Page 5 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
If this guy uses an alias and builds his persona through rumors and whispers, then I bet he’s hiding a mysterious past. My criminal profiling skills haven’t failed me yet, although I have admittedly not crossed someone like this in my professional career before. Most of the criminals that I've tracked and brought to justice have had easily deconstructed and dismantled psyches, but everything about this ghost from my past suggests he is complicated beyond words. To me, that only makes him even more intriguing and likely more of avillain.
The ghost looks through the crowd just as I’d been. It doesn’t seem as if I’m the only one doing the tracking here tonight. Perhaps we’re both stalking each other. When his eyes cut across the courtyard to meet mine, I don’t look away. I hold his stare and watch as his face turns from inquisitive to accusatory. His eyes darken with a stern, silent warning, as if I ought to know better than to be hunting him.
A chill runs up my spine, realizing that I’m playing with fire here and that just because this man spared me once, it doesn’t mean that he’ll spare me again.
“Hey,” Isla’s voice says from beside me.
I hadn’t even noticed her walking up to me. I focused too much on his slate blue eyes and the dark, tousled hair that almost fell in front of them. Isla touches the back of my hand, and it allows me to break my fixed gaze and peel my eyes away fromhim.
“Are you okay?” she asks with concern in her voice.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I hadn’t even realized that my heart was racing until she asked me that question. Now, I suddenlyfeel a panic attack coming on without warning. Old trauma has a way of doing that when it’s triggered. It creeps up and then overtakes you all at once.
“Breathe, Elle,” she says as if she can read my mind. “You’re safe here.”
I do as she suggests and take a few minutes just to focus on my breathing until the feeling subsides. A server walks by delivering drinks as I catch my reflection in a wine bottle. I look as pale as a ghost.
“That’s better,” Isla says with a smile once I’ve calmed down and gotten some color back in my cheeks. “Friendly word of advice, I’m not so sure that I would get involved withNico Vitale.”
“Who?”
“Nico,” she repeats. “The Ghost.”
She whispers that bit of information as if it’s a casual secret shared between friends, and not a bomb with the pin pulled out.So that’s his, the Ghost, the man who kept me alive. Isla must have caught me looking at him, and perhaps she even saw him looking back at me, too.
“He doesn’t really belong here at the wedding,” she says before getting ready to walk back to her husband and rejoin the group conversation that the two of them had been having. “I’m honestly not surewherehe belongs.”
After she leaves, I glance back at the corner whereNicowas standing, but he’s now gone. My eyes search the rest of the crowd, but once again, it would seem that he’s vanished. For a while, I simply stay in my designated spot and observe the people around me while I think about what Isla just said.
In all fairness,Idon’t really belong here either. I have no business being at a mafia wedding, not officially anyway. I’m not involved in the underworld crime syndicate unless you count trying to catch some of their most criminal behavior and bringing in a few of them for questioning. Aside from that, I’m practically on the opposing side of everyone in attendance here—including Valentina.
But once upon a time, she and I shared sleepovers and secret journals. Once upon a time, she was my very first friend, and hell, maybe even my onlyrealone. A part of me still wants to see if Valentina remembers the girl that she used to know. And a part of me wanted to come here to seehimagain, even if I didn’t know that until just now. Both things left me with no choice other than to accept the wedding invitation when it arrived, hand-delivered and unsigned, no less. I didn’t ask questions; I just said that I’d come. I told myself that I had come here to observe, to profile, and to collect intel. I still think that’s true, but there wereotherreasons as well. Some of those reasons have to do with finding answers about past trauma and pastfriends.
When my mom died, I didn’t handle it well, especially after having been a witness to her murder. It was a formative age for me, and I struggled both socially and emotionally after that. My father was of no help at all. He grew even more detached from me after that, as if he had a new, bigger priority in his life to tend to. And when I met Valentina at the private academy that we were both shipped off to, she and I saw pieces of ourselves in each other. She felt alone for different reasons, mostly because she felt overshadowed by the weight of her family’s expectations, and she was desperate for authentic connections outside of her family’s circles. I didn’t know at firstwhatthose circles were.
We quickly became confidantes, “thick as thieves,” as our mutually shared feelings of loneliness drew us together and misunderstanding. It was like our paths weremeantto cross. I used to think that it was fate that made us friends. During school, our friendship was full of late-night talks, whispered secrets, and shared dreams of escaping our lives.Shewanted to escape from her predetermined path, and I wanted to escape from the past that haunted me. I found comfort and normalcy in Valentina’s quiet understanding and unconditional acceptance. And I think she might have admired my determination and courage, traits that she wasn’t able to openly emulate herself without fear of repercussions.
Throughout our years at the academy, she and I were there to support each other every step of the way. We met in secret outside of school to escape wandering eyes that might report back to our families. We shared journal entries filled with aspirations, fears, and juicy morsels about the hidden sides of our families. Even crushes. We kept everything between us to the strictest confidence. Our friendship was nothing short ofsacred. And when either of us endured a personal crisis, whether it was the ongoing grief from my mother’s death or Valentina’s ongoing pressure to conform to her father’s plans for her future, we knew that at least we had each other to share our feelings with.
But after graduating from the academy, as adulthood matured us and our familial obligations intensified, our relationship faced strain.
For my part, I became obsessed with uncovering the truth of my mother’s death. I hadn’tmeantto push Valentina away, but it happened anyway due to my increasingly distant and compulsive behavior. Valentina became more open with meabout her father’s mafia connections and her father’s ultimate goal of an arranged marriage for her. She hinted she didn’t want me involved in her life anymore because she feared it was becoming too dangerous for me to be anywhere near mafia politics, especially the kind that her family was engaged with.
The distance between us, even though I don’t think either of us intentionallywanted it to, grew and spread. First, unanswered texts marked it, and we avoided glances whenever we saw each other. Then, a gradual silence fell over our entire friendship, and that became too deep to cross easily.
When I received the unexpected invitation to Valentina’s wedding, it brought years of unresolved emotions to the surface. And even though I had my ownotherreasons for attending, I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I secretly longed for closure and reconnection with the only friend who once understood me so deeply. I don’t know how Valentina feels about me being here at her wedding today. I haven’t even seen her so much as look in my direction. It honestly makes me feel the same way that I felt before she stopped writing back to me and before a ravine of distance caused our relationship to capsize. I wish I could see inside Valentina’sheartso that I could know if our friendship might ever stand a chance of coming back from the ashes. And I wish I could see inside the Ghost’sheadso that I could figure out what actually happened that night in the alley and why thismurdererhas taken up permanent residence in my mind. So far, I’m not much closer to figuring out either of those two things. I came here for answers, but now I only have more questions.
CHAPTER 5
ELLE
After leaving both the wedding receptionandItaly, I return to Las Vegas with little more insight than I went there with. I had hoped to understand my past with the Ghost and heal my old wounds with Valentina, but I got no more than an inch closer to doing either. At least the flight back to the States is long, so that I can close my eyes and catch a rest before jumping back into things when we touch down in Vegas. People like Vincent and Isla Moretti have their own private planes to jet around the world, but I’m relegated to commercial airlines and connecting flights. The stewardess on my last leg is friendly and gives me both a sleep mask and an in-flight Bloody Mary, so within minutes of the flight reaching altitude, I’m already dozing off.
Unfortunately, my sleep isn’t peaceful.
At first, the dream begins the way it always does—my mother and I are walking home from the theater, my laughter echoing through the alley, the memory barreling toward its inevitable gunshot. The smile on her face, the shadow at the end of the street, the weight of fear pressing in.
But this time, it shifts.
