Page 11 of Ruthless Bratva King

“Then we give him the threesome of his life.” She winks. “If you can stand to share him, that is.”

I arch a brow. “And what about your overgrown lady garden?”

Veronica grins. “Girl, be for real. We both saw the way he looked at you. I could be smooth as a dolphin but it’d make no difference. That man has eyes only for your lucky ass!”

I blush. “I don’t know what you mean, Vee. Let’s just get my stuff and hope we don’t run into trouble.”

9

ELENA

By the time we’re in the car, Veronica has seamlessly transitioned from casual cheerleader to full-blown motivational speaker.

“You know, if you were in charge of designing my apartment complex, I might actually enjoy living there.”

“I think it’s cute as it is,” I reply absently, glancing out the window.

“Cute?” she snorts. “You told me it’s a death trap.”

“Yeah, but an affordable death trap.”

“Come on, what would you do? You have ideas, don’t you? I can tell.”

I can’t help myself. “I’d make the hallways wider for a start, and add better lighting. Maybe build a rooftop garden to give residents some outdoor space. And those countertops would be quartz, not Formica. More durable.”

“See?” She smacks my arm playfully. “You’re a genius. So why the hell aren’t you studying this?”

I shrug, fiddling with the zipper on my jacket. “You know why. Dad tore up my application.”

“He’s gone now. You’ve got no excuses left. One day, I’ll be living somewhere you designed, and I’ll say ‘I told you so’ at the top of my voice from the huge atrium filled with slides and swings.”

10

ELENA

My apartment is just as I left it—silent and still, the air thick with the echoes of some terrible occurrence.

Veronica sets her bag down and turns to me, hands on her hips. “Okay, let’s do this. Gather up the sketchbooks, oh talented one.”

“We don’t have to?—”

“Don’t even think about it,” she interrupts, going through to my room. I find her flipping through the pages when I catch up.

“These are good,” she says after a moment, holding up a page. It’s a sketch of a sleek modern library with a spiral staircase and floor-to-ceiling windows.

I smile faintly. “That one was for a competition. My dad called it ‘impractical garbage.’”

“Your dad was wrong, as always,” Veronica replies bluntly. “This is amazing.”

I feel a strange mix of pride and pain as she goes through the rest of the stack. These designs represent a part of me I’ve long tried and failed to bury, a part that still aches for validation I’ll never get from my family.

When she reaches the last page, something falls out—a scrap of paper folded into a small square.

“What’s this?” Veronica asks, holding it up.

I take it from her and unfold it. A single address is scrawled across the paper in my dad’s messy handwriting, and I read it twice, committing it to memory. I’m good with that kind of thing.

“I don’t know,” I say, frowning. “I’ve never seen this before.”

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