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)
My father stares at me in silence as if he’s testing to see how much I mean what I say.
“Elle, sweetheart,” he says finally. “You can’t really mean that you—”
Before he can finish his sentence, I lift the gun in my hand and shoot the man sitting beside him in the head. It happens so fast that I think it even surprises Nico. The Ghost doesn’t flinch, but his moon-blue pupils flicker momentarily in response.
My father’s mouth hangs open after watching what I’ve just done. His face is now splattered with the blood and brain bits of the mafia shooter that he hired to kill my mom when I was a child. Behind the spray of crimson red blood, my father’s face turns a pale white. His hands start to involuntarily shake as the shooter’s body slumps forward onto the table with only some of his head left intact.
Without reservation, I glance back at my father and use my sleeve to wipe the blood spray off my face. I’d be lying if I said that killing the man who shot my mother didn’t feel good in ways that I wish it didn’t. It feels like I brought things back full circle, an eye-for-an-eye kind of justice. I’ve worked alongside the justice department and the police for way too long to think that the man would have ever faced the punishment he deserved. Thankfully, he just did now. I made sure of it.
“That is what I’ll do to you if you don’t do as I say,” I tell my father with an unwavering voice. "If I ever see you after today, I will kill you. And if I ever hear from you again, or catch word that you’re anywhere around, I will send Nico to kill you.”
My father’s eyes dart to the side as he tries to see Nico out of his peripheral vision behind him.
“You’ve sided with an assassin,” he whispers, no longer arguing with me about what my demands are if he wants to keep his head attached to his shoulders. "You’ve aligned yourself with the Ghost, a mafia monster. Your mother would be ashamed.”
Perhaps it’s all the adrenaline that makes me feel as wild and unhinged as I currently do in this moment, or maybe it’s the feeling that I’ve just lifted a weight that I’ve been carrying around on my shoulders for years, but I can’t help but let out a laugh at his insane remark.
“The Ghost isn’t the monster here, Dad,” I hiss at him. “You are.”
With that, I look up and lock eyes with Nico. And as if on cue, he reads my mind and reaches to take the gun from my hand. As he lifts it back across the table, he jerks his wrist to smack the barrel of the gun sharply against my father’s head, knocking him unconscious and causing him to slump back in his chair.
“What happens now?” I ask, finally starting to feel my hands shake as I come down from the heightened moment.
“Now, I take care of all of this,” he says as he sweeps his hand over the table. “I’ll dispose of the shooter’s body and tie up all the loose ends at the nightclub. No one will question his disappearance. The bartender there owes me a favor and an alibi.”
“And what about my father?” I ask. “I meant what I said. I don’t ever want to see or hear from him again, Nico.”
“I know,” he nods as he walks around the table and stuffs his gun back into his holster. He reaches up to tuck my blood-matted hair behind my ear. “I’ll get him out of the city on a private plane and have him taken far from here. I’ll make sure that when he wakes up, he’s roughed up and scared straight enough to know that you’re not bluffing. Although after what you just did, I doubt he’d question you again.”
“And after that, this will all be over?”
“Do you feel like you’ve been able to get the closure you’ve sought for so long?” he asks.
I nod, and then, without warning, I start to cry.
“Then yes,” he says as he wraps his arms around me. “This is all over now.”
I don’t even know why I’m crying right now as I bury my face against Nico’s chest while he holds me. It’s as if everything is flooding over me at once—the death of my mom, losing the father that I thought I knew, the end of an obsession that I just violently terminated. But even as I stand here crying and letting out all the emotions that I’ve bottled up so tightly for so long, there is something else even more powerful that sinks in. I can hear it in the sound of Nico’s voice as he whispers to me that everything is going to be okay now and feel it in the easing up of my heart as the beating starts to slow and steady itself.