Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
ELVIS HAD SURVIVED JUNGLE firefights, high-value hostage extractions, and a mission in Caracas that involved jumping out of a burning helicopter.
None of it—not one damn second of that adrenaline-soaked chaos—had ever made his knees shake the way they were at that moment.
His stomach was a churning mess while his hands shook slightly, which is why he had them tucked under his arms as he stared out at the sleek casino floor.
The lights were too bright, and the colors too sharp, and he could have sworn the floor itself was about to lunge up and bite him.
He couldn’t stop the way his heart thudded like a war drum behind his ribs, and his fingers wouldn’t stop twitching.
And no matter how many times he replayed it in his head, he still couldn’t believe it. But it was her. It had to have been.
At least he thought it was her. It looked like her from what he could remember.
It had been fifteen years, after all, and they were just teenagers back then.
He was sure she had changed over the years.
Hell, he had, but there was no way he would ever forget Julia Moretti, the woman he had been ready to marry, even as teenagers.
No. No way. It had to be a trick of the lights, some glitch in his brain after too many shots of tequila last night. The woman he saw along the last row of slots was long gone. Fifteen years gone as a matter of fact. No trace. No goodbye. Just gone.
And yet…
He reached up and touched the promise ring under his shirt, pressing it to his chest. He hadn’t thought about Julia in years, and it had taken the Navy and even the SEALs to get her out of his head finally.
So why did he think she was in a flashy casino in Biloxi instead of wherever she had disappeared to?
He had never found her once she had vanished with her family. He had tried, but he was only seventeen, so resources were kind of slim back then. After a few years, he simply gave up, realizing she would’ve found him if she had wanted.
He chuckled. “But I have better resources now.”
“What did you say?” Hawk asked.
Elvis held up his hand, holding the man off, as he yanked his cell phone out of his pocket. He scrolled until he found Blaze’s contact number and then hit CALL as he blew out a breath.
“Yo,” came the reply, upbeat and caffeinated as always. “I thought you were busy with Sage’s brothers. How they doing?”
“They’re doing great,” he said. “Hawk and I will head back to join them soon. Look, I need a favor, and it’s going to sound pretty strange.”
Blaze chuckled. “Won’t be the first time someone from this team’s asked something strange of me. Shoot.”
“I need you to run a name for me. Julia Moretti. She’d be thirty-one now.
I need you to find anything you can on her.
Current address, social media, DMV records.
Hell, think outside the box if you have to.
She was born in Tupelo. Went to the same high school as me until she was sixteen.
Parents are Vincent and Carmela Moretti. An Italian-American family.”
There was a long pause. “All right… wow. You weren’t kidding. Mind giving me some context?”
“I think I just saw a ghost,” Elvis replied as he glanced back to where he thought he had seen her.
“All right. I’ll see if this ghost exists somewhere. Give me a few minutes. I’ll call you right back.”
Elvis nodded as he ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket. Hawk stared at him with questions all over his face, but Elvis simply shook his head. He wasn’t sure what to tell the man yet.
Hawk nodded as he moved to step to the side. “All right. I’ll give Levi a call and check in while you wait for your phone call.”
Elvis simply nodded as he leaned back against the wall next to a fake jade planter and tried to steady his breathing.
He hadn’t thought about her in years; at least not the way he used to.
He remembered everything about her, though.
Her birthday, that stupid song she liked that she just had to belt out when it came on the radio, the way she smiled at him when the lights were low.
He remembered how much they were in love and talked about a future together.
He had even bought her an engagement ring.
However, the sharpness of that pain, the gaping wound she left behind when she simply walked out in the middle of the night without so much as a note or a phone call, had dulled into scar tissue. At least he thought it had.
But seeing her now? If that was her he saw, that is. It was like pressing a thumb into that scar and finding out it still bled.
The woman had haunted him for years, especially with the way she had left.
She wasn’t just his high school sweetheart.
She was the plan. The future. His future.
The ring had been in his sock drawer, wrapped in a blue velvet pouch.
He was going to ask her after graduation, take her to New York for pizza and that Broadway show she loved. He was going to build a life with her.
He reached under his shirt and pulled out the small white-gold promise ring she gave him a few weeks before she had disappeared, wondering if she had kept the one he gave her.
Then one morning he showed up at her house to pick her up for school, but it was empty.
Not just quiet—empty.
Completely empty.
No furniture. No pictures. No dishes in the sink or curtains covering the windows. Just a patch of dead grass where her car, which her father had just bought her for her sixteenth birthday, used to sit and a mailbox hanging open like someone had slammed it shut too fast.
He had gone to the police to file a missing persons report, but they said families move all the time and there was nothing they could do about it.
That didn’t stop him from searching, however.
He called her friends, her cousins, who were just as shocked as he was that the entire family was gone, and even visited her pastor, who said he’d pray for the family but that he had no answers for him.
The only answer he ever got was that they were gone, and no one knew why they had left or where they had gone.
Her extended family couldn’t even get a hold of them.
It was like the entire family had just… vanished.
And now?
Now she was there at the casino? The same casino where he had a job?
What the hell?
His phone rang. Blaze. He swiped the screen to answer it, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would pound right out of his chest.
“What did you find?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Blaze said. “There was nothing to find. At least nothing after her sophomore year.”
He felt his brow furrow. “Come again?”
“Just what I said. I found nothing. There is no Julia Moretti anywhere after the year you gave me. At least not yours. There’s also no Vincent or Carmela.”
“What are you talking about? There has to be. I grew up with the girl, for crying out loud.”
“Be that as it may, she doesn’t exist now.
Not in any records from the past fifteen years.
I found an old yearbook photo and ran it through facial rec, allowing for the passing of years and her getting older, and came up empty.
There’s no DMV, no voter registration, no credit history, nada.
And before you worry and ask, there’s no death certificate anywhere either. She’s not dead, just gone.”
“Jesus.”
“Elvis, I don’t know what to tell you. If you actually saw her, then someone scrubbed her clean.
Witness Protection maybe? Some deep cover shit?
No, that wouldn’t explain her family’s disappearance.
WIT-SEC, definitely. Unless, of course, her family was big-time criminals.
I don’t know, to be honest, but it’s all I can come up with at the moment. I’ll keep digging though.”
He sighed, running a hand over his face. “Thanks, Blaze. I appreciate it.”
He ended the call, whispering another “Thanks,” even though it felt like saying thank you for a knife in the gut.
He struggled to think of some reason her family would have gone into Witness Protection back then, but nothing came to mind—no major news story, no scandal, nothing.
Still, he was a kid back then and didn’t really pay attention to the news, so doubted he’d even really know. However, it made no sense.
His hands felt icy, and he had no idea when that had happened.
“Elvis?”
He turned, noticing Hawk leaning against a wall a few feet away, watching him with those stormy gray eyes that always came across as unreadable. He held a quiet patience that made him a damn excellent tracker, never pushing, always watching. “Briefing’s in five. We need to scoot.”
Elvis gave a curt nod. “Yeah. Right behind you.”
But his head wasn’t in the meeting. It was barely in the casino.
When he entered the small room, sharp suits and tighter smiles huddled around the conference table.
Levi and his team stood off to one side, going over tactics with the casino surveillance team.
Hawk crossed the room to join them, and Elvis knew he should do the same thing, getting zeroed in on the task ahead, taking notes and preparing for his role in the night’s activities.
Yeah. That’s what he should have been doing.
However, as soon as he stepped into the room, he saw her, and then he saw nothing else.
She stood there, talking with the hotel team like she belonged and always had, like she wasn’t a ghost chewing at the edges of his memory.
She was in a sleek navy blouse and black slacks, with a tablet in hand like it was her lifeline.
Her hair was longer than he remembered, darker even, because she had definitely been a blonde.
She seemed more mature, but then again, the last time he saw her she was only sixteen.
There was no hesitation in her movements, and no flicker of recognition in her gaze as it passed over him.
But he knew.
God help him, he knew.
She stood across the room, casually reviewing something with the head of hotel security, nodding, her mouth moving with practiced confidence.
There was no doubt she knew what she was talking about, but why was she even there?
What was her role, and why hadn’t Levi listed her involvement in the night’s security?
However, even though there was no doubt in his mind that she was his Julia, her name badge read Delaney Rhodes, and as he looked closer, he saw the name of her company: Obsidian Analytics. He remembered the name from Levi that morning.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He could only stand there and clench his hands into tight fists.
What the hell was going on? She had a new name? Why? He stared at the new, polished version of herself, seeing no trace of the girl who used to fall asleep on his chest while watching Blue Hawaii.
He thought about the Elvis trivia she used to roll her eyes at.
The way she pretended to be annoyed but never changed the channel.
How she watched him dance like a fool to Jailhouse Rock in the middle of the street when he got his first motorcycle.
The way she kissed him like it was a promise she meant to keep.
He thought of all the plans for the future they had made together, the life they had planned and dreamed about every chance they could.
And then—she was gone.
Simply vanished.
And now she stood there, just a few feet away, pretending he didn’t exist, and that she didn’t know him. How could she not recognize him?
That was only one of the million questions swirling around his head right then. And he wanted to rush over there and demand answers.
But not right there. He couldn’t afford to make a scene. Not there. Not in front of the casino brass and a bunch of corporate contractors huddled around monitors and blueprints. He couldn’t risk anything screwing up this gig for the Silvers. Sage would never let him live it down.
So instead, he sat through the meeting with every nerve in his body on fire, barely hearing the briefing, the mention of cybersecurity threats, or the local law enforcement liaison’s input.
He simply stared at her hands, the same hands that used to trace circles over his ribs while they sprawled on a blanket in his backyard.
How did she make it through the past fifteen years without leaving a single breadcrumb? And why, after all the plans they had made, the promises they gave to each other, didn’t she ever look back?
By the time the meeting wrapped, he was ready to put his fist through a wall. Instead, he eased himself to his feet and crossed the room just as she turned toward the exit.
“Excuse me,” he said, calm as ice, as if his insides weren’t a trembling mess.
She turned, and just for a second, he saw her eyes flare wide with what he took as recognition before she schooled her face once more into something neutral, more professional. “May I help you?”
She could change her hair color, but she couldn’t change her voice.
“Holy shit, it’s you. It’s really you.”
She cocked her head to the side. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
His heart stuttered as he took a step back like she’d slapped him. “Don’t do that. Don’t play dumb.”
“I think you have me confused with someone else.”
“The hell I do.”
She sighed as she glanced around at the others, a panic look crossing her face. “Look, I’m not sure—”
He took a step closer, lowering his voice as he cut her off.
“You just disappeared on me. No goodbyes, no note. You were just… gone. You said you wanted to get married after school, remember? You said you wanted to be together forever. But then you left. You just… left. And now,” he pointed at her nametag, “you’re not even you anymore? ”
Her eyes flicked around once more as she took another slow breath. “Look, as I said, I’m not sure who you think I am, but I promise you, I’m not that person.”
“The hell you’re not.”
They stood in silence for a moment too long, the air charged with everything unsaid.
“I really don’t know what to tell you,” she said, holding the tablet over her chest like a shield. “But I need to get back to work. I would think you needed to as well.” She gave a quick dip of her head. “Have a good day.”
She jerked around and walked away, the click of her heels sounding like exclamation marks on a sentence that never ended.
And him?
He simply stood there, lost in a moment that had waited fifteen years to break him all over again.