Page 76 of Queen of Ruin

“Honestly?” Bradley meets my gaze. “Neither would we. He seems like a good man. Must be, to help you when you threatened to kill him.”

“He is a good man.” Warmth spreads through my chest. “The best, in fact.”

“I’ve got something.” Raven pops out from under the table so rapidly that I jump, almost having forgotten she was there. She climbs back onto the table and with a few key presses, what’s on her laptop appears on the screen attached to the wall behind her.

A picture of a little girl in an oversized white dress, with dark skin and pigtails.

“That’s her!” I stand abruptly. “Oh, my God, that’s her!” She looks much happier in the picture Raven found. Her smile is wide, her eyes sparkling and her hands covered in paint with only a few splotches on the white dress.

“Her name is Tabitha. Seven years old. She was snatched from a playground during an organized group activity, hence the white dress. It was provided to all the children to protect their clothes during arts and crafts. She was snatched three weeks before you went missing, Valentina.”

“A missing kid?” Cassian murmurs.

“Who we know was alive until at least the day Valentina went missing,” Bradley says. “But this is… ordinary. Awful, but kids go missing in droves every day in New York.” His eyes slide to mine. “What’s special about this kid?”

I shake my head, fighting a sharp sting of emotion that crawls up my throat. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t recognize her from anywhere else?” Ruslan asks.

“No. Nowhere. Just the…” I sit slowly. “Oh, my God. What was a kid doing in a place like that?”

“There could be countless reasons,” Bradley assures me. “And not all of them are bad.”

“I’ll get in touch with Tabitha’s parents.” Cassian stands and drags his hand slowly over his head. “Maybe they can give some insight about what’s happened.”

“I’ll dig up what I can about the case and cross-reference it with everything and everyone we know you were in contact with before you vanished,” Raven says with a small smile at me, then she vanishes back under the table.

“You’re doing great,” Bradley says as he stands. “Every little detail is a step closer.” With a warm smile, he follows Cassian out of the room, leaving me with Ruslan and Raven under the table.

“He’s right, y’know. It might not feel like much now, but the fact that you’re remembering details like this is good.”

“Is it?” I drag my hands down my face and groan. “What if I remember something terrible? What if I was doing or being someone that I actually won’t like?”

“I doubt that. Val, you’re still you, even without your memories. That doesn’t change. Everything you feel in here?” He pats his chest. “That means something. You said before that you were scared of the cops and going to the hospital. That tells us that you knew someone was involved who was powerful enough that you wouldn’t be safe there. I think, and this is just a guess, I think you wanted to get back to us that night. And you would have made it if you hadn’t…” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “But part of you remembered enough to keep yourself and Diego safe. You are still you. You’re just missing some edges.”

“You’re kind of scary-looking, you know that, right?” I rest my chin on my palm and gaze up at him. “It’s weird hearing you say such nice things.”

“I know.” He smirks. “But it makes them all the more impactful, don’t you think?”

“Were…” I hesitate slightly. “Were we all friends?”

“Us?” He motions between us.

“All of us. This wasn’t just a work thing?”

“We’re friends. More than friends. We’ve lived in each other's pockets for years. Sure, there’s friction. You were not happy when I brought Ivy back here.”

“Why?”

“Well…” He puffs his cheeks. “I’m the newest voted in. Still a few years, but new, regardless. Things were… different. We didn’t involve ourselves in the little things because we believed that, to maintain balance, we had to focus only on the big disasters between bigger families. But Ivy… she was a survivor of a plane crash carrying drugs and that put her slap bang in the middle of two warring families, each convinced she was a spy for the other. And she wasn’t. She was just an ordinary person. People she cared about started dying, and we eventually learned that if I hadn’t intervened, she would have died, countless smaller families would have been wiped out… basically, it was a wake-up call. A lot was happening that we were missing. The pebble can take down the mountain sort of deal.”

“Why did you intervene?”

“I…” Ruslan shrugs. “It felt right. Something about Ivy just screamed that she needed help. So I ran with it. Ever since, we’ve been looking much closer.”

“And you both fell in love?”

“We did.” The smile he holds carries a deep love that almost matches what I feel in my own heart. “This life makes it hard for anything like that.”