Page 33 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
“It’s okay,” I interrupt. “I understand. Sometimes we think we need things to be a certain way, only to find out that what we really want is the complete opposite.”
“Does this have anything to do with the Ghost?” Valentina’s tone turns immediately playful, and it brings me right back to our days in the private academy when we used to sit in the dark and share our deepest secrets. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you and he might be involved romantically. Is it true?”
“Well, before I tell you all of my intimate inner workings, does this mean that we’re friends again?” I tease.
“Yes,” Valentina says. I can hear her smile through the phone. “If you’ll have me, that is.”
With that, the two of us start talking as if no time has been lost at all between us, and all the hard feelings are now water under the bridge.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” I say after I tell her about everything that’s happened recently. “I think you might need to get by without the Ghost for a while now.”
“Really?” she asks. “How come?”
“Because for now, I think he’s going to focus on just beingNico.”
Valentina and I fall back into conversation, catching up on everything that we have missed in each other’s lives over recent years.
In the background, I can hear Nico moving around the apartment, taking a shower, pouring himself a drink, and giving me time to talk with my long-lost friend.
Valentina and I have reconciled, and now we can both heal from our emotional scars and lean on each other’s shoulders just like we did before. I’m not sure what prompted her to call me tonight, but whatever it was, I’m grateful for it.
After all that I’ve lost—my mother, years of my life chasing after ghosts, maybe even my sanity—tonight, I have Nico, my friendship with Valentina back, closure to a plight that has plagued me, andhopefor moving on toward a better future. I think that is all I’ve ever wanted—love, friendship, peace of mind, andhope.
EPILOGUE
NICO
Icouldn’t be happier that Elle and Valentina are back to being best friends again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Elle smile so many times back-to-back, unless you count the marathon love-making sessions we’ve been falling into every night this week, but that is adifferentkind of smile. I may have decided to live outside of myGhostpersona now, but I still owe Luciano a favor for coaxing his wife to make that call.
“I could get used to this,” Elle says as she sits down at my breakfast table to take a bite out of the eggs that I’ve made.
I laugh because I’m definitely not a five-star chef, and I don’t have all the extravagant means that some of my mafia-aligned counterparts do. But Elle and I are the same in that way—money and lavish baubles don’t impress us,authenticitydoes. And right now, we’re both trying to live as authentically as ourselves as we can,together.
I sit down at the table with her, ready to talk about what today’s plans hold. She’s been getting back to work, profiling a new case that the police commissioner has picked up and been working on, and I’ve been doing some soul-searching and dabbling ina few new pursuits that allow me to put my skills to good useoutsideof the mafia circles, such as looking into starting up a new training gym just outside the Strip. We’ve both talked about disappearing into the Mojave and riding off into the sunset together, but we eventually concluded that we needed a bit more time in the city to do a few things that we had an aching to do before we wentcompletelyoff-grid. The desert still waits for us in our not-so-distant future, and in the meantime, we’re creating our “happily ever after” right here as we go. The one thing that we both decidedly committed to doing was to walk away from anything that would draw us back into the depravity of the corrupt criminal underworld. Sure, we both still have ties to that world, but I’m happy to put some distance between us and the crime syndicate that nearly killed us both.
Unfortunately, though, sometimes the things that you try to let go ofwon’tlet go ofyou.
My phone lights up from its place on top of the kitchen table, and I reach to see who it is. I’ve been waiting for a response from a property manager about a vacant building that I’d like to turn into a training gym and hoping that maybe this is him getting back to me. But when I open my phone, I see two text messages, one of which is from an unknown number.
Unknown: Looks like you’re not in as much hot water as I thought you’d be in. The boss said to tell you that your payment to the Bratva for all the damages that you and your girl caused has been received. Nice doing business with you. Oh, and the next time you come to sit at my bar, you still owe me for that last beer.
I have no idea how the nightclub’s bartender got my cell number, and I have no idea what payment he’s talking about.
“Everything alright?” Elle asks as she glances at me with a worried expression.
“I’m not sure,” I say as I open the second text message.
This one is from Zara, and it’s unusual for her to text me unless sheneedssomething.
Zara: Your debt has been paid. Consider this payment for my sins. You can tell Elle that it was nothing personal and that I’m sorry. You know I’d never do anything to hurt our friendship, Nico.
Attached to Zara’s message is a photo of a wire transfer, showing asignificantamount of money being sent to the Bratva boss at the club.
Zara’s betrayal when she sold Elle out at the nightclub that night did indeedsting, but I’ve already gotten over it. She and I have been friends for much too long for me to stay mad at her. But these messages are truly unsettling. It isn’t the money that unsettles me; it’s the uncharacteristic desperation hidden between the lines of Zara’s message. Her tone in textneversounds like this. She’s normally unapologetic, fiery, and tough as nails. Suspicion twists in my gut that something isn’t right here.
“Something is wrong,” I say as I hand the phone to Elle so that she can see the messages. “Zara doesn’t have that kind of money. The only way she could have gotten access to funds of that amount is by stealing it.”
“And she’s got the tech know-how in order to do that?” Elle asks.
