Page 78 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)

Charity is the closest person to me in the world. And even she doesn’t know what happened the night I came to Las Vegas for the first time.

She has her assumptions, of course, mostly based on the wedding dress I’d been wearing. But she’s never asked me to confirm or deny those theories. In fact, she’s pretty much kept them to herself.

“Elyssa? Did you hear me?”

I nod slowly. But she’s right—I’m not here right now. I’m drifting off in the past.

The Sanctuary has been the dark shadow hanging over my head the last year. A part of me believes that they’re searching for me. Faceless men in white robes, following my bloody tracks through the desert.

If Phoenix were to find out where I’m from, he could use it against me. He could send me back there.

And if he does…

It will be judgement day.

“Elyssa, honey, come back to me. Where’d you go?”

I focus on Charity, but I still see circles of smoke climbing into the dark, open sky above a burning house that was supposed to be my future.

“I went… to my past,” I whisper honestly.

She squeezes my fingers tight. “Remember what I told you? Forget the past. It’s the future that counts.”

“It’s the future I’m thinking of, Charity. We don’t know Phoenix’s motives. We don’t know anything about him.”

“He’s the father of your child. That’s kind of all we need to know.”

I shake my head. She doesn’t understand. Perhaps because she has nothing to lose. But me? I have to think of Theo.

If my past resurfaces and I end up back at the commune, there will be a reckoning for the crimes I committed. What if they take Theo away from me? They’d done as much to women who were guilty of far less.

Thorny memories crop up. Each one hurts like I’m being pricked with a needle.

Girls disappeared sometimes. Vanished into the wind—here one morning and gone the next. It was as if they’d never existed at all. And each of us who lived there went along with the lie. No one ever mentioned their names again. No one raised an eyebrow. We just… accepted it.

Iaccepted it.

Chills spread through my body. What kind of barbarism is that? What kind of monsters can look at the empty space where a human being used to be and just… carry on?

I feel sick to my stomach and my skin is cold to the touch, prickled up with goosebumps. Just like always. As if my body is rejecting the memories. Banishing them back to that deep, dark chasm in my head where they live. Where the answers to my past, to what really took place in the Sanctuary, reside.

“Elyssa? Elyssa!”

I jerk myself back to the present moment. “There are things in my past I don’t want him finding out, Charity.”

She tightens her grip on my hands. “Elyssa, your memories are nothing. Just little patterns in your brain. They aren’t real. Stop giving them power. Stop giving your past power.”

I think of Father Josiah. The way his face looked the night I ran—matted with blood and broken hideously…

“It has power all on its own, Charity,” I whisper. “It doesn’t need my help. That’s why I’m scared.”

“It’s been a year. Nothing’s happened. Your past isn’t coming back for you.”

I want to believe that. More than anything. But it feels impossible. Can a murderer really get away with a crime so big? So blatant?

And even if that’s possible, should she? Should I? Is it fair?

I’m not sure I know what’s fair anymore. Or what’s right. All I know is that I can’t rely on Phoenix Kovalyov.

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