Page 41 of Ripple Effect, Vol. 4

“Gabriel doesn’t take chances.” She shuffles across the room, toward the kitchenette and pulls two coffee cups from the cupboards. “You’re the closest he’s come to trust.”

“Yeah, well, he told me you were dead.”

“I was when he found me.” She pours the coffee into the mugs and nods toward the table off in the corner.

I cross the room and take a seat, nabbing the mug as she slides into the opposite chair.

She swallows hard and her gaze falls toward her coffee cup. “The only thing left of me was the body Gabriel pulled out of the dirt.”

An ache throbs in my chest at the thought of what she must’ve suffered, and my gaze flicks to the scar along her collarbone, peeking out of the wide-neck T-shirt.

“For months, he tried to reach me. I wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t move. I was consciously comatose, if that makes sense.”

With a slight nod, I take a sip of my coffee, hanging on her every word.

“Then one day, he brought me a doily that my mother had crocheted. One of those silly things she always had lying around house. My fingers drifted over her stitches that had survived all those years after my mother died.” A hint of a smile lifts the corner of her mouth, sapping some of the sadness. “I asked him to bring me a needle and some thread. At first, I was just leaving something for him to keep because I was certain I wouldn’t come back from that place inside my head. But the more I sewed, the less I suffered the flashbacks.”

“Ripley told me that he’s part of the reason you were hurt.”

She blows out a breath and tightens her lips, shaking her head. “Gabriel blames himself for our mother’s death, too.”

Holding the mug to my face, I let my gaze fall from hers, knowing he’s undoubtedly punishing himself for what he believes happened to me.

“I was taken after Gabriel and I were separated. Told that I’d be sent back to my real father.”

“Not Ripley’s?”

She shakes her head. “We had two different fathers. But instead of being sent to mine, I was thrown into a van with two other girls and shipped somewhere out of state. We were beaten, starved, tattooed, and raped until we no longer felt like humans, but animals kept in cages.”

I frown and glance down at the tattoo on my own wrist. “The butterfly. What does it mean?”

“Black Monarch Society. It’s a group of very powerful people—doctors, lawyers, politicians, police officers, and teachers, even royalty. Every victim has a handler. The one who drugs them, trains them, turns them into butterflies. The butterflies are traded amongst the members through a website on the darknet. The idea is that after a while, they’ll forget who they are and where they came from.”

“They’re sex slaves.”

“Some. Others are made to do unspeakable things. Suicidal missions. Even kill.”

“Ripley found you, though.”

Her eyes fill with tears and she hides her face behind her coffee cup. When she lowers it, a glisten streaks down her cheek, trailing after the fallen tear. “He never gave up on me. But he blew his cover to come after me, and the men nearly killed him.” Wiping away the tear, she levels her stare on me. “If the Agency knew I was alive, they’d kill me.”

“Or make you one of them?”

She shakes her head. “They’d never take me in. Not like this. And I’d never get through their training. Even if I could, I’d never kill another Black Monarch.”

“I thought they … I thought they saved the girls.”

“Only if they’re hired to save them.” From the shelf beside her, she nabs a pack of Marlboro Lights and tips it toward me, offering me one.

Much as I’d love to have one to calm my nerves, I certainly don’t need another habit to kick, so I decline.

She lights the cigarette and sucks in a long drag. “Ripley’s been hired in the past to seek out Black Monarchs. Hired by their former masters who didn’t like all the personal information they’d acquired.”

It’s wrong, but I don’t want to think about Ripley killing another girl, an innocent caught up in the sick and twisted underbelly. “I understand what you meant now. About Ripley not being able to save me from everything. It’s why I didn’t go back.”

Her tongue sweeps across her lips and she stares back at me. “There are things you might not know about yourself yet, Dylan. Triggers.”

“What are you talking about?”