Chapter 19
NICO
When I wake up in the morning with Elle in my arms, it feels surprisingly natural.
Having her there with her cheek against my chest and the crown of her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder feels like something that I could very quickly get used to and could quickly miss if she were absent from my bed—or in this case, the couch.
I wake before she does and watch her sleep for a few minutes before deciding to get up.
There’s something that I need to do, something that I don’t want her to hear.
So, even though I could stay lying here with her forever, I slide out from beneath her and get up, stretching out my stiff shoulders and reaching for my pants on the floor to put on.
Then, I walk toward my office, close the door quietly behind me, and make a call.
“It’s awfully early for you to be up, isn’t it?” Zara’s voice chides me through the phone. “I thought you were primarily nocturnal.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it was you at the nightclub last night, hovering over your laptop, who turned the ire of the Bratva’s attention onto Elle,” I say with as much audible severity as I can muster for this early in the morning.
“What was I supposed to do? I was trying to remain low profile, and she kept staring at me,” Zara protests as if that’s any excuse to nearly have had Elle mauled by a rival mafia family.
“It was me or her, Nico, and I was on a mission. I had work to do. Besides, you swooped in and got her out of there with only a few of her feathers ruffled, so no harm done.”
If she could see my face through the phone, she would be able to see the stiff frown and scolding brow I can feel on my face right now.
“You nearly got her killed,” I scold. “Just because you’re a hacker prodigy doesn’t mean that you can go around doing whatever the hell you want to.”
I have rarely, if ever, argued with Zara Vega before. She and I have not just a friendship but a loyalty between us that has spanned more years than I have kept anyone as a friend.
“She’s no good for you anyway,” she argues instead of backing down. “Elle Monroe is a cop’s daughter—a dirty cop’s daughter. You should stay away from her and find someone else to get horny with.”
Her crassness isn’t surprising. Zara likes to hide her true emotions under several layers of sarcasm and bravado, but her warning is. She doesn’t usually share her opinion on the personal matters of others.
“I can look after myself,” I say, still angry. “But the next time you think about throwing Elle to the dogs—don’t.”
I give her a second to squeeze in an apology, but when she doesn’t, I hang up the call.
Then, I hear some movement in the other room and go out to see Elle tinkering with the coffee pot.
“Here, let me help with that,” I say as I see her wearing my shirt and nothing else as she stands barefoot in my kitchen. “Like practically everything in my life, it’s flawed.”
She laughs, and the sight of her smile in the morning lights up my whole apartment.
“Let me guess, it’s got a cracked pot?” she giggles. “I’m starting to think that a few scars here and there are more like badges of honor.”
She reaches out with both hands as I walk closer and touches the scars running down my forearms.
“You never told me how you got these,” she says as her fingers trace along the lines of the scars that mingle with my veins.
“Trust me, it’s not something that you’d want to know. You already know too many unsavory things about me as it is.”
“It would be impossible for me to think of you as unsavory now,” she says as she stands on her toes to kiss my lips. “Just like it’s getting harder for me to see you as the Ghost.”
“Oh? Who do you see me as then?” I ask.
“Just Nico,” she says. “A man, flaws and scars and all. Not a hero, not a ghost, not a monster. Just a man who has done his best to do the right thing.”
Everything about Elle makes me melt on the inside.
While I stand in front of the coffeemaker waiting for it to brew, I start to think about that night in the alley. I want to make up for it. I want to make up for my inaction and for not stepping in to stop things before her mother was killed. I feel now like I need to make it up to Elle.
When the coffee is done, I hand her a cup and watch as she sips it while looking out my apartment window at the Strip in the distance.
That’s when an idea comes to me. There is still one thing that I can do to atone for the role that I played that night, and for the consequences that my inaction led to.
I can still try to give Elle closure by bringing her the men responsible for the actual act of murder that stole her mother from her.
I can bring her father to stand judgment before her, and I can find and deliver the killer who pulled the trigger that night, too, because while I might have shot him, I didn’t shoot to kill that night.
All I need to do is find out who that man is.
I’ll go back to the nightclub and shake down the Bratva in ways that only the Ghost knows how to do.
I’ll get his name and then bring him to her so that she can decide how to claim her closure over what these two terrible men did.
If I hurt or kill them myself, it will create a debt for me that will involve other facets of the mafia family system.
I’m not the one that the gunman wronged.
But if I bring the killer to face Elle and let her decide what she wants to do with him, that is playing by the few rules that the mafia has.
No one can deny me the ability to do that.
“I have something to do this morning,” I tell her when she turns around. “Will you be okay here alone?”
“You want me to stay here in your apartment?” she asks. “But I have work to do.”
“I’d say that after all you’ve been through, you deserve a day off,” I say as I give her a small kiss on the cheek before getting ready to go get dressed.
“Take a sick day, or a mental health day. Your schedule should be a bit lighter now that you don’t have to spend so much time hunting me.
I won’t be long, and I’ll be bringing something back for you. ”
Elle shoots me a smirk and agrees to stay at my apartment for the day while I am out. “Okay, fine. What is it?”
“A surprise.”
I go to get Elle’s father first, since he will be the easier of the two men to apprehend. He is technically on duty this morning, which means that he’s sitting in his patrol car outside one of the casinos waiting for one of his unofficial contacts to drop off a payout.
Over the years, there have been many times that I’ve had to get into the back of a cop car quickly.
It has enabled me to develop a certain skill in the matter.
I pull out a small, stiff wire from my pocket and walk straight up to Detective Monroe’s patrol car.
He’s so preoccupied staring at the building up ahead and waiting for his guy to show up that he doesn’t even glance in his rearview mirror until I’ve already stuck the wire into the lock and opened the back door of his car.
Honestly, you’d think by now that the city would invest in better security technology for its fleet.
It works to my advantage, though, so I’m not complaining.
“Good morning, Hale,” I grin as I slide into the backseat and point a gun at the back of his head.
He doesn’t stand a chance at being able to counter me in time. Not that he doesn’t try to.
“I don’t think that I would reach for anything if I were you,” I warn him.
“Trust me when I say that I would truly enjoy pulling this trigger and watching your brains splatter all across the front windshield. I haven’t done anything violent yet this morning, and to be honest, I’m kind of itching to. ”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he hisses as he pulls his hands back out where I can see them.
“That’s a rich question coming from a man who had his wife killed in front of his daughter.” I glare at him and then urge him out of his car and into mine.
My car is outfitted with better tech and security, thanks to Zara’s talented help. So, once Detective Monroe is in there, he can’t get out.
Next stop—the nightclub.
I don’t wait until they open for business, even though their hours are nearly round-the-clock.
I’m welcome anywhere, or at least my person as the Ghost is.
I’m not so sure that the open invitation continues to stand, though, after what I did last night, barging in and busting Elle out of here before the Bratva could sink their claws into her. I guess we’ll see.
“Gutsy.” The bartender snickers as I walk inside the back door that is reserved only for employees and “special” VIPs. “I didn’t think we’d be seeing you around for a while after that stunt you pulled last night. You know the boss is still mad as hell about it, right?”
“Your boss is not my boss,” I say, unfazed by his low-key warning.
“That’s right, I forgot. You work for no one, or at least that’s what the rumors say,” he chuckles as he dries a few glasses and hangs them upside-down by their stems above the bar.
“Although rumor also has it that you favor a few of the top players—the Morettis, for example, as being one of them. I guess that means you know one of their girls was in here last night, probably acting up to no good.”
He's referring to Zara, and I ignore him. I don’t know exactly what she was doing in here last night, but I doubt Vincent sent her.
He tries to steer clear of this place, too; it’s a cesspool for trouble.
Plus, as angry as I still am at Zara for having put Elle in danger, she’s still my friend, and I don’t want to stir up any more trouble for her than she’s already in.
“I’m looking for someone, a man just shy of six feet, unbalanced gait, has a tattoo of a pinup girl on the side of his neck,” I say as I describe what I remember about the shooter in the alley that night.
“Vlad?” he asks.
“I don’t know who Vlad is, but if he matches the description that I’ve just given you, then yes. Where can I find him?”
“Depends,” he shrugs. “What business do you have with him?”
“We have an old debt to settle,” I say. “Which is something that I’m sure you can respect.”
The bartender here has been working at this nightclub for a long while, ever since I can remember first setting foot in this place.
He’s seen a lot come and go, I’m sure, and he’s put up with a lot of crap.
I’m very good at reading people, and my impression of this guy is that he sticks to the “old school” mafia rules.
If a debt needs to be paid, it’s not another man’s business to get involved in it.
“Well, depending on how old your debt with Vlad is,” he says, offering a bit of unsolicited insight. “You might find yourself dealing with a man different than who you remember.”
“How so?”
“Vlad used to be a low-level hitman. One of the Bratva’s soldiers who was sent out on the easy hits to earn his stripes. You know how it goes.”
Unfortunately, I know exactly how the hierarchy works. I was one of those grunt-level soldiers many years ago.
“Anyway, Vlad has since climbed the ranks. He’s a high-level man now. Rumor has it that he’s even being considered for a promotion again.”
“Thanks for that insight,” I nod. “But I don’t care whether he’s a foot soldier or a don himself. I just need to know where to find him, and then I’ll handle my business and be on my way.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid again while you’re in here,” he says as he tips his head toward a door at the back of the bar. “I doubt the boss will put up with any more of your antics, and I don’t want to have to clean up the mess he’ll make with you on my bar counter.”
I laugh, amused that he thinks his overweight bully of a boss would be a match for me in combat. He must not have heard all the rumors about me, or he’d know better than to question my fighting skills.
I nod in thanks and then head for the door.
Behind it, Vlad, the man whom I shot and “killed” that night in the alley, sits polishing his gun with the stump of a cigar hanging out of his mouth. Some might say that I missed that night, but they’d be wrong. I never miss.
“I always wondered when you’d come back to try and finish the job,” he sneers without looking up at me.
“Never did figure out why you let me live that night. That shot you took was a brutal one, nicked my heart, and took me months to recover from. Nearly killed me, if I’m being honest. But it didn’t, and we both know that the Ghost has perfect aim, even in the dark. ”
“I kept you alive because I thought that one day, I might need some answers from you,” I say as I walk toward him with my gun drawn. “Turns out, I didn’t. I was able to crack a crooked cop and get the answers that I needed, even without your help.”
“Ah, you got Detective Monroe to talk? That’s impressive.
I thought that man would do anything to keep from admitting his crimes, even lose an eye or a leg.
Guess I was wrong.” Vlad puts his gun down and sets his cigar into the ashtray at the center of the table.
“So now that you don’t need me alive anymore, you came to kill me?
You know there will be consequences for that, don’t you? ”
“I didn’t come here to kill you,” I say. “I came here to bring you to justice.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?”
“Not in this case,” I shake my head as Vlad gets to his feet and walks with me out of the club, knowing that fighting me is useless. “In this case, Lady Justice has a name, and her name is Elle Monroe.”
“The girl from the alley?” he asks in surprise.
“She’s not a girl anymore. She’s the woman who’s going to decide your fate.”
The bartender watches me walk out with Vlad, looking surprised but staying quiet. When we reach my car, I put Vlad into the back with Hale Monroe and watch as the two of them exchange a silent look of realization that they are both out of chances to avoid retribution.
As I drive back to my apartment with my putrid cargo in the backseat to deliver to Elle, a smile spreads across my face.
This feels good—this action of taking matters into my own hands again.
I’ve spent the better part of my life frozen in inaction and watching from the outside looking in. Now, I act.