Page 212 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

When I turn, though, I see.

And when I see, I understand.

“Anna?”

She’s standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol straight at me. The barrel of her gun is smoking slightly.

“Hello, Phoenix,” she says in a tone I’ve never heard before. It sounds so strange for a moment—and then I realize why.

This is the first time she hasn’t called me “Master.” From the very beginning of her time in my employ, she’d insisted on it.

It seems things have changed.

She walks into the room, and I’m shocked at the sure-footed, confident gait she exhibits.

There’s no limp.

There’s no fucking limp.

But there is a fresh wound on her arm and scrapes that look like claw marks on the side of her face.

My eyes immediately zip down to Charity. I can only make out one hand, but the blood underneath her fingernails is unmistakable.

“You killed her?”

Anna glances at Charity with mild irritation. “She put up more of a fight than I expected.”

She takes a seat in an armchair in front of me and gestures with her gun for me to do the same. “Please,” she adds politely.

I stay where I am. Staring at her, trying to figure out where I’d gone so wrong.

I’d found her in the home of an enemy, enslaved and mistreated. She was the one that pulled the trigger that killed her owner’s life. Mario Gibraltar. A known agent of Astra Tyrannis.

I’d walked in on the scene moments after it happened. Soon enough to see the bastard’s body still twitching and bleeding out. But now, in light of this new revelation, the timing seems rather convenient.

“Everything you told me was a lie,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

She sighs. “Sit down, Phoenix. Please. This may be a long conversation and I’d hate for you to be uncomfortable.”

For the first time since I’d known her, she’s showing me her true face. Gone is the warm, affectionate grandmother who’s tended to my home for years. In her place is a cold-blooded assassin who shot my gun out of my hand from across the room without batting an eye.

“I could break your kneecaps,” she muses. “That would force you to sit. But I’d much prefer not to go to the trouble.”

I have to resist the urge to launch myself at her and throttle her with my bare hands. One look at her casual grip on the gun, though, and I know that I’d have half a dozen holes in me before I made it one step in that direction.

So instead, I lower myself down to the couch just behind me.

She gives me an approving nod, as though she’s disciplining an errant child. “Thank you.”

“What’s your real name?” I ask.

“I was born Martha Blackwell,” she says. “But I’ve had many incarnations. Many lives. I’ve also been Alison Nathanson. Diana Adison. Grace Copper. Susan Lewis. Joanna Robinson. I’ve been so many different women. They all start to blend together eventually.”

“And you’ve worked for Astra Tyrannis the whole time?”

“Since I was fourteen years old.”

“Where did they find you?”

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