Page 162 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

He ambles forward casually, hands clasped behind his back. Elyssa follows him without a word, like she’s entranced. Like she’s his shadow. His puppet.

“I have a proposition for you, Phoenix,” he says pleasantly. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Elyssa, what’s wrong?”

“She’s not going to talk to you,” Ozol remarks with a self-satisfied quirk of the eyebrows.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Exactly that. I’ve told her not to. So she won’t.”

Ozol reaches back and grazes Elyssa’s cheek with the back of his hand. He tucks a lock of hair back behind her ear and gives her a sickening smile.

I’m not the only one that tenses. Josiah does, too.

Ozol turns back to me pointedly. “She’s mine now. She’s willing to do as I instruct. The question is… are you?”

My body feels like steel, hardened towards its purpose. If only I wasn’t stuck behind bars, I’d kill the motherfucker with my bare hands.

“Elyssa, my dear,” Ozol starts with the air of a professor giving a lecture, “do you know why Phoenix came today?”

She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even move.

He just smiles as if she’s done exactly as she’s supposed to. “It was to save you. To exchange his life for yours. Isn’t that noble?”

He gets nothing from Elyssa apart from the tiniest of flinches. Hardly a blink. He might not notice it, but I do.

“Well, perhaps ‘noble’ is a stretch. But still—even I can see that it’s very, shall we say,romantic.”

His voice curls around the word, turning it into something dirty. Something pathetic.

“You’ve exposed yourself, Phoenix,” he tells me. “You’ve given me the power to hurt you and your Bratva. But—I’m not an unreasonable man. I like a good trade as much as anyone. You want Elyssa freed?” he asks. “I can make that happen.”

I’m not stupid. I can see a trap coming from a mile away. But what choice do I have?

“What are your terms?”

His smile gets wider. “Oh, nothing too unbearable,” he says. Reaching behind him with the speed of a viper, he snatches Elyssa and throws her towards the bars of my cage. “Fuck her. Fuck her like you love her. Fuck her like you’ll never get to fuck her again.”

My blood runs cold. “What the hell did you just say to me?”

He laughs. “Generous, isn’t it? Well, what do you say, Phoenix? Fuck her here and now, in in front of me and Josiah and my men, and she’ll be free as a bird.”

“What’s the catch?” I demand. “What do you get out of this?”

“The pleasure of watching a drowning man take his last breath of air.” Ozol’s smile broadens one tooth wider. His teeth are sharp and tiny like a crocodile’s. The effect is nauseating. “Clock’s ticking, Master Phoenix. Do we have a deal?”

I stare into those hauntingly pale eyes of his.

And I nod. “I accept.”

Elyssa’s eyes go wide. She looks terrified, but she still doesn’t utter a single word.

“Guard,” Ozol orders, “open the door.”

An unexpected voice pipes up. “S… sir?” Everyone looks towards Josiah where he’s standing in the corner.

He looks shrunken. The charisma he used to possess seems to have shriveled up and died the moment Ozol entered the room.

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