Epilogue
NICO
Icouldn’t be happier that Elle and Valentina are back to being best friends again.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Elle smile so many times back-to-back, unless you count the marathon love-making sessions we’ve been falling into every night this week, but that is a different kind of smile.
I may have decided to live outside of my Ghost persona now, but I still owe Luciano a favor for coaxing his wife to make that call.
“I could get used to this,” Elle says as she sits down at my breakfast table to take a bite out of the eggs that I’ve made.
I laugh because I’m definitely not a five-star chef, and I don’t have all the extravagant means that some of my mafia-aligned counterparts do.
But Elle and I are the same in that way—money and lavish baubles don’t impress us, authenticity does.
And right now, we’re both trying to live as authentically as ourselves as we can, together.
I sit down at the table with her, ready to talk about what today’s plans hold.
She’s been getting back to work, profiling a new case that the police commissioner has picked up and been working on, and I’ve been doing some soul-searching and dabbling in a few new pursuits that allow me to put my skills to good use outside of the mafia circles, such as looking into starting up a new training gym just outside the Strip.
We’ve both talked about disappearing into the Mojave and riding off into the sunset together, but we eventually concluded that we needed a bit more time in the city to do a few things that we had an aching to do before we went completely off-grid.
The desert still waits for us in our not-so-distant future, and in the meantime, we’re creating our “happily ever after” right here as we go.
The one thing that we both decidedly committed to doing was to walk away from anything that would draw us back into the depravity of the corrupt criminal underworld.
Sure, we both still have ties to that world, but I’m happy to put some distance between us and the crime syndicate that nearly killed us both.
Unfortunately, though, sometimes the things that you try to let go of won’t let go of you.
My phone lights up from its place on top of the kitchen table, and I reach to see who it is.
I’ve been waiting for a response from a property manager about a vacant building that I’d like to turn into a training gym and hoping that maybe this is him getting back to me.
But when I open my phone, I see two text messages, one of which is from an unknown number.
Unknown: Looks like you’re not in as much hot water as I thought you’d be in.
The boss said to tell you that your payment to the Bratva for all the damages that you and your girl caused has been received.
Nice doing business with you. Oh, and the next time you come to sit at my bar, you still owe me for that last beer.
I have no idea how the nightclub’s bartender got my cell number, and I have no idea what payment he’s talking about.
“Everything alright?” Elle asks as she glances at me with a worried expression.
“I’m not sure,” I say as I open the second text message.
This one is from Zara, and it’s unusual for her to text me unless she needs something.
Zara: Your debt has been paid. Consider this payment for my sins. You can tell Elle that it was nothing personal and that I’m sorry. You know I’d never do anything to hurt our friendship, Nico.
Attached to Zara’s message is a photo of a wire transfer, showing a significant amount of money being sent to the Bratva boss at the club.
Zara’s betrayal when she sold Elle out at the nightclub that night did indeed sting, but I’ve already gotten over it.
She and I have been friends for much too long for me to stay mad at her.
But these messages are truly unsettling.
It isn’t the money that unsettles me; it’s the uncharacteristic desperation hidden between the lines of Zara’s message.
Her tone in text never sounds like this.
She’s normally unapologetic, fiery, and tough as nails.
Suspicion twists in my gut that something isn’t right here.
“Something is wrong,” I say as I hand the phone to Elle so that she can see the messages. “Zara doesn’t have that kind of money. The only way she could have gotten access to funds of that amount is by stealing it.”
“And she’s got the tech know-how in order to do that?” Elle asks.
“Absolutely. She’s the best hacker in all of Vegas, possibly in the entire country, and everyone knows it,” I say.
“Which means that if she’s stolen this much money from some rich Bratva Don, she’s likely going to be discovered and in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
I know what she did to you at the club was wrong, but Zara and I go way back, and I can’t just let her get into trouble.
Especially if the trouble she’s found herself in is a result of trying to send apology money to the Bratva to repay my debt. ”
“I understand,” Elle nods as her eyes narrow with the same sort of instinctual caution that makes her so dangerously good at her job. “And I agree. Maybe I can help you figure out where she got the money from. I’m no tech genius, but I’m pretty good at tracking things down through back channels.”
Elle and I put aside whatever plans we were about to discuss for the day and focus on this new task instead.
Together, we dive deeper into the corners of the internet that can help us figure out what’s going on.
She uses the screenshot to trace back to a bank, and when the online sleuthing runs cold, we get dressed and head out to do some in-person sleuthing.
When we get to the bank, Elle acts the part of a prospective customer, garnering the bank manager’s attention while I slip into a back room and sift through some computer files.
So much for letting all of my Ghost skills fall away from me.
It doesn’t take me long before I find what I’m looking for—the man who owns the bank account Zara hacked into and stole from, Dante Marchesi.
Shit. Dante’s reputation is almost as notorious as the Ghost’s.
I quickly download the bank files onto my thumb drive and make it back to the bank’s lobby before Elle finishes up with the branch manager and anyone realizes that I’ve wandered off into parts of the bank I shouldn’t have.
A security guard is standing just inside the bank’s door, and he doesn’t even bat an eye when I walk back into the lobby and sit down.
They seem to be much more concerned with keeping the vault protected than with their computer files.
Seems to me like that’s an error on their part.
“Thank you very much for your time,” Elle says as she and the manager step out from his small cubicle. “I’ll look over all the information you’ve given me and get back to you with my decision.”
“Wonderful,” he smiles politely. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
Elle and I walk right past the security guard and back to the car.
“Well?” she says once we’re in the car with the doors closed. “What did you find out?”
“I found out that Zara is tangled up with a man named Dante Marchesi,” I say with a weighty exhale. “In the mafia underworld, he’s simply known as The Glutton.”
“Sounds delightful,” Elle says sarcastically as we drive back to my apartment.
I continue to tell her what I know about Dante on the ride. “He’s infamous for his ruthless indulgence, obsessed with power, addicted to pleasure, and relentless in his pursuit of pain.”
“Jesus,” she gasps. “He actually sounds downright terrifying. And trust me, coming from me that holds a lot of weight because I’ve crawled into the minds of some pretty terrifying criminals over the years.”
“And I hate to ask you to do this, but—”
“You want me to crawl into this guy’s head, too, don’t you?” she interrupts.
I nod. “To do what you do best and compile a psychological profile of this guy that Zara seems to have inadvertently gotten herself tangled up with. Knowing her, she targeted the first bank account that was easiest to hack without doing much digging into who the guy is.”
“I thought you said that he was notorious,” Elle points out as we reach the apartment and head inside. “Wouldn’t she have known not to mess with him if he’s as bad as you say? It’s not like a nickname such as The Glutton is easy to go unnoticed.”
“I doubt it,” I shake my head. “She probably didn’t bother to look at who she was stealing from, at least not hard enough.
Besides, reputations are usually built on top of rumors.
I’m not so sure anyone really knows the extent to which Dante partakes in the perverse pleasures that he’s rumored to.
Sometimes, men like him use tall-tale stories of how horrific they are in order to scare people off.
I need to know how much trouble Zara is really in. ”
“Okay,” she says as she reaches for her laptop and sets it up on the table. “Give me an hour and I’ll get you some answers.”
I leave her alone to work, trying to press my memory for any encounters that I’ve had with Dante in the past, while I hear Elle’s fingers clicking against the keyboard and the sound of her voice making a few calls and calling in a few favors in exchange for leads and information.
It’s impressive hearing her work. She’s fast and incredibly precise.
And she has more connections around the city than even I was aware of.