Page 116 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

“What did you remember, little lamb?” I whisper to myself in the empty control room.

Her voice pings through the headset, but it’s so low that I almost miss it. I crank up the volume and hunch over to listen close.

“…There’s a place near the Sanctuary,” she murmurs. “In the valley. A place…”

I frown and lean in. This is new information to me.

But apparently, not to Raj.

The man is tenser than I’ve ever seen him. He looks as though he’s going to throw up right on Elyssa’s head.

Her gaze tracks upward. From the puddle of blood beneath his feet, to the stained hem of his pants, all the way up to his swollen, hardened face.

“Do you know it?” she asks.

“No.” He gives himself away by answering too quickly. This is the opening we needed. I’m about to charge in there and cut the rest of the truth out of him.

But Elyssa isn’t finished yet.

“I think… I thinkIknow it,” Elyssa says.

She’s still looking pale and unsteady. As though she’s seen a ghost. Every few seconds, she keeps shaking her head.

“There’s a place… It’s called…”

Her words mesh together and I can’t make them out.

She stumbles upright and turns around so that her back is to Raj. She’s got her arms wrapped around her torso to quell the tremors and her lips move silently, numbly.

That’s enough for me. I rip the headphones off and charge back down the corridor. I burst through the door. “Elyssa!”

She whips around.

But not towards me. It’s Raj she faces.

“How could you do it?” she demands. Her voice is shot through with fire and ice. “I didn’t know what I was doing. But you did. You do. You knew.”

“Elyssa, you—” I reach out for her but she slaps me away without looking.

“I thought I needed information from you,” she says. “But I don’t. Not really. I needed to unlock all the things I’d forgotten.”

He glares at her, still trying to cling to his venom and his training. But I can see his will start to crumble.

“You and Josiah… You were supplying them with children. With young girls, too. You were cogs in the wheel of some awful machine. A meat grinder for the innocent.”

The steely control I saw earlier is gone. She’s coming unraveled now. Her voice breaks, her hair flies as she trembles with rage and sorrow in equal measure.

For the first time since I met her, her emotions are in control.

“Were you around to watch?” she cries. “Were you there to see them being separated? You monster! You—”

“Don’t act so innocent,” Raj interjects. “You were there. So why don’t you tell me?”

She gapes at him for a moment. First, I see the denial flash across her eyes. Then I see the horror. The horror of the other memories that are only now tunneling their way to the surface.

She backs away from him slowly. “Oh God,” she breathes. “Oh God…”

“You stand there and judge me,” Raj continues. He rattles his chains. “But you were the one who lived in the Garden. You worked there. Got your own hands dirty.”

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