10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 10

The warehouse door groans like a wounded animal as I enter. Classic Baba—why fix what still works, even if it sounds like a death rattle?

Inside, the smell hits me first: salt, motor oil, and the cigars he’s smoked since I was old enough to steal them from his coat pocket. My throat tightens.

Two guards block the stairwell, carbon copy versions of the meatheads who used to lurk in our Brighton Beach kitchen, playing xeri and burning through one cigarette after the next until the dawn broke. One cracks his knuckles; the other smirks.

“Lost, princess?”

“Tell him I’m here.”

The smirker taps his earpiece, muttering in Greek. A pause. Then he jerks his chin toward the freight elevator. “You know where to go.”

The ride to the sixth floor takes a century. Scuffed mirrors line the elevator walls, reflecting a girl in a beat-up leather jacket and dirty boots, her hair a mess of curls she didn’t bother to brush. I look like a feral cat. My mouth still tastes like last night’s tequila. My thighs still ache from last night’s sins.

Baba’s office hasn’t changed. Same mahogany desk, same floor-to-ceiling windows smudged with fingerprints. The godawful oil painting he commissioned of himself still hangs crooked behind him. He’s bent over paperwork, gold pen in hand, but freezes when the elevator dings and spits me out.

When he looks up, his face does something I haven’t seen in years: softens. Just for a heartbeat. Then it’s gone.

“Ariana.” He stands too quickly, knocking a file to the floor. “You’re here.”

“Ariel,” I correct, lingering by the door. “I told you that.”

He starts to round the desk, hesitates, then sinks back into his chair. His hands tremble as he straightens a stack of papers. I frown at the tremor—is it new, or have I just never noticed before? A bottle of pills peeks out from his top drawer. Beta-blockers, if the label’s faded blue script is any clue.

“Sit,” he says. Then he adds, “Please.”

I stay rooted. “I’m not marrying Sasha.”

He doesn’t seem surprised. Just nods, slow. “I see.”

“He’s not a good man, Baba.”

A flicker of something crosses his face—guilt? Annoyance?—before he masks it. “He’s… direct. But he’ll keep you safe.”

“Safe?” I bark a laugh. “From who? You?”

He rubs his temple, the gesture so familiar it stings. I used to watch him do that at the kitchen table, late at night, while Mama slammed cabinets and muttered about men and their wars.

“You think I want this?” he asks quietly.

“You arranged it, so, yeah, if the shoe fits.”

“Because I can’t protect you forever!” The words burst out raw, startling us both. He clears his throat, stares at his hands. When he speaks again, it’s quieter, but still shot through with that old, familiar steel. “Your shit job, your little apartment, your fake name—you think I don’t know? That I haven’t let you play house?”

The air leaves my lungs.

He leans forward, voice fraying as he continues. “My enemies want everything that’s mine, darling. You’re my daughter—that means you’re included. You think they won’t come for you? For her?”

I freeze. “‘Her’?”

“The redhead. Your… friend.” He says it like a dirty word. “Gina.”

I’m across the room before I realize I’ve moved, palms slamming on his desk. “If you touch her⁠—”

“I won’t.” He meets my glare, steady. “But others will. Unless you’re untouchable.”

“And marrying a Bratva psycho makes me untouchable?”

“Yes.” He says it simply, like he’s explaining rain. “Sasha’s name is a shield. His people are wolves. They’ll gut anyone who looks at you sideways.”

I want to scream. To flip his desk, rip up his stupid painting, burn down this whole rusted morgue he calls his empire.

“I don’t even know him,” I say, my voice cracking. “Does that matter to you at all? Does… does love?” I hate myself for even saying it, for how pathetic it sounds. It’s even worse out loud than it was in my head.

“‘Love’?” He digs the heel of his hand into his eyes. “Your mother and I loved each other. For a while, at least.”

The implication is that it didn’t matter in the end. That fate destroyed them, so it can’t possibly be his fault.

“And that worked out great for everyone involved,” I spit with fifteen years’ worth of sarcasm and resentment.

“Sometimes, the heart follows the head. Sometimes not.”

I grit my teeth. “I don’t give a fuck what follows what. No part of me is going into this willingly. You can’t just sell me off like⁠—”

“What if—” He stops and taps his fingers on the desk. “What if there was a compromise?”

I snort. “Since when do you compromise?”

“Since my daughter came back to me.” His voice is soft, almost pleading. Something else I’ve never heard from him before. “Give it time. Just… a little time.”

“I don’t need time. I’ll never change my⁠—”

“Ten days,” he says suddenly.

I blink in confusion. “What?”

“Spend ten days with him. Let Sasha show you… whatever it is young people show each other.” He waves a hand, awkward, gruff. “If you still hate him after ten days, we’ll talk.”

“And Gina?”

Baba hesitates. In that hesitation, I see it—the man who taught me to ride a bike, who bandaged my knees after I jumped off the garage roof chasing Jasmine, who hummed Nani Nani to Paidi mou when thunderstorms kept me awake.

“Ten days,” he repeats.

The silence stretches, thick with unsaid things. It’s nowhere close to the promise I want, but it’s all I’m going to get. Finally, I step back. “You’re a bastard, Leander Makris.”

He rises, slow and pained, and rounds the desk. For a wild moment, I think he’ll reach for me. Instead, he stops an arm’s length away, the scent of tobacco and burnt sugar wrapping around us.

“You have your mother’s eyes,” he murmurs. “Her stubbornness, too.”

“Don’t—”

But he’s already leaning in, pressing a dry kiss to my cheek. The gesture is stiff, foreign—a ghost of the man who once spun me in the air until I shrieked with laughter.

And yet, goddamn him—I can’t pull away.

The elevator ride down is a blur. At the foot of the stairs, the guards leer and chuckle. The smirker says something in Greek that sounds like See you at the wedding, but I ignore him.

I walk back to my car, putting that warehouse behind me one step at a time. But just before I turn the corner, I look back, because I’m sentimental and stupid and I never, ever learn my lesson. And as I do, I catch a flicker of movement in the sixth-floor window. A shadow, watching.

For a second, I almost wave.