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“—to do fucking what?” I snapped at Ari, my eyes wild.
One hundred and twenty seconds.
“All of our jobs are different, and we don’t actually hang together—it’s all for you.”
“Me?” I asked, confusion laden in my tone.
“Yeah, Nik.” He sighed, closing his eyes. “Ghost is the underworld god. He handles the balance between the gangs to make sure that they don’t overstep. His job is to maintain peace and to stop wars from breaking out on the streets.”
“To stop innocent people from being killed?” Didn’t seem so bad, really.
“No.” Ari squeezed me again and I finally tore my arm out of his grip. “You won’t care about any of that once your training is done, I’m sure. It’s to stop anyone from being discovered. Ghost has to be equally intelligent as well as cold. You may go in like this, Nik, but you’re going to come out a ghost of who you were. This is where you die to become who they need you to be.”
“So who do I work for?” I ignored the other tidbits he’d said because ninety seconds.
“No one!” Ari yelled, then looked down the street. “The four of us—whoever the other two are—are selected for your purpose only. Ma wasn’t exactly spot-on about my tech hand being the key seller for me gaining Coder. Well, it was, but it was also because you need to have someone you trust impeccably.”
“Ari, this is not making fuck all sense.”
“I know.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I shoved him in the arm. Thirty seconds.
“You wouldn’t have believed me and would have beat my ass for fucking with you.”
He wasn’t lying. “Who are the other two?”
Ari shook his head. “I don’t know. They never said anything about the other two, so I’m guessing you don’t know them.”
“Fuck.” I dropped to the ground, punching my fist into the cement. “Meraki, man. She’s fucking deep in it with Luca.”
Ari’s hand came to my shoulder. “That ain’t your fight anymore. She’s going to have to learn on her own.”
Two seconds.
A gloss-black limo turned down our street and my heart thudded in my chest. Sweat beaded in my palms, and no matter how much I rubbed them down my pants it wasn’t going away.
“If they touch you, I’ll kill them,” I whispered, and I knew Ari heard me.
“And that’s why you’re Ghost.”
The car stopped on the sidewalk and the door popped open. I looked between it and Ari before shoving him out of the way to slide in first. I was the older brother by a few minutes, and I would forever take those minutes with pride.
I slid into the back seat and waited for Ari to follow.
Holy. Fuck.
Jer’s eyes lit up when they connected with mine. “Niko?” He jumped forward and took the other side when Ari slid in beside me. “No fucking way.” His face paled. “Wait, you’re Ghost?”
“Apparently. Fuck.”
Jer shook his head. He always had a wide smile, you know, the kind that girls instantly dropped their panties for, but what the fuck was he doing here? “Let me guess, your smart-ass brain landed you in this mess.” Ari shuffled opposite us. There was no way all three of us could fit on one side.
Jeremy’s wide smile froze before turning downward. “Catcher, actually.”
My eyes flew back to his. “What?”
“I catch, trace, do all the funky shit that”—he waves his hand around, his gold Rolex catching against the sun—“y’all don’t need to do. I’m guessing we will learn more when we get to wherever this car is taking us.”
“So, I got my letter last week. When did you get yours?” Jer asked, checking the side compartments.
“Ah, he got his about thirty minutes ago, and I kind of found out a way I wasn’t supposed to.”
I turned to look at them. “Who is the fourth?”
Jer placed his suitcase onto his lap. “I don’t know. I’m guessing we all know around the same?”
The soft music that was playing through the speakers cut out, and a hardened voice that was obviously being disguised by a voice-over hummed through the space.
“Afternoon, children. As my driver escorts you all to the new residence of Nikolai Ares”—I instantly hated him for using my middle name—“there are manila folders in the drawers below your feet. In these, you will find all of your IDs, legal ones, black AmEx cards assigned to each of you, and a key. The key isn’t important for now, but what I’m about to tell you next is. This is your life now. If you step outside of it, you will be eliminated, your family will be eliminated, and your peers will be eliminated. If one steps out of line, you all die, and we proceed with choosing again. Think for each other, as for the next twenty years, all you will have is who is in this car with you right now. The tasks that will be set upon you, you will need to find your own way around learning how to access them. Ideally, each of you would be inside an organized crime unit. Nikolai, yours has already been assigned to you, and you start next month. You other two will have to find your own way.”
