Chapter 19
GALINA
The murder is all everyone is talking about at school the morning after the news breaks. Even before I’ve rolled out of bed, my group chat with the girls is filled with buzz about the discovery of a second corpse in Hawthorne Hollow, and how freaked out everyone is.
Well…everyone except me.
Late last night, a fisherman pulling in discovered a body in the shadows of one of the piers jutting into the harbor: a man probably in his thirties, his throat cut, his eyes gouged out, and a fucking heart carved into his chest.
Yeah.
I went to Zane’s room after it hit the local news, and we agreed not to tell Papa and Dad. If they knew what’d happened, they’d be on campus in an hour with an army ready to lock both Zane and I up in a tower for the rest of our lives.
Well, I’m joking, but…ugh. Not really.
In the end, not telling them only ends up buying us a whopping eight hours. I’m brushing my teeth next to Ari in our shared bathroom, barely conscious, when my phone dings on the counter next to me.
I groan when I look down with uncaffeinated, still-bleary eyes and see “Papa” on the screen.
“Fuuuuck,” I groan.
Ari, who’s one of those supremely annoying people who can actually have conversations before coffee, sees who's calling and turns to grimace at me.
“Uh oh.” Her face brightens. “You want me to answer and pretend to be you?”
I pout, shaking my head. “They’ll know.”
“I don’t know,” she presses. “I do a pretty good you impression.”
“Right, but you’d be speaking in complete sentences at seven in the morning. They’d know for sure.”
I give her a weak smile and then answer the call. “Hey, P—”
“We're coming to get you.”
Shit.
“Hang on,” I groan, shoving my fingers through my red tangles. “The police haven’t said it was anything more than an accident—”
“An accident?!” Roman Nikitin roars through the phone. “Dochenka, there was a fucking heart carved in his chest! I’ll be there in an hour with thirty men—”
“Papa—”
“—Zane, too. You’re coming home, where I can protect you from—”
“Papa!”
He pauses just long enough to exhale heavily.
“Sorry,” he grunts. “I know it’s early, but we just saw the news, and…” He exhales again. “How would you feel about NYU? Or maybe a private tutor? I can call in some favors and hire half the Psych faculty from Harvard to come—”
“Papa…” I sigh. “Hi. Good morning. How are you?”
A snorted laugh comes from the background.
“Oh, he’s great,” Dad cackles. “Totally calm. Totally not pacing the fucking house like a lunatic.”
“Well I’m sorry that I’m concerned for our children’s fucking welfare!” Papa snaps.
My call waiting beeps. I giggle when I see that it's Dad. I patch him into the three-way call and laugh.
“Aren’t you both at home?”
“Well, yeah,” Dad sighs. “But your Papa is pitching a fit—”
“Val!” Papa hisses. “There was a goddamn murder—”
“Roman, baby, statistically there’s a murder in New York every twenty-nine hours,” Dad points out.
“Yes, in a city of nine million people!” Papa shoots back as I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose, desperately wishing I had coffee right now.
“Rome—”
“How many people live in Hawthorne Hollow?” Papa hisses. “Like seven?!”
“Papa,” I groan. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m okay, really. They haven’t released any info on it yet, but they’re calling it an isolated incident.”
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I look up and groan in appreciation when I see Ari in the bathroom mirror, holding out a steaming mug.
“You are a national treasure,” I whisper gratefully as she snorts a laugh and passes me the coffee.
“An isolated incident??” Papa chokes. “This is the second murder in just a handful of months in that town!”
“No one's saying yet that it was murder, Wreckage,” Dad says gently, using his pet name for Papa that always calms him down. “That guy could’ve fallen off a boat in the Connecticut Sound for all we know.”
“Yeah, with the heart carved into the chest,” Papa snaps. “Not to mention the slit throat and the gouged eyeballs—”
“Roman,” Dad mutters. “C’mon.”
Papa groans. “I’m just… Are you seriously not worried about our—”
“Wreckage.”
From the change in tone and the way Papa sucks in a breath of air, I’m pretty sure Dad just walked over to Papa wherever he is in the house and is now talking to him face-to-face, even though they’re both still on the phone with me.
“Of course I worry about our children,” Dad says gently.
“I am constantly worried about them at school. But I also know we raised strong, confident, street-smart kids. Driving up to Hawthorne Hollow and pulling them out of school because bad shit happens in the world won’t protect them from anything. It'll only push them away.”
A smile creeps over my lips. Then I end the call and FaceTime Papa. Sure enough, they both fill the screen when the video pops up.
“Morning, Peanut,” Dad grins one his famous lopsided, charming smiles at me as he slings an arm over Papa’s broad shoulders and winks.
Papa exhales heavily, but looks calmer than he sounded a second ago. He tips his head to the side, resting it against Dad’s.
My parents are impossibly cute together. They’re the type of couple who are, at first glance, complete opposites, and yet complement each other perfectly.
Roman Nikitin wears a full suit every day to work. He gets them handmade and custom tailored by a shop in London’s famous Saville Row, which means not only do they fit his gym-honed physique perfectly, but he also ends up looking like James Bond…if James Bond was also an Armani model.
Dad, meanwhile, is wearing a ripped Sex Pistols t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, showcasing his tattooed arms, still chiseled and heavily muscled even though he's in his late forties.
I genuinely think part of my attraction to romance books and happy ever afters comes from my parents, who have a freaking Hollywood-level love story: total opposites who were enemies before they crashed together.
Billy Joel’s Vienna is playing in the background now. I’m positive Dad just put it on to help calm Papa down.
And yes, I got my Billy Joel obsession along with half my genetics from my Papa.
“See?” Dad grins at me and nudges Papa with his elbow. “Does she look worried or freaked out or in need of rescuing?” He turns and smiles before he plants a big, smacking kiss on Papa’s cheek.
Papa exhales and gives me a once-over. “No,” he mutters grudgingly.
“How say you, Peanut? Do you need rescuing?” Dad says as he turns to me.
“Nope. I'm good,” I grin.
I am. For one, I’m firmly on team “isolated incident”, as the police are saying. But there's a second reason I’m not freaked out about the body found in town last night, and it's one I don’t plan telling anyone, least of all Papa and Dad.
Ari’s in her room getting ready for class. I crack open the closed door on my side of the Jack-and-Jill that leads to my room and glance toward my bed.
The black mask with a white crown sprayed across the front sits on my pillow.
…Exactly where I saw it when I woke up today.
My pulse skips as heat ripples through my body.
The Ghost Prince was here.
He was here while I slept last night and left his mask lying on the pillow next to me.
A rational person might be freaked the fuck out by that. But somehow, I feel comforted by it. Safe. Protected, I guess?
The truth is, yeah, I was more than a little freaked out after I heard what happened last night. Papa’s not wrong: Hawthorne Hollow is a small town, and not one but two unidentified bodies turning up in the span of just a couple of months is pretty chilling.
Then I opened my eyes this morning, saw the mask, and froze.
Not out of fear. Shock, maybe. Surprise, for sure. But then I just lay there, looking at the mask, and whatever anxiety I was feeling last night about an eyeless body with a slit throat and a heart carved into its chest just…faded.
I close the door to my room and lean against the bathroom counter, my attention back on my parents.
“I have an idea.” Dad turns to smirk at Papa again. “Instead of rolling onto the Knightsblood Campus later today with tanks and paratroopers…” He shifts his gaze to me, arching a brow. “What would you say to some fam time this weekend?”
“Like, come home?”
Dad shakes his head. “I was thinking more that your Papa and I could use some country air. Would it be devastatingly humiliating if your ancient, decrepit parents came up for a day this weekend to visit you and your brother?”
A wide grin splits my face. “I would love that.”
Papa immediately looks ten times less morose. His face brightens, and he flashes me a grin before glancing at Dad. “I think that’s an excellent plan.” He turns back to me. “I mean…if it’s not going to mess up anything for—”
“Papa,” I giggle. “Please come. I miss you guys.”
“Done,” he declares. “I’ll text Maks to clear my schedule.”
When he’s gone, Dad chuckles and shakes his head. “How far do you think he’ll get before he realizes I’m still holding his phone?”
I giggle, then my brow furrows. “Hey, who’s Maks?”
Dad rolls his eyes. “Your Papa’s skanky new assistant.”
I snort a loud laugh. “Skanky?”
Dad scowls. “Guy looks like he belongs in a Dolce ad.”
“Dad…”
His mouth twists. “Hmm?”
“You realize you’re the most handsome guy in New York, right?”
Dad chuckles. “Obviously.”
I giggle. “There’s no way you’re actually worried about this Maks guy.”
He grins. “Oh, I’m not, really. But it’s fun to tease your Papa about the new eye candy he hired. The kid drools over him…obviously. And your Papa is…”
“Oblivious?” I grin.
“Blind,” he laughs. “I swear, the man has zero gaydar, it’s insane.”
Again, I think this has to be a major reason I love romance books so much: my parents have this love story that just keeps getting cuter as they get older.
I mean, they can squabble at times. But underneath it all is this bedrock certainty that they are destined to be in each other’s orbits forever.
I want that.
I want someone who looks at me the way my parents look at each other.
Dad’s saying goodbye when Ari walks back into the bathroom to say hi to him. Then Papa comes back into frame, having realized Dad still has his phone. The two of them love Ari, so I say my goodbyes and then let them continue gabbing away as I walk back into my bedroom.
It's fine. My social accounts are all two-factor locked.
I close the door behind me, scoop the mask off my pillow, and sneak into my closet to stash it in the hidden compartment at the back. I suppose it's not that hidden, though. The Ghost Prince obviously found it if he brought my own sex toy to our meet-up at the lecture hall the other day.
I take one more look at his mask and trace my thumb over the side of it. Then I stash it behind my clothes, shut the closet door, and collapse back on my bed.
What are we?
I sit with the question for about three seconds before my face scrunches.
Great. I am now asking myself what label I should attach to the supremely weird “thing” I’m involved in with a man whose fingers have been inside me and whose cum I’ve swallowed, but whose face I’ve never seen.
A man who's gone down on me and made me see God as I exploded against his tongue, but whose name I don’t know.
And here I am asking, “What are we?” Really? It’s starting to feel like the better question might be “Which antipsychotic prescription drugs should I be on?”
Somehow, I’ve gone from being literally blackmailed by him, to willingly participating in what can only be described as “sexual exploration” after being told there was no blackmail, to this strange new place where I wake up with his creepy mask lying on my pillow as proof that he broke into my room while I was sleeping… and I feel comforted by that.
You need to get your shit together, girl.
This isn't a romance novel, and Ghost isn't some brooding love interest on the verge of revealing a devastatingly perfect face and tragic past.
He’s a guy about whom I know next to nothing who makes shirtless, masked thirst traps online and who seems to feel perfectly at ease with breaking into my room while I sleep.
The fact that I’m not completely scared shitless should be raising alarm bells in my head.
And the fact that instead it brings a smile to my face should get me committed.