Chapter 5
ELLE
After leaving both the wedding reception and Italy, I return to Las Vegas with little more insight than I went there with.
I had hoped to understand my past with the Ghost and heal my old wounds with Valentina, but I got no more than an inch closer to doing either.
At least the flight back to the States is long, so that I can close my eyes and catch a rest before jumping back into things when we touch down in Vegas.
People like Vincent and Isla Moretti have their own private planes to jet around the world, but I’m relegated to commercial airlines and connecting flights.
The stewardess on my last leg is friendly and gives me both a sleep mask and an in-flight Bloody Mary, so within minutes of the flight reaching altitude, I’m already dozing off.
Unfortunately, my sleep isn’t peaceful.
At first, the dream begins the way it always does—my mother and I are walking home from the theater, my laughter echoing through the alley, the memory barreling toward its inevitable gunshot. The smile on her face, the shadow at the end of the street, the weight of fear pressing in.
But this time, it shifts.
This time, the shadows give me something else.
He’s there. The Ghost. Nico. My fixation wrapped in flesh.
He steps out from behind the dumpster, not just a watcher anymore but a man closing in, tall and mercilessly composed, his eyes burning hotter than the bullet that stole my mother from me. His gaze pins me in place, freezing me with fear and something far more dangerous—want.
I should be a child here, but my mind betrays me. I’m no longer twelve. I’m me now—grown, aching, trembling as he cages me against a wall. The alley blurs, morphing into stone and candlelight, the wedding bleeding into memory, memory bleeding into fantasy.
“You’ve been searching for me,” he whispers, his voice a low rumble meant only for me.
My pulse stutters. “And you’ve been watching me.”
His mouth curves into something that isn’t kind but isn’t cruel either. “Always.”
And then he kisses me.
It’s not gentle. It’s hunger. His lips crash into mine, rough and consuming, my back slamming against the cold wall as his body presses into me.
My fists clutch his suit jacket like it’s the only thing tethering me to this moment.
His tongue slides against mine, smoke and danger and sin flooding my senses.
When I gasp for breath, his teeth catch my bottom lip, biting hard enough to sting. “Say my name,” he growls against my mouth, like a sin, like a dare.
But I don’t know it. To me, he’s only ever been the Ghost.
The kiss deepens until I feel like I might come apart in his arms, unraveling from the inside out. My body burns with it, desperate for more—
—and then the dream wrenches sideways, back to where it always takes me.
I’m twelve again. The gunman appears. The sound of the shot cracks the air, the smell of smoke and blood filling my nostrils. My mother crumbles, her hand slipping from mine, and I’m trapped in the horror I can never outrun.
Behind the killer, I see him again. Silent. Watching. The Ghost with the pale, unblinking eyes. The figure I’ve replayed a thousand times, wondering why he hesitated, why he waited until it was already too late.
The alley dissolves, the fantasy shatters, and I jolt awake.
The hum of the airplane presses back into focus. The seatbelt across my lap. The shuffle of passengers moving in the aisle. My lips still tingle from a kiss that never happened, even as my chest aches from a wound that never healed.
I tell myself it was just a dream. But my body says otherwise.
“Miss, do you need help retrieving your bag?” a man in a business suit seated next to me asks. His tone is polite, but the look on his face mirrors that of everyone else around him, one of impatience. It’s been a long flight, and everyone wants to disembark.
“No, thank you. I’ve got it,” I say, forcing a smile and grabbing my bag.
Honestly, even if the Ghost were on this flight, I probably wouldn’t even know. He has a habit of going undetected even in the most public of spaces.
When I get off the plane and step into the airport terminal, I realize I can stop calling him the Ghost now.
At least I was able to discover that during this trip, the connection between the Ghost and the man from my haunted past. But now I know he has a name—Nico.
The name rolls off my tongue easily, perhaps a bit too easily.
The one thing that I can’t allow is for my judgment to be clouded.
If I really want to get this guy pinned down and see how he fits into my past, then I need to be careful not to let any of my personal emotions or obsessive behavior interfere.
I’ve learned to harness and tame my emotional intelligence in order to keep myself emotionally guarded and closed off.
It’s much easier to walk through life like that, both on a personal level and professionally.
By the time I get home, I’m exhausted from the trip.
My nap on the plane was the opposite of restful, thanks to the dream I had.
I unpack my bags before getting ready to sit down with a cup of coffee and determine where my personal investigation is going to head next.
Las Vegas might be big, but it’s not big enough for Nico Vitale to hide from me forever.
I am just about to wash my clothes from the trip when a note falls out of the pocket of one of my pants.
I reach down to pick it up and am surprised to see that it’s a small handwritten note, scribbled on the corner of one of Valentina’s reception napkins.
Someone must have slipped it into my pocket without me realizing it.
Dear Elle,
Thank you for coming to my wedding. I saw you there, and I was going to come over and talk to you at the reception, but I guess I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
You’ve always been the braver and riskier of the two of us.
But I wanted to. You know that seeing you at my wedding felt like a painful reminder of the love and friendship that I lost back then due to a familial duty that I didn’t even want a part of.
Now, I’m marrying the man I love, so that chapter of being held emotionally hostage by my family is over.
That said, I feel a pang of guilt over what happened between us. I think I’d like to fix that.
Yours sincerely,
Valentina
I almost can’t believe what I’ve just read. Maybe attending Valentina’s wedding was more than just surveillance—maybe it was the first step toward mending what we lost. I press the note to my chest and smile, a flicker of hope warming me for the first time in years.
But how did it end up in my pocket? That’s what unsettles me. Valentina would never have had the chance to slip it there herself. Which means someone else helped. Which means he helped.
The Ghost. Nico Vitale.
Even from the shadows, he’s pulling the strings of my life, leaving me with breadcrumbs, daring me to follow.