Page 16 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

“In the corner,” I explain impatiently. “The dark pane. What does it look like?”

She follows where I’m pointing. “A hook? No, a bird. Wait. Wait. It’s a…” Pirouetting back to me, she looks like she’s just seen a ghost. “It’s a swan,” she finishes. “They’re all black swans.”

“How many homes are on this commune, Elyssa?” I ask.

“I—I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“A hundred, maybe? I’m really not—”

“There are one hundred and thirteen homes within the walls. Guess how many of them have a black swan buried beneath the foundation?”

She swallows. I don’t have to say the answer—she says it for me. “All of them.”

“All of them,” I confirm. “Every single fucking one. There are swans in the stained glass. Swans in the foundations. The office of your would-be husband is littered with the motherfuckers. And do you know why?”

She shakes her head. I can see realization dawning in her eyes, but she refuses to accept it. Refuses to see the obvious truth staring her in the face.

“Because the kind of men who traffic in women cannot bear to own something without marking it. Because they cannot sleep at night if their property is not branded.”

“What are you saying?” she whispers in the tiniest voice imaginable.

“I think you know.”

She shakes her head. “No, you’re wrong. That doesn’t even make any—it’s not like that. It can’t be, because…”

“We’ve been surveilling this place for a month, Elyssa,” I cut in. “My men do not make mistakes. You and everyone you’ve ever known are just property. The playthings of a hundred-year-old organization that trades women like cattle. That deals in blood, in pain, in bodies. The Sanctuary belongs to Astra Tyrannis.”

It’s like she hasn’t heard me at all. She stares off into space, her eyes darting from side to side. Her expression is so sincerely horrified that I find myself taking a step towards her. Now, there’s only five feet of space between the two of us. And it’s too close. Too fucking close.

Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out. I see her lips starting to turn blue. “I can’t… I can’t breathe…” She starts clawing at her dress, trying to reach around to the back to undo the zipper. She’s gasping and struggling to breathe.

I have to make a choice. Intervene or stand aside?

Touching her was the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do. I know what she does to me. The effect she has on me. From the very beginning, she’s coaxed me into mistake after mistake.

I can’t just stand her and watch her die, though. The panic attack has her in its claws. It’ll devour her if I don’t do something.

So, growling, I make my decision. I grip her by the shoulders and spin her around. She’s so light and fragile in my hands. The back of the dress is a complex patchwork of buttons and hooks.

“We don’t have time for this shit,” I snarl.

Seizing the fabric in my hands, I tear as hard as I can.

Lace rips. The buttons squeal and pop off one by one, bouncing around on the dais. The dress falls in a ruin around her feet. It’s forever destroyed—but when I hear Elyssa suck in a desperate, gasping inhale, I know I did the right thing.

We sink to the ground together. She’s a puddle in my arms. Her smooth, cool skin brushes against mine at the wrists, at the neck. Our breath mingles together.

I don’t know how long we sit there, slumped on the altar we were just married upon. Long enough for the color to return to her lips. For her eyes to flutter open and look at me again like she’s seeing someone new in my skin.

Gradually, the trembling and the gasping eases.

And then I start to realize things.

Like how, beneath her dress, she’s wearing porcelain-colored lingerie. The finest, thinnest lace imaginable. She’s too frail now, but her curves are crying out for my touch anyway. Demanding that I run my fingertip over the rise of her hip.

“Feel better?” I murmur.

---