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Something I’ve never seen on Niko—not ever. It sends a shiver down my spine that reaches the edge of my tailbone. I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t the Niko I knew.
I step away from him. “Go home to Lydia and your baby. I am not your problem, Niko. Fuck.” Without much thought, I lean back into him, eyes narrowed. “Why is it that you think you can ride back into my life and take charge of it like you didn’t burn it all up the day you sped out of Halsin on your bike?” I take another step, stabbing my finger into his hard chest. “I hated you then, and I still hate you now—and no, Niko. I don’t want your help. You know why?”
Just as I’m about to jab my finger into him again, he snatches it in the palm of his hand, pulling me into his chest. I pause briefly, stopping any arguing, and peer up at him in slight shock. When my eyes collide with his, they’re not the same ones I’m so used to. These ones are darker, sinister—as if they’ve been there all along but hidden. His features change, the edges of his jaw and cheekbones somehow seeming rougher.
“Because you’re with him, huh?” The words stumble out of his mouth at a at that I’m not familiar with.
My blood turns cold. “What?”
Niko’s lip curls, his eyes falling up and down my body. “Guess I was wrong about you, Meraki fucking Mallory.” He shoves me away so hard I smack against the door.
No. No. No.
I shake my head. “It’s—no, it’s not that.”
“Yeah?” he asks, and the way he’s looking at me now makes me want to crawl into the darkest corner of the room and never leave. “You’re a fucking liar.”
I search the ground, looking for anything. Something to say. Niko came back and I hated it. I hated that he was here, but it wasn’t for the reasons why I wanted to believe. It’s because I could never lie to him.
To everyone else I could.
To him I couldn’t.
Niko leans against the wood, reaching into the leather holster in his jeans. I watch as metal flashes against the moonlight and I step backward, fear flashing over my face.
“Nik…”
“Shut the fuck up, Meraki. You don’t ever get to call me that. So here’s what’s gonna happen…”
I follow the muscles of his forearms, the same ones I looked at for comfort, now look more like weapons. There’s no point. There’s no point reasoning with him because somehow, Niko already knows.
He knows what Luca and I have done over the years.
He knows what I am to Luca.
He fucking knows everything.
Niko steps forward into my space. “You’re gonna go back to your little boyfriend and tell him that Ghost—”
I pause, and all blood must drain from my face because Niko chuckles. I watch as that same shadow passes over his features and his stance changes, his shoulders squaring.
I’d heard about Ghost, but only in passing. Luca allows me in to see some of what happens, but not all of it, yet somehow still enough to make me look like a piece of shit. He keeps me close by hanging me above everything just enough. Ghost isn’t real. He’s an entity that exists in the outlaw world. People speak of him often, but only when needed. It has been said that he comes and goes like a thief in the night and causes chaos among gangs. He’s what you don’t want as an enemy but definitely not as a friend. No one has met him or even knows who he is, but the man must be old because he has been around for generations and generations—according to Luca’s father. I’ve always imagined him to be an old man in a trench coat and fedora hat who smokes cigars in dark corners.
Luca says they’re not one person but an entire group.
I gave up caring. Sick of the fear that a single word put into people—especially Luca, who you never see with fear.
“What,” I whisper, goose bumps breaking out over my arm. “Did you just say?”
Niko pins me with a glare far too icy to recognize. “That Ghost has said he’s to deliver his father to me by the end of tomorrow or I’m taking you instead.”
Niko kicks out his leg, and when he comes closer to me this time, I find my flight kicking in. The urge to run penetrates my legs and panic grips me around my throat.
He grabs me there instead, but unlike most times when he’s manhandled me, where it’s been borderline sexual, this is not. This is a man standing in front of me who would kill me in a second and not bat an eye.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mer.”
He cocks his head, and I watch as the corner of his lip curls. I’ve never seen Niko look at me the way he is right now. Sadness sweeps over me for a second. A sadness that swallows any hope I had of escaping. When Niko came back, in the back of my mind I thought this was it. This could be my way out, but I was wrong. Niko is intertwined in this world with Luca, and now the exit I thought I saw looks more like a detour.
