Page 8 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
But once again, the Ghost takes me by surprise.
I’m not watching my surroundings at all as I walk past a side street near my apartment. Which is why I don’t let out that scream that I thought I could engage at a moment’s notice. It catches me off guard as a hand reaches out from the twilight shadow and grabs my arm. The motion is abrupt and forceful enough to upset my balance and cause me to trip, essentially right into the thin, empty, dimly lit street.
It must have been part of his plan, and an exact execution of his skills, to pull me soundlessly between the buildings at the exact angle that causes me to spill into his arms. But if he plannedthat move skillfully, then why did he hold his breath for a second before he lets me go?
I steady myself on my feet and stare back at him unblinking. It’s the first time since that fateful night that heisn’trunning away from me. The Ghost is standing right here in front of me, motionless as he lets me take a good, long look at him. As expected, his eyes practically swallow me whole. But what Ididn’texpect was the swell of nearlyvolcanicenergy that courses within the space between us. I can tell that he feels it too, because his usual well-controlled, cold expression wavers for a slight moment. His eyes dart over my body, and when they land on my eyes, he holds them there as he lets out a slow, steady exhale.
“Who are you?” I ask quickly, not wanting this chance to slip away as it has so many times before.
After taking a moment to answer, he carefully chooses his words, and his tone is unreadable.
“You already know who I am, Elle.” The muscles in his perfectly chiseled jawline tense.
“That’s not what I meant,” I press. He, of course, alreadyknowsthat’s not what I meant. “I want to know who youreallyare—Nico Vitale, or should I call you Ghost?”
“You’ve been watching me for a while now,” he says as he takes a small step closer toward me until it feels as if there’s not enough space to breathe, even though we’re standing out in the open air.
“Yes,” I nod. “But all I can find are breadcrumbs about the part you play as Nico within the mafia circles, and the more concealed role you assume as the Ghost. I want to know who you are and how those two parts of your identity coexist. I want toknow what you do and how you think, andwhyyou saved me that night. Most of all, I want to know why you didn’t kill the man who shot my motherbeforehe killed her.”
I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but for a second, it almost looks like a tiny sliver ofregretflashes across Nico’s face. So, I keep going.
“I saw you in that alley behind the garbage dump. I saw you there before the other man jumped out and pulled his gun. Your reputation precedes you,Ghost,” I say as my compulsive desire to find the answer I’ve spent my entire adult life searching for surges. “Youhadto know he was there. You were just watching,waitingfor something to happen. And when something did, you acted too late.”
I can feel the tears threatening to sting at the corners of my eyes, and I fight them back out of sheer rage alone. This is the pent-up anger that I’ve carried around in my chest foryears. “I want you to tell me why you saved me but nother.”
As hard as I try, I can’t stop a single tear from rolling down my cheek. “Please, tell me.”
Nico’s face twists ever so slightly, as if he’s wrestling with his inner demons and whatever he isn’t willing to say. I want to force him to talk, as if the more I press and plead, the more it will crack him open somehow and give me my answer—my closure. If this were any other criminal, I wouldn’t care past the point of solving a crime. But this isn’t justanykiller. This is the man who watched as my mom died. This is personal.
“Why did you even pull me off the street if you weren’t planning on saying anything to me? Aren’t you going to say anything at all? You know that I’ve been watching you, and I know thatyou’ve been watching me too. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish or why you’re still keeping tabs on me after all these years,” I say in a last-ditch effort to make him talk. “But I know whatIwant, and that’s answers from you.”
For a few moments that seem to stretch on forever, Nico and I stand almost nose-to-nose as I wait for him to talk. When he finally does, his ambiguous answer makes me feel even more unsettled than I did before.
“You shouldn’t look for things that you don’t want to find, Elle,” he says in a quiet voice.
I’m just about to open my mouth to ask him what the hell that’s supposed to mean, when he turns and steps back out onto the main street. The way he moves so nimbly makes his named persona fit perfectly. He can come and go as lightly as fog over a graveyard. The Ghost doesn’t even leave the sound of footsteps behind.
It takes less than a couple of seconds for me to step out from between the buildings myself and go after him so I candemandthat he answer me. But as soon as I peer out into the street, he’s gone. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
There was no explanation for why he grabbed me. He didn’t even ask me anything at all, so I have no idea what that whole thing was all about. The only thing that I know now for sure is that all this time that I’ve been hunting him, Nico was already huntingme.
CHAPTER 7
NICO
Why didn’t you stop him before he killed my mother?
Her voice still echoes in my head as I slip back into the shadows. Elle’s words weren’t just an accusation—they were a blade, sharp enough to cut through the armor I’d built around myself.
Because I’ve heard them before. Not from her lips, but in my head. For years.
She doesn’t realize that her question is the same one that’s haunted me since the night my brother died. The night I failed him. The night that made me the Ghost.
And just like that, I’m dragged backward into old memories. Back to Moscow. Back to blood, to lessons carved into bone, to the brother who should still be alive.
Seventeen-year-old me wasn’t as emotionally detached as I am now. Building all the walls that it took for me to erect as a means of self-protection took a lot of time and a lot of trauma. But even before all of that, there was theviolence.
The Bratva culture creates killers. The training that I received during my formative years crafted me into a weapon, not a well-adjusted man. Being a part of the Bratva alienated me from everyone else around me who wasn’t a part of it, too, and there weren’t many of us. The Bratva only chose the best, most highly skilled, and highly intelligent boys to invest their time and effort. At the time, I thought that meant I wasspecial. I didn’t know that if Moscow’s Bratva considered you “special,” you’d receive lasting emotional scars. It’s easy to let my mind slip back into those days. They were long and laden with the kinds of deeds that will forever haunt me.
