Page 60 of Queen of Ruin

“He’s being dramatic,” Ivy remarks with a smile. “He’s a good cook when he wants to be. It’s just, none of us have been doing much cooking or eating since…” She trails off and Ruslan, who’s sitting next to her, shifts as if his arm has grasped her thigh under the table for comfort.

“Since what?” I tighten my grip on Diego’s hand. “You’ve all been… mysterious. Talking and acting like I should know who you are, but I gotta say, none of this feels good.” Even as the words leave me, there’s a niggle in the back of my mind because some of it does feel good.

There’s distant familiarity even in this situation, but it’s like trying to decipher a fogged photograph.

Something clatters on the counter near Bradley, but I can’t make out what it is.

“In time,” Ruslan says quietly, “you’ll remember. The doctor said it wasn’t permanent, correct?”

“But she did say the timeline was impossible to gauge,” Diego adds. “It could be anywhere from six days to six months.”

“Given what you’ve told us…” Ivy’s smile strengthens, and it seems to be a calculated choice that she’s the one talking to me and not one of the others. “You went missing about a week before you ended up in Diego’s car. Eight days, to be exact. It was the morning of our wedding, Ruslan and I. You were my maid of honor.” Her voice cracks ever so slightly, but she masks it well with a deep inhale. “That’s why you had our rings. Ruslan didn’t trust Bradley with them since he has a penchant for losing things.”

“I don’t,” Bradley mutters. “But whatever.”

“You so do. You couldn’t even find cufflinks that morning,” Ruslan remarks. “Can you imagine what you would have done with two small rings?”

Bradley rolls his eyes as he approaches the table, and he sits with only a mug of coffee. “No one likes cufflinks, anyway.”

“We called off the wedding because your disappearance was so out of character,” Ivy continues.

My stomach tightens. “You didn’t get married?”

“No.” Ivy’s smile doesn’t waver. “We can get married at any time and we knew we wanted all of our friends there. By the time we made it to the start of the ceremony, there was no trace of you, so we called it off and started the search.”

Diego shifts beside me, and his chair creaks, then he clears his throat. “You started the search? You didn’t call the cops?”

“No,” Ruslan replies. “We didn’t.”

“Seems a bit weird, don’t you think? Your friend goes missing and you don’t call the cops? Eight days and not one phone call?”

Ruslan exchanges a look up the table with Bradley. He takes a deep breath that almost seems to thin the air around us. “I won’t get into details,” he says. “All you need to know right now is no, we didn’t call the cops.”

Diego’s thumb shifts against my knuckles, but he doesn’t say anything else.

“We’re pretty adept at looking for missing people,” Ivy says. “I say we. It’s more them. I’m not exactly involved in any of that, but the main point I’m trying to make, Valentina, is that you are one hell of a woman who doesn’t just disappear off the face of the earth. We knew something had happened. Something bad. But we found nothing. Not a single clue, not a hint, not even an encrypted message anywhere. You were just… gone.”

The stab of pain in Ivy’s tone makes my heart clench, and warmth builds unexpectedly behind my eyes. I swallow quickly to combat the sensation. “But you found me.”

“We did.” Her eyes close briefly. “The card you have with you is how we tracked you. We kept our ear to the ground, hoping for a hint of life from it, but we had nothing until we got a brief flicker at your apartment.” Her eyes slide to Diego very briefly. “It was our very first hint that you were alive, and it was so brief that while Ruslan and Bradley ran to search the place, Raven was running tests to make sure it wasn’t a glitch.”

“You searched my apartment?” Diego remarks sharply. “Does the law seriously mean nothing to you?”

“No,” Bradley replies shortly. “Given the blood we found on the bed there, and Raven’s conclusion that it wasn’t a glitch, we feared the worst.”

“I saw you,” Diego continues. “That night. I was attacked at the bar where I work and Valentina saved me. On the way home, I saw you outside my apartment so we didn’t get off the bus.”

“You were attacked?” Ruslan leans forward. “By whom?”

His demand is quickly pulled back by Ivy clearing her throat. “What they mean to say is, we can understand why you ran. But from that point on, Valentina, we thought you were dead. It…” She shakes her head briefly and her eyes sparkle.

“Until the motel,” I say as it suddenly clicks in my mind. “I activated that card again. Is that how you found us again?”

Ivy nods, even as her smile wavers. “It was… confusing. That card is coded only to you and us in emergencies, and we definitely didn’t have access. So the alert put us on edge, and then Ruslan crashed into a poor civilian, which then gave you a chance to leave. Cassian had been tracking a few smaller leads here and there after interviewing people at the bar you work at, Diego, and then we met Mindy.”

Bradley grunts softly and buries the sound in his mug of coffee.

“We picked up on one of her calls while following police scanners and she was yelling about you, Diego, which meant nothing to us until she gave a not-so-kind description of Valentina. From there, we tracked Diego’s phone, which also seems to be what those bounty hunters did. And the rest…” Ivy shakes her head.