Page 122 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

“So what changed your mind?” I ask.

Elyssa gets very still. “I didn’t want to be alone,” she admits. She glances up at me. “Is that a horrible thing to say? Am I a horrible person for saying it?”

I don’t know what to say to her. I certainly don’t expect her to look to me for validation. God knows I don’t have any fucking answers about what it means to be a parent.

“But that was at the beginning. Everything changed when I felt him kick for the first time. It was like he was trying to comfort me. Every time I got sad or scared, he’d kick inside me, and I’d be reminded that…”

“That you weren’t alone,” I finish for her.

“Yes. Exactly.”

The rest of the drive is silent. When we get back to the mansion, I leave the car parked outside the main door and walk Elyssa into the house. She’s got her arms wrapped around her body as though she’s trying to comfort herself.

She turns to me when I offer her the small bag of cash that she won tonight. She stares at it, but she makes no attempt to take it. Almost like she thinks I’m about to snatch it away and laugh in her face for being so stupid as to think I’d ever make good on my promise.

“Go on,” I urge. “You won it.”

“It feels… strange to take it,” she admits. She bites her lower lip—another endearing gesture that I refuse to be distracted by.

“Why?”

“Because it feels like you’re paying me off.”

“I’m not. If I was, there’d be less than half this much money in the bag. Silence is cheap.”

She shakes her head. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to ask you for money,” she says. “But for my son, for Charity… I’m willing to swallow my pride and ask.”

“For Charity?”

“We’re more than just friends,” Elyssa replies proudly, lovingly. “She’s my family. The only family I have left.”

“You talk as though you’ll never see your family again.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

“Why?”

She looks down at the bag in my hand. “The game is over,” she tells me. “And I’m tired.”

“Take the money,” I say, thrusting it into her arms.

She accepts it without a fight. But there’s obvious reluctance in her hazel eyes. Melancholy in there, too—then again, that’s been there since the moment I met her.

“Thank you for dinner,” she whispers. “For the entire day, actually. I felt like I was someone else today.”

“Someone else?”

“Someone normal.”

Before I can unpack the weight of that sentence, she turns and walks up the stairs. I can’t take my eyes off her ass. The silk of her dress hugs it beautifully. Every switch of her hips makes my cock jump.

Even after she’s disappeared around the corner, I still stand there, feeling her presence.

“Fuck,” I growl at myself when I’m alone again. “Phoenix, you need to get a fucking grip.”

* * *

It’s late but I know Matvei will be awake.

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