Chapter 12
NICO
Trying to get Elle to see that I’m not the villain in her story is nothing short of exhausting.
I know she sees it. She’s too smart not to.
She’s just being stubborn because if she admits to herself that she’s been chasing nothing more than a ghost all this time, then she’ll have to admit that the boogeyman that changed her life forever might still be out there.
I don’t understand how she could be so blind to the fact that her father’s corruption runs deep in this city.
If there were foul players to whom he owed a favor to, or who levied a threat against him, I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to have considered his wife collateral damage and hid the whole thing.
Elle is resistant to me exposing the truths about her father’s challenging relationship with morality and ethics, but she’s not dumb.
Somewhere deep inside, she knows that I’m telling the truth, and she knows I’m right.
“What is it that you want from me?” she asks as she furrows her brow.
Even when she’s frustrated and upset, she’s still lovely. It’s confusing to deal with someone like this—someone who I want to push away and pull closer at the same time.
“I want you to wake up and see the truth and the danger all around you before you wind up sharing the same fate as your mother,” I say without holding back.
“Is that a threat?”
“Of course not. If I wanted to kill you, then you’d be dead by now.” I can’t help but chuckle at that. “And I sure as hell wouldn’t have saved your life and put up with your constant intrusiveness in my life if I wanted you gone.”
My choice of words raises the heat between us, but not the argumentative kind of heat—something else.
“I want you to stop digging and walk away from whatever happened that night,” I say as I try to keep my voice steady. “I’ll handle the killers in this city. You can keep profiling them, but drop this.”
“What, are you some sort of vigilante now?” she laughs sarcastically. “I thought you were part of the Bratva.”
“I am. And I’m neither a hero nor a vigilante here. But when I decide to protect something, I protect it to the ends of the earth. It’s just how I was made.”
For a second, Elle looks confused. “And you’ve decided to protect me?” she asks. “Why?”
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t think I even knew it back when I saved her life in the alley that night. But there is something else on top of all of those uncertain feelings that drives me forward, a blurred line between justice and vengeance.
“I couldn’t save my brother,” I say. “I trusted the people around us who were supposed to be on our side and keep us safe. I’m afraid that you might be doing the same thing.”
Elle’s mouth opens as if she’s about to say something, but then she quickly shuts it again. To my utter surprise, she is finally speechless and without any further questions to bombard me with, at least for now. When she finally speaks, she sounds less sure of things than she did before.
“I came here for answers, and you haven’t given me much,” she grumbles. “At least not the answers that I need in order to move on from all of this.”
“You will never get all the answers that you need to move on,” I say, speaking from experience. “Trust me. Sometimes you need to be able to move on without the closure that you seek.”
“I don’t think I can do that. I’ve spent years of my life trying to solve this. You’re the only thing that’s kept me connected to that night, and to my mom.”
I can empathize with what she’s going through, even though I don’t want to give in to feelings like empathy at all. But just this once, I’m going to have to pause my brother’s warning so that I can give Elle a piece of learned advice.
“Your mother will always be a part of you, Elle, just like my brother will always be a part of me,” I say.
“And you don’t need to take up a mantle or a new identity in order for that to happen.
You just need to make peace with it and carry on with your life without carrying the burden of her death on your shoulders.
You feel like you need answers, but you’re looking in the wrong place.
I’m not the one who pulled those strings. ”
“But you do have strings that you can pull, don’t you?” she asks. “You have many connections in the mafia, with all the big players.”
“If any of them were involved, I would have known about it. The families have small circles where rumors and whispers abound.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asks as she gets ready to use my own words against me. “You told me yourself that you don’t work for anyone and that you don’t trust anyone. Maybe they’re just not telling you because they know you let me live.”
“No one knows what happened in that alley besides you and me,” I say with certainty.
“And like I’ve said already, I’d be much more suspicious of the lead detective on that case, your father, than I would be of a handful of mafia bosses who couldn’t care less about an innocent woman whose sole focus in life was on raising her daughter to be a good woman in a city full of terrors. ”
Elle’s face sours with continued disappointment. “I’m not going to stop looking into you,” she says as if she’s challenging me to make her. “You’re the only piece of that puzzle that I have.”
“No, I’m not.”
We’re at a standstill. She refuses to open her mind to the possibility that her father was involved in her mother’s murder, and I refuse to admit to myself that this is all turning into so much more than just protecting her.
We both came here for answers. She wanted to know why I didn’t shoot first that night, and I wanted to know what kept driving her to chase after me.
Yet here we are, both dancing around the answers to our most important questions, and neither of us is ready for the truth.