Chapter 44 Ghost
GHOST
GENEVA IS A SAVAGE.
I’m so in love. And so fucking turned on.
But now is not the time for dick-stractions. Not when Bisset looks ready to skin me alive. That’s fair since I’d like to do the same to him.
Geneva drags her gaze away from the chaos unraveling behind us to look up at me. “So,” she says calmly, like we’re not surrounded by armed men, “are we going to kill him or what?”
I grin. “Obviously. But not yet. We still need a name, Doc.”
“Victor Stanton.”
“You sure?”
She nods. “He approached me after the keynote and said he liked my speech. Stanton also said my insights into you were fascinating.” Her mouth tightens like she tastes blood.
“He asked me when I left Africa. It was mentioned so casually, I didn’t think twice about it.
But now? I think he was checking timelines to confirm my identity. ”
Fuck.
“You’re sure?” I ask again, quieter this time. Not because I don’t believe her, but because the magnitude of what she’s saying needs to be handled carefully. Once we kill Bisset, there’s no going back. No respawn mode.
Geneva nods once more. “He must’ve recognized my parents when I put their picture on the screen and said their names.”
I want to kiss her. To soothe her. But this moment isn’t about comfort. It’s about clarity. Vengeance.
“We’ll hunt him down next,” I say. “But first things first.”
I retrieve the knife in my pocket and slice through the bindings on her wrists. She massages the chaffed skin, making me frown at her discomfort. So I move on to more pleasant thoughts.
“Are we killing Bisset now?” I ask.
“‘Rule number two: You need to learn how to separate what you want from what you do.’” Geneva sighs. “I want to torture him. But I’ll settle for killing him instead.”
“Fair enough.” I reach into the holster strapped at my ankle and press the pistol into her palm. “Then we move on to rule number six.”
“Kill with intent, or don’t kill at all,” she says.
“That’s my girl. Here are two mags. Aim for center mass. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull.” I tap her chin. “Bunker down behind that vault and don’t move from this spot, no matter what you hear.”
She curls her fingers around the firearm with confidence before walking over to her hiding place. I swear to God, after we finish this quest for revenge, I’m proposing.
I check the rest of my arsenal. There’s a Glock at my hip, a backup piece, the sweet weight of a suppressor beneath my jacket, and my handy-dandy knife, of course.
One sexy Geneva. One psychotic Ghost. And a cemetery full of problems.
I love those odds.
I turn to Geneva, sweeping my gaze over her one last time. Her posture’s steady, grip firm around the pistol. Her dress is torn, her hair is sticking up in places, and there are smudges on her cheeks.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I’ll bring him to you,” I murmur. “Bisset. Alive but probably bleeding a little bit.”
She gives me a nod, but her eyes… Maybe I’m not the only psychopath present.
“Make him crawl,” she says.
I brush my thumb down her cheek, then slip into the dark.
The cemetery is bustling with movement. Bisset’s men are spread out, weaving between crypts, their voices clipped and tense. They’re searching for Fabien and getting more desperate by the minute.
Good. They’re distracted.
The first is closest to the perimeter wall, peering into an open tomb with a flashlight and shouting something in Creole that I don’t bother translating. I come up behind him and wrap one arm around his throat, the other driving a knife into his body. He jerks, twitches, then goes still.
One down.
The air’s heavier now with the fog coiling low against the ground, masking the blood soaking into the grass. I spot the next two removing bricks from the front of a crypt.
I angle around a slanted tomb, crouch low, and slide the suppressor into position.
One breath. Two headshots. Three heartbeats.
They collapse in tandem, dead before their bodies even understand what hit them. I walk between them without pause.
Numbers four, five, and six are so busy digging with their hands that they forgot to keep a weapon to defend themselves. Amateurs.
Two shots. One blade. Zero hesitation.
By the time the last corpse hits the grass, I’m already moving again, silent as sin and twice as committed. With the Planner now alone, I’ll be able to deliver him to Geneva.
“Bisset…” I call out to him like we’re friends. “Need a hint? You’re getting warm.”
I hear the rustle of movement and heavy breathing as someone shifts behind the vaults to my left. He’s probably trying to circle around behind me.
“You want to find him?” I raise my voice. “You better ask nicely.”
Bisset emerges from the shadows between two mausoleums, his pants and coat covered in dirt. Flanking him on either side are two men I’ve never seen. Reinforcements, and of course, they’re armed.
How many guys does he have on his payroll, for fuck’s sake?
One carries an SMG with a suppressor, the other a tactical shotgun resting too comfortably in his hands. Bisset holds nothing but a flashlight.
He delegates the violence.
While I delight in it.
“Where is my son?” Bisset asks.
“Over there.” I tap my chin with the tip of my silencer. “I think. Or it could be over there. So hard to tell in the dark.”
The man with the SMG stiffens, his finger twitching near the trigger. But Bisset—always the strategist—lifts a hand.
“Stand down. One of you go left and the other right.”
Divide and conquer.
I tilt my head, watching them split off like obedient dogs. Their footsteps echo between tombs, kicking up fog and loose gravel. Bisset stays planted, flashlight limp in his grip, his jaw flexing as he stares at me. He’s trying to understand me.
Good fucking luck. I don’t even understand me.
I start whistling the Jeopardy! tune, slow and off-key. His eye twitches.
Then it comes. A voice, strained and winded, shouting from the shadows to my left.
“Over here! I found him!”
Bisset jerks his head toward the sound. Instinct battling strategy. The father battling the Planner.
I lower my silencer and wave a lazy hand in dismissal. “I’m a man of my word.”
Bisset’s grip tightens on the flashlight. He glances toward the voice again, then back at me. For a second, I think he might stay. That pride or suspicion will win. But then he breaks.
He pivots fast, shoes slamming into the damp grass as he takes off into the dark, racing toward his son’s prison. But even as he runs, he keeps his head twisted just enough to keep me in his periphery.
I don’t follow. I don’t shoot. I just stand there smiling until he disappears from sight. Then I turn back toward the crypt where I left Geneva.
“Marco!” I call out.
“Um, Polo?”
Geneva’s crouched behind the stone, pistol raised. Her eyes lock on mine the second I appear, and I catch the flicker of relief in their depths. It gives way to confusion.
“Where is he?” she asks.
“He’ll be coming ’round the mountain, when he comes…” I sing quietly.
Geneva rises from her hiding place, slow but steady, her pistol still gripped in both hands. She eyes me, then shifts her attention toward the darkened row of tombs.
The footsteps come first. Then the flashlight beam. Bisset appears between the crypts, panting hard, mud streaked up his sleeves. His coat flaps open, and the look on his face is pure, molten fury.
“You lied,” he hisses. “You lied to me. He’s dead.”
I roll my eyes. “Only a parent could love his pedophile of a son. Ew.”
Geneva stiffens.
Bisset raises the flashlight like it’s a weapon, but the two guards flanking him are the real problem. One steps forward, SMG lifted.
I shoot him in the throat.
The second man lifts his weapon, but Geneva doesn’t give him the chance to fire it. Her shot punches through the night, catching him in the chest. He collapses with a grunt and doesn’t move. I walk over and shoot him in the head.
You can never be too careful.
I should make that rule number 7.
Bisset is alone now.
I raise my pistol and step forward. “Looks like your reinforcements’ reinforcements need reinforcements.”
Geneva mirrors me, keeping hers aimed dead center at Bisset’s chest. “What’s the line you used earlier? Oh, right. ‘I dismantle. I reconfigure.’” She glares at him. “Welcome to demolition day, asshole.”
Bisset doesn’t beg. Doesn’t run. But his hands tremble as he lowers the flashlight.
“You murdered my parents,” she says. “You left me with a nightmare and a question I couldn’t stop asking.”
Bisset meets her gaze, and for the first time, I see it: the hint of something close to remorse. But it’s too little. And far too late.
Geneva’s voice is steel. “The name you gave me was the answer… and the only thing keeping you alive.”
She pulls the trigger.
Bisset jerks as the bullet hits him squarely in the chest. He stumbles back, crumples to his knees, then falls onto his side in the grass. Moonlight catches the blood soaking through his shirt.
Geneva lowers the gun.
I step to her side, hand curling around the back of her neck, grounding her even as her breathing goes shallow.
“That was for them,” she says, eyes still locked on Bisset’s body.
“And this is for you.”
I pull her to me and kiss her.
To remind her she’s alive in this graveyard full of death.
She kisses me back, harder and fiercer. Maybe from adrenaline, or the aftershocks of firing a bullet into the man who ruined her life. But eventually she melts into me, fists curling into my jacket like she needs something to hold her together.
When I pull back, her eyes are glossy, her lips parted. Her voice, when it comes, is a whisper. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, love.”
I press one last kiss to her forehead, then pull away. Reluctantly. She hesitates, her fingers still tangled in my jacket like she’s not ready to let go.
Neither am I. But the cemetery is littered with bodies. And unlike me, Geneva didn’t have a silencer. I’d bet my left nut the police are on their way here.
I crouch beside the nearest body and pluck a still-warm shell casing from the grass.
Geneva watches me with a frown. “What are you doing?”
“Rule four is never leave evidence.” I glance up at her, fingers closed around another casing. “This is why I prefer knives.”