Page 14 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
“I wasn't paralyzed,” I remind her. “I pulled the trigger that savedyourlife. One might begratefulfor such an act.”
“Of course,” she apologizes. It feels like her apology is more done because she thinks it’s expected, versus genuinely meaning it. “It’s just that I miss my mom. You have no idea what it was like growing upalonewithout a mother and with only a father who?—”
Her voice trails off as her eyes peer across the table at me. She stopped herself short of saying something about her father, but she didn’t need to. I already know what a terrible person he is, even greater than she does.
“Actually,Iknow exactly what it’s like to grow up alone. My brother was all that I had. Our parents were gone, and the Bratva leadership was less thanfamilialin all that mattered.” Which is why, I circle back around to finally answer her first question. “When he died, I took over his identity as theGhost. It was a way for me to embody him, to carry on his legacy, and to avenge his death. It was a way for me to step into my place as a lethal assassin and to finally embody the lesson that he was still trying to teach me through his last, dying words.”
“What was the lesson?” she asks curiously.
“To remain detached and not allow myself to get personally involved with anything oranyone. To do the jobs that I need to do and not let any of it linger in my soul. And so, I became a silent, soullessghost.”
For a few long moments, the kitchen is silent as we both sit there staring at each other. I don’t answer any of her other questions yet, and Elle doesn’t press me further. Ialmostfeel like this has done the trick to satisfy her burning curiosity and let things rest. But Elle Monroe always seems to be full of surprises.
“I don’t think you’re soulless.”
My breathing hitches in my chest. I wasn’t expecting her to say something like that. I’m the monster that watched her mother die and did nothing to stop it. I’m the compulsion that she’s been obsessed with hunting her whole adult life. She shouldhateme. I thought she hated me. She should think that I’m the devilincarnate, and yet she goes and says something like that. I don’t know how to feel, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that her presence challenges my lifelong, well-practiced withdrawal.
I go to stand up from the table, feeling the need to put some physical space between us, and thinking that I have already said enough, probablytoo much,to get her to stop pursuing answers that carry heavy consequences along with them.
“Wait,” she says, reaching an arm across the table to stop me before I get to my feet. “What about my other questions? What role do you play in the mafia now?”
“I play the same role that I have always played. I’m an assassin, thebestassassin that there is. When there is asensitivejob that needs to be done discreetly, I'm called on to do it.”
“But for whom? Whose side are you on?”
“Side? There are nosidesin the mafia,” I say. “There are only the alliances that help you stay alive and those thatdon’t. I answer to myself, no one else. You’d be wise not to trust anyone, no matter whosesideyou think they’re on.” I want to tell her to include her own father in that warning, but for now, I hold my tongue.
“What about my last question?”
“I think I’ve answered enough questions for now.”
Elle frowns at my response and presses further. “You brought me out here. You opened up to me about your past and some of the trauma you’ve endured. Surely, you can answer one more thing. You’re not the only one with trust issues and complicated relationships with those around you, Nico. And I assume that the reason you brought me here and told me anything at all is because you think it will appease my curiosity enough to preventme from continuing to insert myself in your life and privacy. If you want me to trust any of this, then you’re going to need to give me an answer about what you were doing in the alleyway that night.”
Complicated relationships indeed. Out of all the interactions I’ve had in my life with countless people, my long-standing, almost masochistic relationship with Elle from afar has been the most complicated of all. It’s almost as if she can’thealunless I fill in the blanks of that night for her. Some blanks are meant to stay empty. Unfortunately, though, Elle isn’t going to stop until she gets some sort of closure.
“I was tending to business,” I say with intentional ambiguity.
“Business sitting beside a dumpster in a dark alley?” Elle’s wit and snark don’t go unnoticed.
To be honest, it entices me to see her spunk. I saw it that night, too, when she tried to chase me, even though she was just a kid. I should have known then that she was going to wind up causing me problems for years to come that night. But now, she’s no longer a child. She’s a stunning, sassy, and exceptionally strong woman. And even though I may still be nearly a decade older than her, she’s every bit old enough to tempt me more than I’d like to be tempted.
“I was following someone,” I add, dribbling tiny bits of information one drop at a time, hoping it will be enough to end this line of questioning. “Notyou and your mother.”
“You were following the man who shot her?” she asks. Elle’s profiling skills are showing themselves as she tries to turn the tables and interrogate me instead of letting me direct the flow of information that I want to disclose.
The truth is that I have my theories and my suspicions about who killed Elle’s mother, but I don’t know forsure. All I know is that it was a highly covered-up crime. Even after the crime, someone buried it faster than anyone could blink.. It’s normal for the mafia to kick hit jobs under the rug, and even commonplace for the killing of innocent bystanders or witnesses to be erased before anyone can see and uncover the truth behind them. But they covered up the murder of Elle’s mother faster than I had ever seen before. And it wasn’t just covered up by the big players in the mafia families, but by thecops,too. The whole thing reeks of corruption, and corruption is something that I cannotstand.
There was corruption in the Bratva, too, and to this day I wonder if that didn’t play a part in my brother’s death. Others in the leadership had boys of their own around our same age, and I’ve always wondered if one of them, who might have been hoping to take my brother out and replace his position with one of their own boys, compromised the hit. If that was their goal, I didn’t let them have the chance since I surprised them all by taking up my brother’s mantle. Since then, I’ve had an intolerance for corruption of any kind, whether it’s within the cops, the mafia, or corporate Vegas.
“I followed the killer that night because I wanted to know what he was doing. It wasn’t a job at the time,” I answer honestly. “I could tell that something wasn’t right, and so I stalked him for a while. He cased that alley several times before he eventually took a position there. And after watching him long enough to see that he was going to do something, I hid behind the dumpster to see what it was.”
“You didn’t know that he was going to shoot my mother?” She asks as if it surprises her. “Were we just in the wrong place at thewrong time? Could it have been anyone else walking down that street that night who was shotinsteadof my mom?”
I can practically see the wheels spinning in her head. I did the same thing to myself after my brother died. Hell, I still do. You try to rationalize how to blame yourself for something that had too many moving parts to be only one person’s responsibility.
“No, I didn’t know,” I say before deciding to give her a piece of additional information that is bound to send Elle down a rabbit hole. We’re too far into this conversation for me to pull the plug without it causing even more questions and problems. “But I don’t think that it was random. I think that someone was intentionally waiting in the dark with the sole purpose of killing your mother.”
“Like a hired assassin? Why in the world would anyone want to have my mother killed?” Elle’s eyes shine with a glossy wetness that hints at her holding back tears. “All she ever did was take care of me and support both my dad’s career and his ego. She never did anything bad to anyone that I know of. What makes you think it wasn’t a random incident?”
