My eyebrows go up and I stare at him for a second, trying to figure out if he’s joking about the fingers or not.
I’m still not sure by the time the door swings open.
Xaviaro looks just as imposing in a T-shirt and jeans as he does in his usual expensive suit.
He waves us inside with a grunt and the impassive expression that seems to be a permanent fixture.
Alessio was right, the place is definitely minimalist, to say the least. There aren’t any paintings or decorations, just necessary, practical pieces of furniture in the spacious living room he leads us into.
“Where’s Sparrow? I figured he’d be waiting for us outside so we could start planning in the elevator,” Alessio jokes.
“I’m coming,” a disembodied voice shouts from down the hallway I’m assuming leads to the bedroom. “Don’t you dare start without me.”
A strange, electric feeling tingles just under the surface of my skin, and my heart starts to beat faster for some reason.
I frown as I drag in a slow breath and start to bring my hand up towards my chest. I stop halfway when I realize it’s trembling.
I squeeze it into a fist, release it, and squeeze again, but the slight quiver remains.
“Everything okay?” Alessio asks quietly.
“Fine,” I lie. I don’t know what else I would say. I’m not even sure what’s wrong. A panic attack? I don’t have the first clue what set it off though, other than the sound of Sparrow’s voice, and I’ll sound insane if I say that.
Xaviaro excuses himself to the kitchen to grab us some drinks, waving Alessio and me over to the couch to get comfortable.
I ball my hands up again, tight enough that my leather gloves creak slightly from the tension, and take a seat on the arm of the couch.
I’m too on edge to settle in. Maybe that’s all this is—too much adrenaline from knowing we’re going to make a plan to finish off the Reapers once and for all.
Alessio sits down on the couch, and I can see him watching me out of the corner of my eye, but I focus on my breathing and the sweet taste of the candy coating my tongue to distract and calm myself down.
By the time I hear soft footsteps coming down the hallway, I’ve managed to get my heart rate back to normal.
A petite man I’m assuming is Sparrow steps into the living room and my pulse stops completely.
It can’t be. There’s no way… But somehow it is.
At least I think it is. I’ve seen that face a thousand times over the past seven years.
It’s different though. Not just older, which makes sense, but less soft, lacking the easy smile that’s always filled my dreams, with dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in almost as long as me.
His hair is longer too, falling into his eyes as he stares right back at me, his face pale and his mouth hanging open like he’s seeing a ghost.
I hear the vague, distant sound of Alessio’s voice, but I can’t make out what he’s saying over the thundering rush of blood in my ears now that my heart has managed to restart and is beating twice as fast as usual to make up for the brief interruption.
My whole body is numb, but I manage to stand up anyway, and that seems to snap Sparrow out of his trance.
“No way,” he murmurs. “No fucking way.”
He’s moving and so am I, practically sprinting to close the space between us. We crash into each other halfway, our arms going around each other in a tight hug. I fist the back of his T-shirt, and he lets out a throaty sob, pressing his face into my shoulder.
Part of me always thought that if I did ever find the nameless man I can’t stop dreaming about, it would unlock all the memories I lost the night I died, but I’m as blank as ever.
Even if my brain doesn’t remember, my body seems to.
Nothing about his touch makes my skin crawl.
It feels safe in a way I didn’t know I’d ever felt.
It feels like a home I still can’t remember.
“You’re dead,” he rasps, holding in another sob as he pulls back and brings his hands up to touch my face like he’s expecting to find that it’s a mask or an illusion.
“I was,” I croak, and I instinctively put my hand on my own chest just to be sure I can still feel my heart beating.
Just like Alessio’s voice before, I’m vaguely aware of Xaviaro coming back into the room and both of them asking what the hell is going on, but we’re in a bubble right now and they can wait.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Benny? I fucking buried you.” He pats my shoulders and chest, still checking for signs that this isn’t real. “I’m dreaming, right? This is one of those fucking dreams where I’m going to wake up gasping and sobbing.”
He dreams about me too? I still don’t know who the fuck he is, but it’s comforting knowing I’m not the only one who can’t stop the dreams.
“Is that my name? Benny?” It feels strange on my tongue; familiar but unfamiliar. It sounds more like someone I used to know than who I used to be.
He gives me a strange, confused look, and Alessio’s voice finally manages to break through.
“He doesn’t remember anything.”
I nod. “I did die, seven years ago, and I haven’t been able to remember much of anything from before. I didn’t know my name or who I was.”
“This is your brother?” Xaviaro asks.
I tear my eyes away from Sparrow’s face to look at the hitman standing right behind him, his stoic expression hardened into suspicion.
Brothers? We’re brothers? That feels right.
More right than the name, even. I tug my gloves off and shove them into my pocket, then bring my hands up to his face like he did to me, running my fingers over the planes of his face to make sure he’s real.
A tattoo on the side of his neck draws my interest, but I can’t quite see it. He must notice the direction of my gaze because he tilts his head so I can get a better look. It’s a small sparrow. Another little jolt goes through me, and a tiny fragment of knowledge shakes loose in my brain.
“Sparrows were my favorite bird?” It comes out sounding like a question, and I guess it is. I’m not sure of much of anything right now.
A warm smile that’s a few degrees closer to what I remember stretches across his lips, and he nods.
“Are you absolutely sure this is him?” Xaviaro asks, his voice filled with the same suspicion that’s written all over his face.
Sparrow nods again, and then the smile slips.
“Who the hell did we bury?”
“Another nameless victim of the Reapers?” Alessio guesses, and my stomach clenches with sympathy for the dozens of young men just like me who were left to die all alone in that same ditch.
A tear rolls down Sparrow’s cheek, and he quickly wipes it away.
“Yeah, that makes sense. His face was so swollen and distorted, but he had the same hair color and body type. And you didn’t have any tattoos the last time I saw you,” he says with a tight laugh that borders on a sob, reaching out to run his fingertips over the tattoo peeking out slightly from the neckline of my T-shirt.
I brace myself for the crawling feeling under my skin from his touch, but it doesn’t come.
My body knows he’s safe, even if my brain is still trying to catch up to exactly what’s happening.
“Maybe I just needed it to be you so I could stop lying awake at night wondering when I would get that call to identify your body.”
My throat tightens and guilt churns in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Shut the fuck up.” Sparrow lets out a laugh that turns into a sob again as he pulls me back into a crushing hug. “You’re really here? This isn’t a dream or a hallucination or a fucking mental break, right?”
“I’m really here.” I squeeze him back.
He stops hugging me and grabs my face again, looking into my eyes in a searching kind of way.
“And you’ve kicked all that shit? I’m not going to have to go right back to worrying that you’re going to overdose?”
“I’m sober,” I assure him. “I’ve picked up a different dangerous habit though. I’m hoping you can help me with it once and for all.”
“The Reapers?” he says knowingly.
I nod. “The Reapers.”
ALESSIO
I still can’t quite wrap my head around what’s happened here.
It took an hour for things to settle down enough that we could get down to business, but it’s obvious we’re all still reeling from it.
Spettro is Benny, the brother Sparrow thought he lost. His death caused Sparrow to fake his own, to come to Wildcliff on a quest for revenge against the Sleepless Reapers, and ultimately to meet Xaviaro.
I can’t imagine how he must be feeling, or how my Spettro is feeling for that matter.
An insecure part of me wants to find some way to reassure myself that he’ll still want me and need me, even though he’s not as alone in the world as he thought he was.
As if he can sense my neediness, he casually puts a hand on my thigh and gives it a gentle squeeze as he tells us his idea for how to take care of the Reapers once and for all.
“Taking them out one at a time isn’t working. They recruit like crazy and when they’re offering all the drugs and helpless victims a new recruit could possibly want, it’s not hard to find members.”
“We need to take them all out at once,” Sparrow concludes.
Spettro smiles and nods. “Exactly.”
“Not an easy feat with two hundred bikers,” Xaviaro says. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
“Then your imagination is lacking.” Spettro smirks. “Every couple of months they get a massive shipment of the ingredients they need to cook. When that happens, they throw a rager at the clubhouse. No one misses it. No one.”
“So if we can find out when the next one is, all we have to do is block all the doors and light that bitch up.” I follow his train of thought to its obvious conclusion.
“Exactly,” he says again.
“How do we find that out?” Sparrow asks.
Spettro’s smile gets even wider. “I’m in their group chat.”
“The Sleepless Reapers have a group chat?” I don’t know how Xaviaro manages to call them fucking morons with his tone alone, but he does.
“Why does this feel too easy?” Sparrow asks.
“It won’t be easy,” I say. “The plan is simple though, which is a good thing.”
Xaviaro grunts and nods in agreement. “I don’t see any reason Lorenzo won’t approve this, but I’ll go ahead and run it by him. Alessio, you can handle explosives?”
“Of course.”
“Good, and Benny will stay on top of the group chat,” Sparrow says.
“Spettro,” he corrects him, and then gives his brother an apologetic look. “Benny doesn’t feel right. I don’t think that’s who I am anymore.”
A sympathetic smile flickers on Sparrow’s lips. “I get it. Who I was before…” He clears his throat and shakes his head. “It’s not the same, but that version of me is dead too.”
They share a look for a long second, and then Spettro reaches for my hand. He never put his gloves back on, so our bare skin is touching as he slips his fingers between mine.
“Great, so we have a plan, and now it’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment,” he says, and something in his voice tells me that as happy as he was to find his brother, it’s a lot to wrap his head around and he’s ready to go home and start processing.
We both stand up and Sparrow jumps to his feet too.
“Let me give you my number. You can text or call me any time, okay? And maybe we can get together for lunch or drinks or…”
“Sober, remember?” Spettro says with a quiet chuckle.
“Shit, that’s right. I swear, I’m going to wrap my head around this new version of you. Just give me a minute and we’ll figure it all out together.”
“We will,” he agrees, still holding on to my hand as he reaches out with his other to pull Sparrow into another hug.
They exchange phone numbers and agree to set up a plan to get together later this week, then we head out.
As soon as the elevator doors slide closed, he sags against me.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs, and I feel his hand trembling. “I didn’t know I could feel so many things at once. It’s amazing, but it feels so fucking out of control.” He clenches his free hand and squeezes mine again.
I take a chance and card my fingers through his hair. He lets his head rest heavier on my shoulder and blows out a shaky breath.
“If you need to get that feeling of control back, I’m happy to help,” I flirt, because I don’t have the first fucking clue what else to say to someone who’s just discovered that they have a brother and a past that they were sure didn’t exist.
He glances up at me and I see a wicked smile starting on his lips.
“I might take you up on that, slut.”
“Bring it on, Sir.”