Page 113 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

“So,” he starts, “I’ve decided to delay our attack. We need a plan. We need information. I want to hear what we know. Konstantin?”

Konstantin has a sharkish glint to his eyes and a lithe grace in his fingers. He strikes me as someone who’s seen things, who’s done things. A Bratva man through and through.

“I’ve had two teams pursuing a pair of leads,” he says. “We have tails on all known Astra Tyrannis compounds.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” Konstantin sighs. “No movement. No sign of Astra Tyrannis agents or the Yakuza. Silent as the grave, to be honest.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there,” another man speaks up.

Phoenix eyes flicker over to him and then back to Konstantin. “Continue.”

“They’re covering their tracks, boss,” Konstantin continues. “They know we’re looking for them.”

“They know we’re looking for them in places we’re aware of,” Phoenix points out. “What we need to do is find the places they’re trying to keep secret.”

“But how do we do that?” one of the men asks. “They’re secret.”

I can tell that Phoenix is trying very hard not to roll his eyes. “Yes, thank you, Ilya, for your enlightening observation. What I’m saying is—”

“It seems to me our best source of information is right here,” I blurt out before I lose my courage.

All of the men look at me. Not with shock or irritation, like I might’ve expected. But calm acceptance. Like I belong here.

I wish I knew how to describe the feeling that stirs up in me.

“Explain,” Phoenix orders.

“Raj,” I say. “It’s obvious he knows something. We need to convince him to talk.”

“We tried—”

“You tortured him,” I interrupt. “You didn’t try to convince him. There’s a difference.”

A flicker of annoyance flits across Phoenix’s face. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe he brought me here to be an ornament, not a contributor, and by speaking up, I’ve broken some rule I didn’t know existed.

But he’s the one who invited me into this meeting. If he didn’t want my honest opinions, then he shouldn’t have asked me at all.

You tell him, girl,Charity croons in my head.

“You don’t know how things are done here,” Phoenix says softly.

His expression brooks no argument, but I’m suddenly aware that of everyone in this room, I’m the only one who can get away with arguing with him.

“Just because it’s how things are done doesn’t mean it’s how things should be done,” I snap back.

He raises his eyebrows, and I wonder when his patience will start to give way. And what it will mean for me when it does.

I can’t worry about that, though. My son’s life hangs in the balance, and I refuse to cow back and be a doormat. Even though a part of me really wants to fall back into that comfort zone. Into the safe sanctuary of submitting to the world around me.

Stop it. You’re stronger than that. You just never believed you were.

“Phoenix, listen to me,” I insist. “Torturing the man for information is not the right way to get him to talk. He’ll end up telling you what you want to hear, as opposed to the truth. And we don’t have time to make detours. Not while… not while they have my son.”

He’s listening intently. So is everyone else. I’ve never been in this position before, the center of attention at a moment when everything hangs by a thread.

It’s terrifying—and incredibly empowering.

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