Page 10 of My Ghost

“He’s got this gift,” she continues, “with tech, for tracking and that kind of thing.It’s like what you do, but darker.If someone needs to be found, Matteo finds them.He was the one tracking me down when I came to stay with you.”

My stomach knots.

Lily goes on.“I heard them mention a ghost a few times, someone who helped when they were hitting walls.I never suspected it was you.But now…it kind of makes sense.”

My mind is reeling as realization hits me like a sledgehammer.

It’s him!The Gatekeeper.

The man behind the wall.The very wall I slipped past, that one time, when Lily was taken.I needed access to their surveillance cameras’ feeds to follow a hunch, and that hunch turned out to be right.Back then, I didn’t care who I was hacking, only that the network I infiltrated was impressively tight.It took everything I had not to leave a trail behind.I remember how fast the defenses kicked back in.Someone on the other side had been good, very good even, because after that I couldn’t sneak back in.They slammed the door shut and there was no way I could break through without tripping their alarms.

And now the man behind this defense is out there, sitting in a garden chair, sipping whiskey without a care.

Matteo.

I mistakenly thought he was nothing more than one of Damiano’s guns on a payroll.I never imagined this.

He is the one behind the digital walls.

My heart beats too loud, too fast.

He doesn’t know it was me, he can never find out.But I’m no longer just worried.I’m curious too.How many layers is he hiding beneath all that silence and brooding?Tonight, I need answers, and I’m going to peel him open, one secret at a time.

Chapter Seven

Erin

We went to that little karaoke dive bar like we planned, only us girls, Lily, Chiara and me.And honestly?It was stupid fun.That is, if you ignored the fact that a small army of men in black shadowed us the entire night or that half the regulars cleared out within ten minutes of our arrival, either intimidated by the sudden shift in atmosphere or kindlyaskedto leave by a few muscle-bound shadows who took their job very seriously.Subtlety clearly isn’t part of the Santaluccia security protocol.

Still, we sang badly, laughed too loud, and for a few hours, it was like any regular girls’ night of off-key duets, cheap cocktails and mocktails for Lily, and a lot of teasing.

But now, hours later, back in the quiet of my borrowed apartment, I’m still wired.Too many margaritas, too much adrenaline and too much Matteo spinning circles in my head.

So I open my laptop, settle in, and do what any irrational and slightly tipsy woman would do after a night of bad karaoke and worse decisions, I start stalking Matteo.Digitally, of course.

I am sitting cross-legged on the sofa, my civvy laptop, the one for everyday use, perched on my lap.

I am aware that if—when—I open this door, there will be no turning back.I type Matteo and Damiano Santaluccia in the most obvious search bar.Pages of results explode over the screen.There he is, Matteo Di Rossi, thirty-two, businessman, private security consultant and risk specialist, king of the Di Rossi Corporate empire.

There’s even a picture of him in a black suit, gaze dark and glowering, and my heart does an involuntary somersault.I click on the links to read one article after another.There’s no mention of his family, or of any wife or girlfriend, for that matter.Not that I was particularly looking for this information.Nope, not me.

However, his ties to the Santaluccia family are mentioned several times.He owns a handful of successful businesses and… What the actual hell?

I blink.Then read the information again.And again.

A club owner?Akinkclub owner!

The Second Circle.Allegedly, it’s a members-only club operating well below the surface of the city.Some say it doesn’t even exist.Others whisper it caters to the kind of appetite that comes with money and power.It’s only one paragraph, one unverified claim.But Matteo’s name is right there.

I lean back, dumbstruck.Matteo andkink, in the same sentence?I try to imagine it and short-circuit a little.

After I’ve read all the freely available information about him, I hesitate.Should I dig deeper?

Abso-freaking-lutely.

I grab my other laptop, the one I use for this kind of investigation.I tether it to a burner phone, one of those I bought with cash and modified with a custom OS.The SIM card runs on a prepaid plan registered to a fake name and will be disposed of after I’m done.I boot up into a virtual machine layered in enough encryption to make a government analyst cry, and route myself through a cascade of proxy servers across three continents, just to be safe.

Then I access the darknet.