Page 224 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

“It means that I can’t remember everything,” she says, her voice flaring up for the first time tonight. “It means that I’ve lost huge chunks of time. There are whole parts of my childhood, my adolescence, that I can’t really remember.”

“How convenient.”

“I know it seems that way, but it’s the truth!”

I laugh without humor. “I’m not fucking playing around anymore, Elyssa. I’ve been far too tolerant with you. I want some goddamn answers. And I want them now.”

47

Elyssa

“I’m not the enemy!” I cry out.

“Yeah?” he hisses. “Prove it.”

It hurts the way he’s looking at me now. Everything hurts. Charity’s body is only feet away from me but I can’t really see her behind the desk.

Anna, on the other hand, is on full display. The sight of all that blood and gore is making my guts churn with discomfort.

I know she deserved what she got. But seeing a body human splayed open like that… it’s a reminder of just how fragile we all are. We’re all one knife’s edge away from death.

“Elyssa,” Phoenix growls. Even the way he says my name is a threat. “Start talking. Now.”

I shudder and swallow back the billions of feelings threatening to overwhelm me. It’s hard to look him in his eyes after what he just did to Anna. It’s hard to look at his hands, too—the hands that just tore her apart. Her blood drips from his fingertips.

He’s a fucking savage.

The question remains, though… what will those hands do to me now?

So I start my story. What I can remember of it, at least.

“The night I ran from the Sanctuary, I… I woke up, I guess you’d say. I was confused. Didn’t know where I was or what was happening. I was wearing the wedding dress and there was something in my hand.”

“The paperweight?”

I nod. “Yeah. The paperweight… covered in blood.”

He doesn’t say a thing, so I continue. Even when the fear running through my veins burns like battery acid.

“It wasn’t my blood—that much I knew. I got to my feet, and I realized that I was in someone else’s home. Someone else’s room. I turned and saw there was a body by the side of the bed. Father Josiah’s body. And he was…”

“Dead?”

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“You killed him?”

I flinch. “Honestly, until today, I thought I had.”

Phoenix’s eyes darken. “What do you mean?”

“When I went back to the Sanctuary today, he was there. Josiah. He wasn’t dead at all. He survived.” I drag my eyes up to meet his. “Phoenix, I’m… I’m scared. I don’t remember the weeks leading up to that night. In fact, I don’t remember years leading up to that night.”

He’s staring at me like he doesn’t know who I am. Which is fair—at this point, I don’t know who I am, either.

Am I Elyssa Redmond, daughter of the Sanctuary, betrothed of Father Josiah?

Am I Theo’s mother?

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