Page 57 of Ripped Veil (Ripped Bratva)
But when he starts squeezing, I realize I don’t want to die. Even my guilt is hollow. Even my shame is a lie.
In the face of death, I cling to life. In the face of punishment, I crave escape.
“Please,” I beg. “Let me go.”
The ghost shakes his head and squeezes harder and harder, and my breathing slows to a trickle and then to nothing at all, and my lungs are burning, and my eyes are bulging, and everything hurts and hurts and hurts until I reach the edge of the cliff and I fall off, tumbling down into endless shadows below…
* * *
I gasp awake. It’s later. The room is dark, and Charity is curled up on the other side of the bed, snoring softly. My eyes go wide with terror as I flail around and search for the one comfort I have left in my life.
“Theo?” I whisper into the dark of the cavernous room. “Theo?”
The center of the bed where I laid him down is empty. Theo’s blanket is sprawled messily against the sheets. They’re still warm.
“Theo,” I gasp, panic turning my voice gravelly with fear. “Theo!”
But he’s not here. He’s not anywhere.
My son is gone.
14
Phoenix
Phoenix’s Office
My office is completely devoid of natural light. A deliberate choice on my part.
I had the windows boarded up about three years ago to make more space for the wall of leads I started days after Aurora and Yuri disappeared.
The paper trail has only grown since then. The boards are now plastered with thousands of documents pinned and connected and highlighted and annotated.
Reports and profiles and detailed bios on every man suspected of being involved in Astra Tyrannis.
News articles on the missing women—and God, there are so fucking many of them. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Countless women and girls ripped from their homes and sold into the shadows of the underworld I call home.
I walk over to my desk and pick up the file lying in the center. Opening it up, I scan the A4-sized image of Detective Jonathan Murray’s face.
The file is filled with his details. School records from his youth, hospital forms. Fuck, I even have his goddamn police academy report card. All the things that made him a valuable piece for Astra Tyrannis to recruit.
He’s smug in the photo. Proud. Like he thinks that his connections mean he can’t be touched. Can’t be made to pay for his crimes.
“How very fucking wrong you are, Detective,” I murmur to the photograph. I pluck the glossy image from the file and stride over to the wall. Grabbing a pin, I stab it through his forehead and skewer it in place at the end of the lineup of leads I’ve accumulated over the past five years.
The other men in this section of the lineup have the same look in their eyes that Murray does. Arrogant and cruel. A hardened, greedy glint to their eyes.
Every single one of them is dead now.
I hunted them down one by one. Tortured them into giving up their fellow co-conspirators.
And little by little, I’ve circled closer to the beating heart of Astra Tyrannis.
I promised those men whatever they wanted to hear in order to coax their confessions. And when flattery didn’t work, I made them scream until the cells in my basement rung with their howls.
But every interrogation ended the same way: with the lifeblood of these scum pulsing out of their slit throats as they gurgled at my feet.
Murray will meet the same end if he doesn’t cooperate with me.
