Chapter 17
Ivy
I barely slept — maybe four hours across the last thirty-six, fragments of rest snatched between the Ghost ride and Killian standing on my doorstep.
The guilt has been living in my chest like a second heartbeat.
I met two different men six hours apart.
I held one while thinking about the other.
I’m leaving with Killian and I can’t stop thinking about Ghost.
I’m in the office, watching Ms. Rivera and the accountant gather their papers from my desk.
I had some papers left to sign after the meeting I had at her office.
I sold the majority stake of Vane Enterprises to the board, and all the properties, except for the mansion.
I’m another half billion dollars richer and another step closer to vanishing.
In forty-eight hours, I’ll be someone new. New name. New country. Killian beside me. The Ledger in my bag and enough money to hunt every name on it. My heart should be racing with excitement, but it’s heavy with something I can’t name.
I spot an unmarked sedan as I leave the office myself, and my stomach drops. The detective is already by the front door by the time I open it.
“Miss Vane. Do you have a moment?” The smile on her face is the kind that precedes surgery.
She doesn’t wait for an answer. She walks inside like she owns the place, pulling a thick folder from her bag.
“I’ve been reviewing your case. Something doesn’t add up.
” She opens the folder. “Twelve offshore accounts were drained the day before your father died. The access codes weren’t your father’s standard protocols.
Your kidnapper had inside help, Ivy.” Her eyes find mine.
“And I think that someone is still inside this house.”
Twelve. She found twelve. Not sixteen. She doesn’t know about the Panama accounts. But twelve is enough.
“If you were coerced, we can protect you. Immunity. A fresh start.”
If I confess to coercion, the case reopens and I’m trapped here for months. If I deny, she keeps digging. But if I run — if I’m gone before she can prove anything — all she has is suspicion and empty rooms.
“I’ve told you everything I know, Detective. I never saw his face. I have no idea how he got access codes. Maybe he coerced my father before —” I exhale sharply, tears running. “Before he killed him.”
“You’re lying.” Her tone is flat. She’s not even pretending it’s a question anymore. “You’re protecting him.”
“I’m the victim here. If you have evidence to arrest me, do it. If you don’t, I’d like you to leave.”
She turns, opens the door and stops. “When you run, Ivy —” She doesn’t look back. “I’ll find you.”
The door slams. She said when, not if. She’s not guessing anymore. She knows.
I rush to my bedroom and collapse on the bed with my phone. My body is shaking and my mind is split down the middle, one half screaming pack, run, find Killian, the other half pulling me toward a screen and a stranger who’s never been a stranger.
Ghost posted two hours ago. The overlook where he took me — our overlook — the Veridian Shore skyline at dawn. Every ending is just another beginning. He knows. It’s like he always knows.
I open our DM history and start scrolling. Not to reread — to remember. To feel the weight of what I’m about to walk away from.
The first message is from six months ago. I’d just followed @ghost_rides because his photos made freedom look like something you could touch. I commented something flippant on a sunset post, and he replied with three words that hooked me. Sunsets are overrated.
I messaged him that night.
What isn’t overrated?
Speed. Silence. The right person at 3 AM.
That was the beginning. A stranger on the internet who talked about freedom like he’d lost it and was trying to remember what it felt like.
I scroll further. The messages multiply. Once a week at first. Then twice. Then every night.
Three months in, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I’d gone quiet for two days. He messaged me first — the only person on earth who noticed I’d disappeared.
You went silent, Smoke. I don’t like it when you go silent.
I’d typed back through tears I couldn’t explain.
Some days the cage is louder than others.
Then scream. I’ll hear you.
He heard me. Through a screen, through a city, through whatever distance separates strangers who’ve never seen each other’s faces.
He heard me. Nobody else did. Not my father’s staff, not the therapist Malachi hired to keep me functional, not the hundreds of people at galas who looked at my face and never once saw what was behind it.
Ghost saw. From the beginning. Without being shown.
I scroll to the night I almost broke. Four months in, 3 AM.
I’m afraid I’ll never feel anything real. That I’ll spend my whole life performing and never actually exist.
He’d replied in seconds, like he was waiting.
You exist, Smoke. You’re the most real thing in my feed. Don’t let the cage convince you you’re not in there.
His words have always been like a nightlight I’d never been allowed to have.
And now I’m leaving. I’m leaving with Killian — the man who killed my father, who fed me, who kissed my forehead and gave me a name. Killian, who saw my monster and didn’t run. Who held my throat in his hand and told me to come back to him.
I should want only Killian. But Ghost was first. Ghost was there when I had nothing, when I was no one, when the only thing keeping me tethered was a scalpel under my pillow and a stranger’s words on a screen.
He didn’t save me the way Killian did — with bullets and money and blood.
He saved me the way oxygen does. Quietly. Constantly. By existing.
I can’t leave without saying goodbye. Even if it’s selfish. Even if it makes me a terrible person. Even if Killian would never understand.
I need to see you. I’m leaving the city tomorrow. Can we ride one last time tonight?
My heart is breaking in a direction I didn’t know it could break.
The buzz comes fast.
Midnight. Wherever you want to go, Smoke.
Killian
This is the last time.
I stare at the gear, and the thought sits in my chest like a stone. Ghost dies tonight. The identity I built — the Instagram, the rides, the midnight messages — all of it ends the moment I drop her off at the gates. Tomorrow, we leave as Killian and Ivy. Ghost doesn’t make the trip.
I knew this was coming. I planned for it. What I didn’t plan for was grief.
Ghost is the version of me that was allowed to be honest. Killian was built by Silas — tactical, brutal, conditioned. Ghost was built by me. The words, the captions, the way I talked to her at 3 AM when neither of us could sleep — that was the truest thing I’ve ever been.
Ghost could say things Killian can’t. Ghost could be tender without it being mistaken for weakness.
Ghost could tell her she was real and she believed it because Ghost had nothing to gain from the lie.
Killian has everything to gain. Killian took her off a balcony and killed her father and stole three hundred million dollars. Ghost just listened.
And she chose Ghost. Freely. Without zip-ties or dead fathers or ransom negotiations.
She followed a stranger’s Instagram, messaged him at midnight and told him things she’d never told another living person.
She chose Ghost the way you choose to breathe — not because someone forces you, but because you’d die without it.
Tonight I take that away from her. And she won’t know it’s the same man doing it.
I should tell her. I’ll tell her. Eventually. When I’m sure she won’t run. But tonight, Ghost gives her one last ride. One last goodbye. One last version of myself that she loved without conditions.
She’s waiting outside the gates. Black jacket zipped to her neck, hair loose this time, the wind lifting it softly. Her breath makes little clouds in the cold and she looks like a shadow someone forgot to pin down.
I pull up on the Panigale and pass her the helmet.
Her fingers graze mine intentionally through the glove.
She climbs on smoother now, like she’s been doing it forever.
Her arms wrap around me and she doesn’t hesitate — she presses her cheek against my back, and grips me tight, trying to memorize me through the leather.
I can feel the desperation underneath the composure.
I twist the throttle and her grip tightens as we hit the open road. I’m not going as fast tonight — not because I can’t, but because I don’t want this to end any sooner than it has to. Every mile is a countdown. Every turn brings us closer to the moment I park the bike and Ghost ceases to exist.
Her comm crackles softly. She’s murmuring to herself. I don’t need to hear her to know what she’s saying. She’s on the back of my bike, holding me, processing the guilt of leaving me for me.
I throttle harder, trying to drown it out. “You okay back there?”
“No.” Her voice cracks through the comm. “But don’t stop. Please.”
The subtle shaking of her ribcage against my back and the way her grip shifts from holding to clinging makes my chest tighten. She’s crying for Ghost. For me. For the version of me she’s about to lose without knowing she’s not losing anything.
The bike screams as I push it to 140. Everything blurs. The bridge opens up ahead and I feel her fingers dig into my chest through the leather. A laugh breaks through the crying — raw, startled, and involuntary, the kind of sound that happens when grief and joy collide at the same speed.
I ease off the throttle and stretch the moment until there’s nothing left to stretch. I kill the engine and the silence is different this time. Heavier. The kind that knows what’s coming.
She dismounts and pulls off the helmet. Her hair is wild from the wind, her cheeks flushed, and her gray eyes are red-rimmed. She looks wrecked and beautiful, and I want to take off this helmet so badly my hands ache.
She turns to me. I stay on the bike.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Or the day after. And I’m not coming back.”
“Where?” I keep my voice flat.
“I can’t tell you.” She looks at the ground. “Someone I owe everything to is waiting for me. But you —” She steps closer. “You listened when no one else did. You made the noise disappear.”
I tense when she takes another step.
“Please. Let me see you before I go.”
Everything in me screams to take off the helmet.
Every instinct, every want, every version of myself that’s tired of hiding.
She’s standing three feet away, begging me to be real, and I can’t.
Being real means the man she chose freely becomes the man she was forced to endure.
Being real means Ghost dies and Killian gets the blame.
“No.”
“Why? I’m never coming back. Why does it matter?”
“Because you’ll remember, Smoke. I want you to remember me as freedom.”
Because my scar would remind you of a warehouse floor. My hands would remind you of zip-ties. My face would make you realize the man who understood you and the man who took you are the same, and the freedom would curdle into betrayal.
She’s frustrated and hurt. “You’re the person who really saw me. Don’t you want me to really see you?”
You’ve seen me already. You just don’t know it.
“Let me be the ghost I’m supposed to be. And leave with the person who can give you what you need.”
Her eyes fill and the tears run and she doesn’t wipe them. “I don’t want to forget you.”
My knuckles crack against the handlebars. “We don’t forget the people who set us free.”
I nod toward the bike. “One more ride. Then I take you home.”
She stares at me for what feels like a lifetime. Her eyes are begging me to change my mind, to give her something — a name, a face, a single piece of the real me she can take with her, but I can’t.
I take it slow through the city one last time as Ghost. She holds me like I’m her last breath.
Her body molded against my back, memorizing every contour, every vibration.
Her breathing through is synchronized with mine, and I think about how this is the last time.
The last time her arms will be around Ghost. The last time she’ll press her face against this jacket and feel safe in a way that has nothing to do with weapons or money or dead fathers.
It never crossed my mind that this would be my last night too. When we leave Veridian Shore, Ghost doesn’t come with us. Ghost dies the same way he was born — in the dark, alone, with no one to mourn him except the woman who doesn’t know she’s mourning the man next to her.
The sterile glow of the rich and the rotten materializes in front of us. I pull up to the gates and kill the engine.
She dismounts and hands me back the helmet. I take it carefully, not letting our fingers touch. If she touches me now, I’ll break.
“Smoke?” I stop her before she turns. Why do I have to make this harder? “You’ll see me every time you feel free.”
And because I’ll be next to you for the rest of your life. You just won’t know it’s me.
“Goodbye, Ghost.” Her whisper is barely audible.
“Goodbye, Smoke.”
She slips through the gates, and I wait until her bedroom light flickers on.
I stare at the window. She’s standing there, looking out.
Looking at me. She can’t see my face through the helmet but she’s staring directly at me, the way she stared at the alley outside the coffee shop — like her body knows something her brain hasn’t caught up with.
I twist the throttle and the Panigale screams into the night. In the side mirror, her silhouette disappears.
Ghost is gone.
She cried tonight. She cried for choosing me over me. The absurdity of it should be funny, but it’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever felt.
Ghost is dead. Long live Killian.
I just hope he’s enough.