Chapter 11
ELLE
“Elle, did you consider someone closer to you might be hiding the villain you seek?”
Nico’s question doesn’t register in my head at first. But then, as he goes on to call out the cops, I see where this is leading.
“The police department, and many of the detectives who work within it, are corrupt,” he says assuredly.
“I’m not saying that all cops are dirty and that all the higher-level detectives are compromised, but I’d wager to say that the majority are.
And that night, there was a case to be made surrounding an investigation into your mother’s murder.
But there was nothing. Don’t you find it strange that the wife of a city detective was shot at point-blank range in the middle of an alleyway on the Vegas Strip and no investigation was launched? ”
“Of course, I find it strange,” I say, sounding annoyed. “But what exactly is it that you’re getting at?”
“Come on, Elle. You’re smart. Smarter than most. Use your head.”
The truth is that I don’t want to use my head, not with this.
I’ve questioned why my father didn’t push harder for answers for years.
He had the authority. He had resources at his disposal.
But yet, he let it all simply slip away.
I told myself that it was because he was protecting me, that he knew I was already traumatized by what I’d seen and gone through, and that he was just trying to make it all go away so that I could try to rebuild my life.
It was a rather weak plot that I built for myself, which would have been more convincing if he'd actually been supportive of me after the incident.
But all my father did was stick me in therapy and shove me off to a private academy.
He never once talked to me about that night or what I saw.
It was as if he just wanted to erase it from my memory completely.
I suppose if I had thought harder on it, I would have entertained the possibility that maybe he was being threatened to cover it up, or that he simply couldn’t deal with the loss himself and wasn’t as strong as he liked to portray himself as being.
Or maybe even he knew there was corruption in the force and chose to look the other way for a paycheck.
Honestly, I’m not sure which sin my father can lay claim to, but I know which one Nico can—his inaction that night cost my mother her life.
“My head?” I shoot back at him. “Where was your head that night, Nico? Or sorry, should I call you The Ghost? Because you were doing an excellent job at pretending, you weren’t even there when my mom took a bullet to the chest and bled out on the street.
Perhaps you were so traumatized by your own past that you froze and couldn’t bring yourself to act fast enough to save her.
That sucks, but at least there’s a psychological reason to blame for it.
But you ran away from the alley. I tried to run after you, and you just left me there. ”
“I didn’t just leave you there,” he argues. “I saved your life. And I wasn’t running away from anything, I was—”
Nico cuts his sentence short.
“You were what?” I press.
He shakes his head, suddenly tight-lipped. “I’ve already said too much.”
“Fuck that,” I growl. “Finish your goddamn sentence. You were what?”
“I was chasing after someone else.”
For a moment, I’m stunned. There were only four people in that alley that night—me, my mom, the Ghost, and the killer who shot my mother.
“Never mind,” Nico says quickly, pivoting once he realizes he opened Pandora’s box. “What I’m trying to say is that your father has been implicated in many, many scandals involving corruption. I think you’d be wise to question why an investigation into your mother’s murder wasn’t pushed for.”
“You’re just trying to change the topic and take the focus of all of this off yourself.”
“No, I’m trying to expose the fact that your father isn’t who you think he is, Elle.”
“This entire conversation is about you, and the night my mom was murdered. This has nothing to do with my father,” I argue, even though I’ve been carrying these exact questions around in my chest for years. My father and I have never been close, more so since my mother’s death.
I can see the anger flare in Nico’s eyes as he looks back at me.
“I wasn’t the one who shot and killed your mother,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I also wasn’t the one who covered up whatever happened that night.”
“True,” I say, feeling angry enough to misdirect all of my rage even though I know he’s finally trying to communicate with me after all this time. “You were just the one who failed to save her and then ran away.”
We both sit there locked in a stare. Both angry and frustrated, and both unsure what to say next.
I came here for answers, and I thought that he would have them.
But what if he doesn’t? What if Nico is telling the truth, and he doesn’t know who killed my mom?
What if he did his best, and his best meant that he was only able to save me and not her?
And what if my father did have something to do with the cover-up?
As tensions rise between us to the point of boiling over, and the two of us emotionally spar back and forth, I start to wonder what Nico’s actual goal is in bringing me here. Is it to open lines of communication between us, or is it to expose something else?
“Why am I here?” I ask, blurting out the desperate frustration that I feel. I still haven’t gotten answers relating to why he didn’t shoot my mother’s killer before he killed her. Instead, I’m being baited into talking about why my father may have failed to investigate it well enough.
“You’re here to learn the truth,” Nico says. “About me, about what happened that night, and maybe even about yourself and those who are closest to you.”
“You still haven’t told me the one thing that I want to know,” I scoff.
“I’ve asked you repeatedly why you didn’t shoot before that man killed my mom.
And from what I can gather based on your very vague explanations, you don’t know who he was and don’t know why you didn’t shoot him earlier.
Am I missing anything? Because if that’s the truth, then consider me underwhelmed.
It certainly does not live up to the reputation of the notorious Ghost Assassin.
It makes you sound like any other of my criminal profiles—desperate, damaged, and deranged. ”
“You know what your problem is?” he asks combatively.
“No, please tell me,” I say as I roll my eyes at him.
“You want to diagnose everyone other than yourself. You can’t see your own compulsion, your own bias, or even your own family for what they actually are.
You’re so desperate to blame that night on me, you’ve failed to look objectively at everything else.
For fuck’s sake, Elle, stop and think about it.
Why would I want to kill your mother? She wasn’t involved in anything at all other than being a mother to you and the innocent wife of a crooked cop. ”
“I don’t know why,” I frown at him. “But I—”
“That’s exactly my point,” Nico interrupts.
“If your reputation is as good as I’ve heard it is, then after all the digging around into my life and trying to get into my head, don’t you think you’d be able to answer that question by now?
You’re one of the best criminal profilers in Vegas.
If you can’t answer why you think I’m to blame, then maybe you should consider the fact that I am not to blame and someone else is. ”