Page 63 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

“I don’t know you,” she continues. “You may have given me a baby, but you’re a stranger to me. So you can judge me all you want for how I’m raising Theo. But I’m doing the best I can. Because you were never there!”

I drop her hands immediately and step back. She glances down at my hands as though she’s worried I’m going to strike her. I unclench my fists just to prove I’m not.

But the guilt stays with me.

Her eyes do, too.

And I can’t escape either one.

15

Elyssa

I know I’m dangerously close to hyperventilating, bursting at the seams with fear and exhaustion and tremors I can’t control. Tears threaten to spring loose from my eyes and my hands won’t stop shaking.

I’m not sure what’s causing it—Theo missing? Or Phoenix pinning me against a wall in this dark, empty hallway?

Every cell in me is screaming with fear. But they’re vibrating with something else, too. Something I can’t quite describe. I feel… alive, in the strangest way.

Maybe that’s the wrong word to use. But I stopped understanding how to describe everything happening around me the second Phoenix showed up at the shelter door.

He stares at me without speaking. But his eyes betray the emotion he’s trying desperately to hide.

It’s a feeling I know well. I’ve spent my entire life trying to tamp down my emotions. It’s what I was taught. How I was raised. Charity is the first person who ever told me I didn’t have to do that.

It’s okay to cry when you’re sad, she always says.Laugh when you’re happy. Rage when you’re mad.

And…fuck when you’re horny.The last part of her advice flashes across my mind despite myself.

It’s the crudest possible way of putting it, which is why I’ve always omitted it when I repeat her little manifesto to myself at night.

But sometimes, it sneaks into my consciousness all the same. And for the last year, whenever it has, I thought of the man in front of me now.

I remember the way he had pressed himself between my thighs and breathed new life into me on a night when I felt like my world was ending.

The accusation I just threw at him is unfair. He tried to help me that night. He protected me while he could. He told me where to go to stay safe. I was the one who made the choice not to go there and wait for him. The way I see it now, I’m the one at fault here.

But his dark expression prevents me from saying as much.

Something is different about him now. I remembered him being—well, not quite soft or tender—but more… open, more protective. The man in front of me is not that. Not by a long shot. He’s a raging inferno of violence. Of darkness. Of pure, seething hate.

It doesn’t feel directed at me, though, which is the strangest part of all. I dropped a huge bomb on him. I’d expected the news that he has a son to have a bigger impact. To draw a bigger reaction. Or really, any kind of reaction at all.

“I just… I just want my son,” I manage to stammer. “Please.”

His eyes rake over my face. “He’s here,” he says gruffly. “Somewhere.”

Phoenix turns and stalks away down the hallway. He doesn’t bother to see if I’m following. With a shudder, I scurry along his path and catch up.

We’ve walked another minute or so when he glances at me. “Where’s the other one?”

“Charity? She’s searching the other side of the house. It’s big.”

He doesn’t reply to that, except to speed up as though he wants to put as much distance between us as possible.

“Who else is in this house?” I ask, breaking the silence again.

“Many people,” Phoenix replies. “Maids, gardeners, chefs, guards, my men.”

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