Page 129 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

When she finishes, the silence crashes down on us like a tidal wave. It’s brainwashing, pure and simple. It’s manipulation. It’s cruelty.

And it makes me so fucking angry that I have to restrain myself from punching a hole in the window.

“I used to think it was so beautiful,” she admits, the shame thick in her voice.

“That was what you were meant to think.”

“That’s my excuse?” she asks. “That I was brainwashed?”

“It’s the truth.”

She turns her face away from me. She looks broken.

No—she looks like she’s breaking apart, one piece at a time. Crushed by the sins she committed when she was too young and too indoctrinated to know any better.

“Listen to me,” I say, reaching out for her.

But she recoils from my touch as though she doesn’t think she deserves the comfort. “Please, no…”

“Stop,” I say. “You have to fucking stop this.”

“Stop what?”

“There’s no time for this, Elyssa. You can fight your inner demons another fucking day. Right now, I need you in my corner.”

She shakes her head robotically. “I can’t fight. You don’t want me in the fight.”

I grab her face and force her to make eye contact with me. “You can’t fight? Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. You realize that those were real guns pointed at us back in the Garden, right? Those big bangs weren’t just for show. You stayed calm during all of it. You kept Violet calm. You kept her safe.”

“Did it seem that way to you?” she asks. “Because that’s not how I felt.”

“Elyssa, you’re strong. Stronger even than I thought.”

“They still have my son,” she points out. “What good does all that bravery do if they still have the only thing that matters? And now, they know we tried to rescue him. They’ll move him. We’ll never find him again. I can’t lose him, Phoenix. He’s all I have.”

“He’s not all you have,” I assure her. “You have me, too.”

She laughs bitterly. “You don’t mean that.”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

She shakes her head. “You deserve better.”

“Stop—”

“It’s true. You deserve better than—”

I silence her with a kiss so sudden and so fierce that I feel her gasp release in my mouth. She goes stiff and her hands patter lifelessly against my chest.

Until she recovers a second later and pushes me off. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to stop you from giving up,” I growl. “This is not the fucking end, Elyssa. We will get Theo back.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I do know it,” I say, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her back against my body. “Kiss me again and tell me I’m not very fucking certain.”

Our lips crash together. Bodies melt into each other. Breath mingles, panting and desperate. We back into one of the walls, upending something that clatters to the ground.

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