Page 6 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

My hand strays towards the tiny knife I managed to conceal from security, but I resist pulling it out. No sense in showing my cards before I have to.

The girl—I suppose she’s a woman, but she looks so young and innocent that “girl” seems more appropriate—looks up at me. She has huge amber eyes fanned with thick black eyelashes and ringed with smudged mascara. Her blonde hair has lost its sheen to sweat, and her breaths burst from her in small, pain-filled gasps.

She looks like every other girl I’ve seen here tonight: beautiful. Young. Broken.

The only difference is that, on her… it shows.

“Who the fuck are you?” I snarl.

She blanches, her eyebrows furrowing as though she’s trying to shake off the voices in her head.

I look around the room, but it doesn’t appear that we’re being watched. Of course, that means fuck-all. There are a million places to hide a camera in here if someone with bad intentions wanted to observe.

I turn back to her, unmoved by the tear tracks leaving streaks down her hollow cheeks. She still hasn’t answered my question.

“I asked you a question,” I repeat. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Please,” she whispers, as though terrified to speak out loud, “don’t curse.”

I raise my eyebrows. Did she just tell me to watch my language? I almost laugh. I’m thirty-two years old, and it’s been more than two decades since someone has told me to watch what I say.

Her eyes dart from side to side and her hands twitch at her sides. I look down and notice that her fingernails are bloody. She seems to be shivering, too.

“I… I… The lights were so bright,” she stammers. Her words slur. “I was just trying… trying to get away from everything… A door was open… I went… I came in here… and there were… I saw… I saw…”

The trembling is more pronounced now. Her eyes are unfocused. I’ve seen this before, more times than I care to relive.

She’s drugged.

“Listen to me,” I order, raising my hands palms up. I don’t touch her, but I take a step closer. “Calm down. Breathe.”

She complies instantly, melting with innocence and looking into my eyes like she’s desperately waiting for my next instruction.

This girl doesn’t fit the mold of a spy or an assassin. She can’t possibly be working for Ozol. But maybe the fact that she’s an unlikely recruit is exactly the reason he’s sent her in here.

“How do you feel now?” I ask.

“I…” She shakes her head, and a fresh tear squeezes from the corner of one eye. “I’m scared,” she admits, her voice breaking.

“Did someone bring you in here?”

“No. I was on the streets… There were so many lights, so many people… I just wanted some quiet. I needed to think.” Her eyes dart around the room. Whatever she notices clearly doesn’t make her feel any better, because she clams up instantly. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“No,” I agree, “you shouldn’t.”

Any minute now, a very bad man is going to walk through that door. The only thing that would keep her safe is the very bad man who’s already in here.

Me.

“But I can’t go back out there,” she pleads desperately. “There were men and women. They were everywhere. They were…”

“Fucking,” I offer coldly.

She flinches at the curse. There’s no way this woman works for Ozol. There’s no way this woman has spent any time in the underworld at all.

But then again, she’s standing in front of me in a bedraggled wedding dress and bare, dusty feet. And there’s literal blood on her hands.

So she can’t be as innocent as she looks.

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