Page 22 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

In the end, I don’t answer at all.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, I’m in front of a roughshod wooden door. Two of my men stand guard outside.

“Open it,” I instruct. One of them twists the handle and lets me in.

Father Josiah has been chained to a chair in the center of the room. The windows are drawn tight, casting the space in darkness. His head dips low and the loose burlap bag hanging over his head obscures his face. The blood on his stomach is dried into a dark red splatter.

I move forward and rip the hood off. He blinks in pained confusion before raising his eyes to mine. They go wide for a second and I see the fear again.

It’s an extremely satisfying reaction.

I drag forward the only other chair in the room and twist it around before straddling it. “Father,” I greet pleasantly. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Why are you doing this?” he moans. His words turn into a spluttering cough.

I had one of my doctors examine the knife wound and bandage it as needed. I made sure to aim carefully when I stabbed him. Couldn’t have the fucker bleeding out like a stuck pig on me. No, this man knows things. Things that I’d like to know more about myself.

He’s going to stay alive for a while longer.

I also wanted to prove a point—I’m the fucking leader now.

“You know why,” I answer.

“Is it all for her?”

I freeze. His head is still bobbing forward on his chest, so he doesn’t see my reaction. But it takes me a moment to compose myself again.

Focus, Phoenix, I scold myself.Focus on the fucking mission.

“How much does she know?” I ask instead of answering his question.

He frowns, spit-flecked lips turning downward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sigh. “We’re going to play that game?”

I lean back a little and regard him as objectively as I can. He’s an older man—late forties, early fifties at most. Good-looking in the generic, trustable sort of way that men like him tend to be. But he’s got the crazy eyes that men like him tend to have, too. Eyes that see things that aren’t there.

“Why her?” I ask.

“What?”

“She’s got to be, what, thirty years younger than you are?” I point out. “Why choose her?”

I can see the debate in his eyes:Be diplomatic? Or tell the truth?

He seems to settle on the latter. One of his masks falls away—though there are many more waiting underneath.

“Because I could.”

I stay calm, even though I’m seething underneath. “And did you ask her?”

“Ask her what?”

“Ask her if she wanted to marry you, you dumb fuck.”

“No more than you did,” he snaps back.

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