Chapter 13
ELLE
“If you’re trying to get me to say that my father is a difficult man, then yes, I agree,” I say as I get more and more frustrated with Nico’s verbal evasion.
“Difficult is not the word I would choose,” he says. “Corrupt is.”
My father and I might not get along, and I’ll be the first in line to admit how much he absolutely sucked at providing me the emotional support that I needed after my mom died.
I’d even go so far as to admit that there have been some questionable things that my father has gotten himself involved in down at the police station.
But I chalk most of that up to the “boys in blue” being a bit of a misogynistic club that the cops and detectives, and even some in the judicial circuit, take part in.
As much as that doesn’t make it right, and as much as I’m frequently disappointed in my father’s behavior, it’s still a far cry from accusing him of corruption or being directly involved in covering up the investigation surrounding my mother’s death.
“What reason would my father have for interfering with the investigation of his own wife’s murder?” I ask. “You make it sound like my father is the bad guy here, but he’s not the one who pulled the trigger that night, or who sat and watched my mom get shot and killed.”
“I know you want to make me the villain in your story, Elle,” Nico says as the tension escalates between us again.
“And trust me, I could be the villain in many people’s stories—but I am not one in yours.
I did my best to save you that night, and I had nothing to do with your mother’s murder.
I don’t know who the shooter that night was, and I haven’t been able to uncover anything about it since. ”
“Hang on a second, do you mean that you’ve looked?” I don’t know why, but I’m surprised to hear that he would have delved into what happened to my mom any further than his own involvement in the alley.
“Yes.”
“Why? Was it because you knew I was tracking you and digging for answers?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “It was because I wanted an answer to that night myself. I don’t like it when there are unresolved loose ends.
I wanted to find out who would want to kill an innocent woman and the wife of a detective, and why.
But the only thing I was able to uncover was that the case surrounding her death was closed very quickly and lacked any substantive resolution. ”
I’m so angry over that fact. I was so young at the time that it wasn’t like I could press my father to do more or argue with him when he didn’t, and maybe my anger toward Nico now is a bit misdirected.
Regardless, I’m furious that no one other than me batted an eye over the elimination of a woman as wonderful as my mom.
“So, you think that just because you weren’t able to find out anything either, that suddenly means it’s my father’s fault?
” I lash out at him. “That’s rich. If my father made a mistake in his oversight of the investigation, I’m sure there would have been hell to pay.
He has a superior to report to, and it’s not like there weren’t other people overseeing the investigation, too.
Perhaps you should consider the fact that he was grieving and that he might not have been as clear-headed as he should have been.
Mistakes happen—you should know. You made one yourself that night by not acting sooner. ”
Nico grimaces as if my words hurt him. For a guy who prides himself on being detached and emotionless, he’s doing a poor job of keeping to that mantra right now, here with me. “How many times do I have to tell you that I did my best that night?”
“Your best?” My emotions are frantic, and my voice is nearing the point of shouting at him. We’ve been talking about all of this for over an hour, and yet somehow, I feel like I’m even more lost and confused now than I was before I drove all the way out here to his hidey-hole in the desert.
“How can that be true? You’re the Ghost. You’re best is supposed to be perfect.
You’re supposed to be able to see and hear everything, to act flawlessly and instantly.
Your name is whispered on the lips of even the most powerful mafia bosses as if you’re revered.
And yet all you have to say for yourself about that night is that you blame my father for a botched investigation and that you did your best? ”
Heat flushes my face. I can feel it warming my cheeks and stinging my eyes. I will not start crying. He won’t see any weakness in me. I refuse. Instead, I let my anger boil until I feel as if I might explode.
“You failed that night,” I grit out, fighting hard to hold onto my emotions and my grief before it overwhelms me. “You think that you failed on the night he was killed because you acted too soon. But on the night my mom was killed, you failed because you acted too late.”
Nico stares at me intensely. I can’t read his expression well enough to know if he’s going to discard my outrage or let it anger him to the point of doing something dangerous.
It doesn’t matter. I meant what I said, and I don’t care if he lashes out at me.
At this point, if I can’t get closure on the one thing that has driven my life for years, then what else is there for me to chase after?
But to my surprise, as the apex of our volatile confrontation erupts into a surge of heated, conflicted emotions on both our behalves, Nico doesn’t react aggressively toward me—at least not in the way that I might have expected.
He gets up and rounds the table slowly, as if he’s trying to keep himself carefully restrained and not act recklessly while emotions are running unchecked.
He stands beside my chair, and I get to my feet to meet him on even footing.
I want him to know that he doesn’t intimidate me.
The racing of my heart would beg to differ, but I’m not entirely sure that it’s intimidation causing that to happen or the nearness with which Nico now hovers over me.
His piercing cold blue eyes stare through me just as they have in my memories and dreams for all these years.
He might be the Ghost, but he’s too breathtakingly handsome to be an apparition.
I want to hate him so badly that it makes my skin burn.
But despite myself, I can’t stop wanting him too.
For a frozen moment, I hold my breath, and he holds his tongue. But then, that moment breaks.
“I didn’t fail that night in the alleyway, Elle, because I saved you.” As soon as the last word leaves his mouth, something cracks wide open inside of Nico. Without warning, he reaches out to grab me and pulls my body against his.
I don’t resist. I don’t even try to. I melt against him as he puts his mouth on mine, and I feel the ground shift beneath me.
After all this time, and all these thoughts, I’ve never actually touched him. It makes everything feel so much more real, less like a dream or a faded illusion in my head, as I feel his hand grip the small of my back and his tongue push between my parted lips to meet with mine.
He tastes like heartbreak and longing, perhaps belonging to both of us. And even though I know I should pull away, I don’t.
Conflicted feelings whirl around me as I twist my hand against his shirt, clenching the fabric in a small fist to keep myself from feeling as if I’ll implode with desire.
Every night since I was a teenager, this man has invaded my waking and sleeping hours.
Thoughts of him have become a legend in my mind, for all the wrong reasons.
And now, the monster of the Ghost that I’ve created in my head is suddenly the man that my heart wants.
My usual clear-headed, pragmatic way of approaching things, the psychological profiler portion of my brain, has completely turned off.
Now, I’m acting on impulse and pure, unbridled passion only.
If the kiss is any reflection of how Nico is feeling, then it sure as hell seems like he is feeling the same inner turmoil that I am.
It’s not a soft embrace, or a gentle pressing of our lips—it’s an almost primal gnashing of teeth and thrashing of heads as our hands grasp everywhere that we can lay claim to each other’s bodies.
It feels as if my chest is going to burst with yearning and as if my lungs will collapse under the sheer weight of it all as I try to catch my breath.
The kiss feels as if it lasts forever, and also not nearly long enough.
But then, my fantasy is suddenly pierced by reality as a single image invades my brain—the sight of Nico that night, crouched down beside the dumpster in the shadows, and the sound of my mother’s laughter right before her killer stepped out of the dark to shoot her.
My senses overload instantly, and I feel as if I might short-circuit, or at least, have a total panic attack. I put the palms of both of my hands flat against his chest and push Nico away.
As soon as he feels my resistance, he lets me go, staring in shock, chest heaving, his eyes wide and crystalline blue. He doesn’t say a word. He simply waits to see what I’m going to do next.
Here, standing in this kitchen with just the two of us alone in the desert and no one around for miles, things feel different.
But that doesn’t change who this man is.
It doesn’t wipe his ledger clean, and it doesn’t undo anything that's happened. And suddenly, the mix of all my emotions and the turmoil within me that wrestles between wanting Nico and wanting to hate him, is too much to bear. I feel myself breaking down into hysteria, and there’s no way for me to stop it.
I’ve kept my emotions bottled up and in check for so long that I have no idea what to do with them now that they are pouring out like a rushing river of uncontrolled feelings.
Embracing emotional vulnerability and letting myself trust are two things that I’ve resisted ever since that fateful night.
What if this is all a game to him? What if he lured me out here for this very reason, to distract me from searching for the truth?
Perhaps the Ghost is shutting me down because I was getting too close to finding something out?
Panic sets in when I realize how easily I let myself be blinded by desire instead of staying levelheaded and alert.
This whole thing, and all this time, might have just been one big game that the Ghost has been playing with my life.
“What if it was you?” I ask him as I take a few steps back, holding my hand to my chest as if I can force it to stop pounding against my ribcage. It’s loud enough for me to hear it in my ears, and I wonder if he can hear it beating out of control, too.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, looking equally as disheveled and disarmed as I feel.
“What if you are the man behind my mother’s death, and your presence in the alley that night was just a diversion to keep me from ever figuring that out?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know that’s not true. You saw the other man shoot your mother just as much as I did,” he says, sounding exasperated. “And you saw me shoot him as soon as he did it.”
“Yes, but maybe he was working for you,” I say as I follow my railing thoughts to a conclusion.
“Why would I have killed one of my own men if that was the case? Come on, Elle, you’re smarter than this. You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement.”
“I doubt you would even blink an eye at killing a man whom you hired to complete a task for you. You could have staged the whole thing that night.” The more accusations I hurl at him, the more I feel myself trying to create emotional distance from Nico so that I don’t let down my guard with him again.
“That doesn’t make any sense, and you know it,” he says with a furrowed brow.
“Think, Elle. You’ve been profiling me for years; you’ve got a whole character assessment of me strung up on the wall of your home office.
Does it fit with your narrative that I would have been the one to want your mother dead? ”
I shake my head because now I’m feeling overwhelmed and confused. He’s right. It doesn’t fit with the criminal profile I spent so much time compiling of the Ghost.
I rub my temples with my fingers and try to think straight. I wasn’t expecting any of this to happen.
“Why did you kiss me then?” I ask. Conspiracy theories over Nico’s motives cross my mind and make me feel irrational.
The kiss was wonderful—hell, it was more than wonderful, but there had to be a reason for it. The Ghost is only loyal to himself; he admitted that much already.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not a good enough answer,” I say as I get ready to head quickly for the door. I wonder if he’ll try to stop me. I wonder if part of the plan was keeping me here like some sort of hostage.
Nico cuts me off and blocks the door with his body, not because he’s going to force me to stay, but because he has something to say to me first.
“I kissed you because I needed to,” he says as his blue eyes darken and focus on mine.
I feel like everything inside of me is slowly coming undone. I feel like I’m swimming around in those intoxicating eyes of his, unable to come up for air and drowning in desire.
“I kissed you because I can’t seem to make myself stay away from you,” he continues. “Even though I know that it’s probably best for both of us if I do. But the fact is, Elle, that I’ve tried keeping my distance from you and keeping you at arm’s length, and my restraint is waning.”
Instead of pushing past him and running out the door, I hesitate. I just kissed my enemy, or is he? Now, I don’t know what’s real anymore.