Page 32 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

I squeeze her hand. “Charity,” I say with a small amount of desperation, “forget that. Look at yourself. How did this happen?”

She looks down as though she’s embarrassed. “I was working a high stakes poker game at the Bellagio,” she explains. “I was just meant to serve the drinks, flirt with the high rollers who were there to play.”

I nod and wait for her to continue.

She swallows a sob and goes on. “The short version? The wrong man lost. He was doing really fucking well, but then he got cocky. He lost about two million at the table in two minutes flat.”

Two million. Jesus.

“He enlisted my services for… after,” Charity says, her voice cracking a little. “It’s not unusual for one of the players to want to fuck me after the game. I thought he just wanted to blow off some steam. And he did… But not the way I expected.”

“He hit you,” I say with outrage.

She nods.

“Charity…”

“It’s never happened before, Elyssa,” she says. “I’ve always known how to handle men. But this one… He was so angry... And when he looked at me, it felt like he wanted to kill me. I thought hewasgoing to kill me.”

“How did you get away?”

I know I’m probably holding her hand a little tighter than is comfortable, but I don’t care. And she doesn’t seem to care, either. She needs it.

Her trembling ramps up a bit. “I managed to grab hold of something. I don’t even know what. But it was hard and heavy. I hit him with it and I just… I—I ran.”

“Good for you.”

“I heard him roaring as I ran, but I didn’t look back.”

I wrap my arms around her and pull her close. I hold her tight until her trembling subsides. “You were so brave, Charity,” I tell her softly. “So, so brave.”

She burrows her face in the crook of my neck. “For the first time, I’m scared of my job.”

I want to tell her that I’ve always been scared of her job. I’ve spent the last year worrying about her every time she’s gone out to work. But why rub salt in the wound? What she needs right now is a friend, not a kick when she’s down.

I can’t deny that it’s unsettling, though. To see someone like Charity so out of sorts, so broken down…

She’s the confident one. The experienced one. The smart one. Nothing scares her. She’s always been so damn unflappable. She’s been my strength every time I’ve faltered over the last year.

To see her like this—it’s sobering.

Not to mention terrifying.

“Charity, what he did to you, it’s assault. It’s a crime. We should report it.”

Her one good eye goes wide. And I read the hopelessness there. “Report it?” she repeats. “To who?”

I hesitate. “To… to the police?”

“The police?” she echoes again. “That’s a joke. The cops in this city don’t give a shit about people like me. I’m just a whore to them. A cheap, disgusting, filthy whore.”

“Stop! That’s not what you are.”

“It doesn’t matter, Elyssa,” Charity sighs. “What I am doesn’t matter. All that matters is what they think I am.”

“Well, then…”

I struggle for a moment to find the right word. The word that conveys the enormity of this situation. The word that’ll mean the most to Charity.

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