Chapter 3
ISABELLA
The door explodes inward and my world crashes. Wood splinters. The frame cracks. I’m on my feet before I register the movement, chair rolling away behind me, spinning to face the threat with my heart slamming against my ribs.
And then he’s there. Filling the doorway like he was built to block out light. Gun raised and steady and pointed at my head.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Years of hiding, of being invisible, of being Ghost, and the scream won’t even form.
My back hits the edge of my desk. My hands fly up on instinct. Palms out. Universal surrender. The monitors glow blue behind me, casting my shadow toward him like an accusation.
My mind defaults to its natural setting under pressure.
Catalogs. Parses. Breaks down the threat into manageable data points.
Male. Tall. Broad across the shoulders in a way that suggests muscle gained through everyday use, not vanity.
Dark hair, face shadowed by the hallway light behind him.
Each step is measured. Economical. Controlled.
A man who doesn’t rush. He already knows how this ends.
The gun hasn’t wavered. Not even a tremor. Professional.
Which means one of the families tracked me down.
I keep my hands up. Keep my back pressed against the desk. No sudden movements. The knife taped underneath wouldn’t do shit against a bullet anyway. Instead of begging, I do what I always do when the situation is hopeless.
I open my mouth.
“If you’re going to kill me, at least tell me which family sent you.” My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to. “Professional curiosity.”
He doesn’t answer. Just steps into the apartment, silent and controlled, moving past the ruined frame without a glance. The door itself hangs crooked on one hinge, useless now.
The blue glow catches his face as he moves closer, and my stomach drops through the floor.
I know that face. Three hundred pages of compiled data. Kill counts and known associates and a photograph pulled from a surveillance feed eighteen months ago.
Lorenzo Santoro. The Santoro enforcer. The underboss.
Shit.
Of all the families I’ve poked, the Santoros sent their best.
“Strong silent type,” I manage, arms still up, desk digging into my lower back. “Great. Look, I’ve had a shitty few years, so if we could speed this along.”
“Ghost.” One word. His voice is rough, like he doesn’t use it often. Like words sit heavy in his throat.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re Ghost.” He takes another step forward. I press harder into the wood, palms still out, pulse hammering in my throat. “The hacker.”
Goddamn it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t.” Another step. Closer now. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to keep his face in view, and my vulnerable position sends a spike of heat down my spine.
Near enough that his eyes sharpen in the blue glow of my screens.
Dark. Flat. Empty in a way that turns my blood cold.
Near enough now to smell him — gun oil and sandalwood underneath, and my skin prickles, the fine hairs on my arms standing on end.
“I’ve been hunting you for eight months. Don’t try to lie to me now.”
A flush crawls up my nape. My raised hands won’t stop shaking.
Focus. He’s here to kill you.
Eight months. He’s been hunting me for eight months, and I never saw him coming.
My chin lifts. Some stupid survival instinct that doesn’t know when to quit.
“Fine.” The word tastes like surrender. “I’m Ghost. Congratulations. You found me. Now what?”
He doesn’t answer. Just studies me, head to toe, with a stare so thorough it peels me apart layer by layer. Disassembled into components. Weighed and measured and found what? Wanting? Useful?
His face gives nothing away. But his gaze lingers. On my face. My throat. The pulse jumping there for him to read like a confession.
Heat coils low in my stomach. My thighs press together.
“You’re not what I expected,” he says. His voice is low. Rough at the edges. The sound vibrates through my chest, and my lungs forget how to work.
“Sorry to disappoint.” The sarcasm rises like a reflex. “Were you hoping for someone taller? More masculine? Less likely to have eaten ramen for the third day in a row?”
His gaze drops to my mouth. Just a flicker. Gone before I can be sure it happened. His jaw loosens. A fraction. Barely detectable.
“You talk too much.”
“And you don’t talk enough.” My fingers are shaking against nothing. I curl them into fists so he won’t see. “We’ll balance each other out.”
The gun is still pointed at my head. I should be crying. Begging. Doing whatever people do when they’re about to die. Instead I’m running my mouth because that’s how I handle mortal terror now. Typical.
But here’s the thing. I was ready to die. I’ve been ready since the night I traced that first IP address and saw what kind of people took Sofia. I knew the risks. I accepted them.
What I’m not ready to do is die before I save her.
Sofia. Fifteen in my memory, forever fifteen. Stealing my headphones and wearing them around her neck like jewelry. Singing off-key through the apartment until I threw a pillow at her. You love my voice, Izzy. Admit it.
I can’t die yet. Not until I find her.
So I do the only thing I can think of. I offer him a trade.
I’ve been inside the Santoro systems. I know what they’ve been searching for. The encrypted communications about the Benedetti family. The bounty Dante Santoro put out for information on their whereabouts. The desperation underneath the cold efficiency of their search patterns.
Lorenzo Santoro wants the Benedettis. And I have them.
“Kill me if you want.” My voice doesn’t waver. I’m proud of that. “But I know where the Benedettis are hiding.”
The gun lowers a fraction of an inch. Just enough to let me know I have his attention.
“I’ve been mapping their operation since my sister disappeared. Every safehouse, every route, every vulnerability.” I meet his gaze, those flat eyes that see right through me. “Your family’s been hunting them for months. I can end that hunt tonight.”
Silence. The kind that stretches and thickens the air until I can taste it. He’s calculating. It’s in the set of his mouth.
“Why?” he asks.
“Why what?”
“The Benedettis. Why do you care?”
My throat tightens. Sofia. Braces and that ugly shirt. I swallow twice before I can speak.
“They have someone who belongs to me.”
He watches me for a long moment. His head tilts. The muscles in his neck shift. He swallows once. His thumb eases off the grip, and something behind his eyes changes that has nothing to do with the deal I just offered.
Then he lowers the gun.
“You’re coming with me.”
“What?”
“Move.” He steps back, making space.
My legs are shaking. I don’t realize how hard I’ve been leaning against the desk until I attempt to push off from it and my knees buckle. A shiver tracks down my spine, cold and electric.
He tucks the weapon into his waistband, and the casual efficiency of the motion sends my pulse kicking harder than the gun itself did. His hands are scarred. Capable.
“To the Santoro compound?” I shake my head, gripping the desk edge to steady myself. “Where I’ll be surrounded by people who want me dead? Hard pass.”
“You’ll be alive.”
“Will I? For how long?” I cross my arms, trying to look defiant instead of terrified. “You’re supposed to kill me. That’s what you do. I’ve read every file I could find on you, Santoro.”
His nostrils flare. That stare goes even emptier.
“We’re leaving. Now.” His voice drops into a register that makes my legs move without permission.
I turn around. My screens are still glowing, cursor still blinking where I left it.
“My equipment,” I say. “My research. I can’t just abandon—”
“Leave it.”
“I can’t just—”
“I said leave it.” He’s already moving, expecting me to follow. “You can recreate files. You can’t recreate yourself.”
He’s not wrong. But he also doesn’t understand.
My fingers move on instinct. Three keystrokes.
The command I programmed years ago for this exact moment.
My screens flicker once as the upload initiates.
Everything important pushed to an encrypted cloud server.
Then the local drives begin their wipe cycle.
Thirty seconds and there will be nothing left but hardware.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure no one else gets what I just promised to you.” I hold his stare. “You want my intel? It lives in my head now. Not on those drives.”
His chin dips. A fraction. Like he’d picked up a weapon and found it loaded.
I stare at his back as he turns away. At the economy of his movement, the way he fills space like he was born to occupy it.
He stops in the doorway. Turns back. His gaze finds mine in the blue glow of my dying screens.
“Are you coming?”
We both know I don’t have a choice. His weight is forward, not blocking the exit. Waiting. Like my answer matters even though it doesn’t.
I held my ground. Didn’t beg. Offered a deal instead of pleading for my life. Maybe he noticed. Maybe that’s why I’m still breathing.
Fuck.
I cross the room on legs that can barely hold me. Before I go, I rip Sofia’s photo off the wall and shove it into my hoodie pocket.
The cold coffee on my desk. The brownie box I can’t bring myself to throw away. The monitors flickering as the wipe cycle finishes its work.
I leave all of it. But not her. Never her.
I step over the splintered remains of my door and face Lorenzo Santoro, who’s waiting in the hallway with the patience of someone who knows exactly how this ends.
“If this is a trap,” I say, “if you’re just taking me somewhere quiet to put a bullet in my head, I want to know now.”
“Then you’ll be dead and it won’t matter.”
He doesn’t look back.
“Move.”
He starts walking, his footsteps silent on the worn carpet. I follow because Sofia is still out there. Because the alternative is a bullet, and I’m not done yet.
The SUV smells like leather and something darker. I climb in and press my forehead against the cool glass, trying to remember how to breathe.
Lorenzo sits across from me in the darkness, silent as a grave. His hands rest on his thighs. Scarred and motionless. He doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t shift.
I catch his reflection in the window glass. He’s watching me. Not the road, not his phone. Me. When I turn my head, his gaze is already elsewhere.
My skin won’t stop prickling.
Sofia. The Benedettis. The deal. I have information Lorenzo Santoro needs. That makes me valuable. That keeps me breathing until I can use it.
The SUV turns onto a main road, heading toward the compound and whatever waits for me there.
Ghost is dead.
“How far?” My voice sounds thin in the dark cabin.
He doesn’t look at me. “Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes to calculate if I just saved my own life or ended it. My eyes shut. I think of the one fraction of a second when I didn’t flinch, and he blinked. Like I’d surprised him. Like that hadn’t happened in a long time.
I press my forehead harder against the glass and wait to find out what kind of monster I’ve bargained with.