Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
I leave his body there, knowing that my brother is no longer in it, and I walk back to the Bratva’s base of operations. As soon as I walk into the room where the leadership is meeting, and as soon as they see me covered in blood with my brother’s gun in my hand, they know what’s happened. No one asks questions, and no one will. It doesn’t matter how my brother died because they don’t care. All they care about is that I will take his place.
“I am the Ghost now,” I say as I stand before them. “The mission tonight was completed.”
There are several silent nods, and then my trainer, who sits among them, is the only one to speak.
“You are no longer Nico Vitale,” he says with a somber, respectful voice. “You are now The Ghost, and you will act with swiftness, silence, and deadliness.”
I nod and turn to leave because there’s nothing else left to say. When I get back to the room that my brother and I shared, I pack away his things. Carefully, I separate the weapons and my brother’s only suit, to keep and use for myself. The rest I place in boxes to protect and move them from my sight. He’s gone; his things need to be too, so that I can now take his place. There is only one Ghost that is whispered on the tongues of our enemies, and beginning tonight, it’s me.
I stand for a moment in front of the mirror in the bathroom that we once shared, and I take a long look before I wash the blood off my face.
Tonight, I stole my brother’s name. But in doing so, I’ve lost myself.
CHAPTER 8
NICO
Elle Monroe is a fascinating woman. Her obsession with me makes her even more fascinating. What is it about the single thread that I've woven into her life that makes her so consumed with dissecting my identity? I need to find out.
So, while she watches me, I secretly watch her too. Except that my surveillance goes well beyond the usual practices. While Elle is talking to some people here in the city who went to Luciano’s wedding in Italy, trying to get them to cough up any information they have on the Ghost, I head to her apartment. I’m fully confident that neither Vincent, Isla, nor Luc will let any information about me leave their lips. They all know how this works—in order for me to help them as the Ghost, I need to remain an enigma. None of them are willing to risk severing a relationship with me because all will need my help and services at some point.
Valentina is a bit of a wild card, especially since I know that she and Elle used to be close friends. But as word would have it, they’ve been on the outs for a while now, and Valentina is now devoted to Luc and protecting all the secrecy that she is marrying into. So, I doubt that she’ll say anything either, although she probably doesn’t even know much to begin with. The men I deal with frequently don’t even tell their wives or families about me. My secrecy keeps me, and sometimes them, alive.
Elle’s apartment is almost too easy to get into. You’d think that as a cop’s daughter, she’d put a better lock in or set up some security cameras. But then again, to call her father a cop, even though he technically is one, is making the word do a lot of heavy lifting. Detective Monroe is as corrupt as they come. Elle doesn’t know the half of it.
I slide the lock open and step inside, closing her apartment door behind me so that none of the neighbors see me in here. I’ll be fast, and I’ll be gone before she gets back.
Invading her private space feels wrong, even though snooping around in places that I shouldn’t be is something that I do quite often. There’s something different about Elle, something that makes this feel more personal.
I can hear my brother’s words echoing in the back of my head, reminding me not to take anything personal, not to feel, just to stay detached and focus on getting the job done. The job here is to see how much Elle has found out about me, and to take a peek into who she is, outside of what I already know of her.
I look around the apartment a bit, then walk into her small home office. This is her private space, the room where she keeps all of her secrets, all her off-the-books obsessions, to herself. I can see them all pinned up to the boards on the wall behind her desk, and they are all about me. Photographs, notes, printed out screenshots of news articles, including the one about the night her mother was murdered—the entire office is covered with evidentiary tidbits, pieces of the puzzle she is trying to solve. Her notes and profiles of me are extensive, and if I’m not mistaken, it looks like they go well beyond a professional interest. She’s not just trying to solve a case or even just get closure on the crime that stole her mother from her. She’s trying to figure me out, not just as the man in the alleyway that night who fired the second shot, but me.