Page 106 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

“My mother gave it to me years ago,” I explain. “She said it was a part of her past she no longer wanted. I didn’t understand that back then. Maybe I do now; I’m not sure. I intended to rebuild it—to do it my way. But… I never got around to it, I guess. Life happened. Death happened.”

Elyssa looks back at the ruin. “I want to look closer.”

I raise an eyebrow. “It’s not exactly good viewing. It’s a bloodstained, burned-out wreck. Lots of people died in there.”

“I can handle it,” she snaps.

I suppress a grin. “If you say so. Come on then. Watch your step.”

We put our backs to the water and weave through the dunes until the remnant husks of ashen buildings rise up around us. I keep a tight grip on Elyssa’s hand in case she stumbles.

She notices me wrinkling my nose. “What’s wrong? What do you smell?”

“The stink of death,” I murmur. “It never goes away.”

25

Phoenix

“Does it feel weird?” Elyssa asks, stepping over rubble. “Being here?”

“Yes and no.” She raises her eyebrows and I chuckle. “That’s not helpful, is it?”

Her eyes sparkle brightly underneath the muted moonlight. As she walks ahead of me, it’s hard not to miss the fact that her dress is translucent. I can see the perfect curve of her hips and the graceful lines of her long, lean legs as she picks her way through the devastation.

“Not particularly, no,” she says. “Care to elaborate?”

“All this happened before I was born,” I explain. “I’ve only ever seen it like this. So in a way, my attachment is to the ruins.”

She smiles, but it’s a forlorn smile. The kind of smile that only comes from someone who knows what it’s like to lose everything. “I suppose I can relate. Everything I’ve ever loved was broken.”

As we enter what remains of the main body of the house, the moonlight never truly fades because the ceiling has been blown apart on one end and caved in on the other. The remaining beams form a jagged trellis over our heads. Bats flit from crevice to crevice.

Elyssa hops up onto a precarious wooden log jutting out from a mound of rubble. She turns and curtsies like a debutante, then giggles. It’s a sound this place hasn’t heard in a long, long time. Hell, it’s a soundIhaven’t heard in a long time, either.

Even still, I move forward protectively, ready to catch her in case she loses her balance.

“Don’t stop talking,” she encourages. “I like listening to you.”

I shrug and let my hands fall by my sides, though I don’t stray far from her. “My parents bought me here when I was a little boy. Showed me around, told me what happened.”

“That’s morbid. Especially for a little kid.”

“Not in so many details,” I assure her. “Just enough so that I understood where I came from.”

“And where do you come from?”

“A long lineage of mafia royalty,” I reply solemnly. “Don after don after don. I was destined to be what I am from the day I was born.”

“Did you ever want anything else?” she asks curiously.

“Meaning?”

“Did you ever want to be anything other than… well, than what you are?”

I consider that a moment. “No,” I say. “Not really.”

She nods. Expected me to say that, I’m sure. But I can’t help wondering if she’d allowed herself to hope—even if just for a fraction of a second—that I’d say something else instead.

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