Page 36 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

“Nothing yet,” I say. “He’s still sitting in his fucking car.”

“You think he knows you’re tailing him?”

“Nah. He can’t even see me from here.”

“I can come to where you are,” Matvei suggests.

“I’ll be fine. You just sit there and be pretty.”

“What if whatever’s about to go down requires some manpower?” Matvei asks.

I roll my eyes. “I’ll handle it.”

“Fucking hell, Phoenix. Quit this now. You know where the fucker lives. That’s all we need. We’ll get him another day. When you have your men behind you.”

“The men don’t need to be involved until they have to be. That goes for you, too.”

“You know that your parents are right about this, don’t you?”

“I don’t care,” I reply. “Astra Tyrannis is a fucking stain on the world and I’m going to wipe it out.”

“And I am completely behind that plan,” he tells me. “But not the way you’re doing it.”

“If you’re about to call me reckless again, I’m hanging up.”

“Brother,” Matvei says, his tone growing cautious, “Astra Tyrannis is a century old. Their systems have been in place forever. All their members have been active since the inception, and we don’t even know their names.”

“We know one,” I growl. “Viktor Ozol.”

“And he might as well be a ghost in the wind, for all the good our hunting has done in getting us close to him again. You’re running a personal war on instinct alone. It’s a bad idea, Phoenix.”

“My instincts have never let me down so far.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Thanks for the pep talk. That’s just what I want from my second.”

I can tell Matvei’s smiling. “That’s exactly why I’m your second. I’m not going to feed you lies or stroke your ego. You do that plenty yourself.”

I squeeze the phone hard. “I can’t just sit by and watch this shit happen in my city, Matvei. Aurora wouldn’t want that. Yuri wouldn’t want that.”

Their names still taste like fucking asphalt coming out of my mouth. But sometimes I force myself to say them anyway.

It’s the fire I need to keep going.

“That’s not—”

“Everyone assumes that I’m so consumed with revenge that I can’t see straight enough to make certain decisions. But it’s possible to want revenge and think clearly, too.”

“You haven’t properly mourned them.”

“I’ve mourned them plenty,” I snap. “I’ve got the scars and the tattoos to prove it. Now, I just need to avenge them. I won’t stop until I do.”

“You’re missing out on life in the meantime.”

“Thisismy life, Matvei. I don’t want anything else.”

“Okay,” he sighs. I can hear the taint of defeat in his tone. “Okay. There’s no stopping you.”

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