10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 19

There’s a three-second delay between my eyes registering Sasha and my mouth catching up.

“What… How did⁠—”

“You’re not the only one who knows how to swing by without warning.” He leans in, close enough for me to taste the mint on his breath. “Now, are you going to invite me in or not?”

I yank my robe tighter. The satin does exactly nothing to hide the fact I’m naked beneath it. “Not.”

“Fair enough.” He takes my wrist and pulls me into the hallway.

“Where are we— Jesus, I’m not dressed!”

“A shame.” His gaze sweeps me head to toe, lingering on the strip of thigh my robe doesn’t cover. “But it won’t matter where we’re going.”

“And where is that?”

The elevator dings. Sasha tugs me inside. “You wanted to know who I am, right? Well, I’m showing you.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re deep in a part of the Bronx I’ve never been to before, parked outside a restaurant called Babushka’s Lap. The neon sign flickers like a dying firefly.

Through the windows, I see plastic ferns, a countertop aquarium with a single listless goldfish, and a bulletin board papered over with ads from Russian newspapers.

Sasha strides in like he’s home. When I follow him in, I see why.

An old woman behind the counter looks up, her creased face splitting into a grin as she cries out in pure joy, “Sashenka!” She rounds the counter faster than her cane should allow and grabs his face in her wrinkled hands. I’m stunned that he permits it. “How are you, malchik? Still handsome! Still scowling! Have you eaten?”

She doesn’t wait for him to answer before she turns to me. “And you? Clearly not! You’re skin and bones!” She swats Sasha on the arm and my eyes bulge at the fact that he doesn’t immediately order her execution and public dismemberment. “Have you been starving this poor thing? She’ll need fattening up if she’s to survive you!”

Sasha chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. “Zoya, this is Ariel. Ariel, this is Zoya.”

I keep my bathrobe clutched closed with one hand while I offer the other to the old woman to shake. Taking me by surprise, she sweeps me into a hug instead. I’m mortified, but she couldn’t give a damn less.

“Any friend of Sasha is a friend of mine,” she declares, oozing maternal warmth. “And any girlfriend of his is even better.”

My face goes beet red. Sasha makes no move to correct her.

She steps back, though she keeps both wrinkled hands plastered on my shoulders. “You are a beauty, dear! Let me put some food in your belly.”

I keep blushing as I fumble to remember how adults make conversation with new acquaintances. Especially when that acquaintance doesn’t even blink at Sasha showing up here with a woman in a robe. Is this a regular thing he does? “Is, uh— Am— Is this your restaurant?”

She cackles. “Mine? Nyet, girlie. This is Sasha’s.”

I nearly choke on my own tongue.

“It was my mother’s,” Sasha interjects, suddenly focused on arranging the salt and pepper shakers on a nearby table in military formation. “Zoya ran it for her. Took it over when she—when the time came.”

Zoya’s good eye twinkles, though the other is cloudy with cataracts. “Did my best not to run it into the ground. I know my way around a kitchen, don’t be fooled. But I let Sashenka here deal with all the numbers and things.” She waves a hand and laughs. “Now, come! Lots to eat. Lots of meat left to put on you, malishka.”

I’m nearly speechless as she pinches my butt, loops a hand through my elbow, and then leads us into the kitchen, bathrobe and all.

Sasha follows behind. I could swear he’s even smiling.

I’m so full I might die.

But Zoya does. Not. Stop.

The food keeps coming in endless courses: dumplings glistening with butter, borscht the color of fresh poppies, a bottle of vodka so cold it mists.

“I’ve never eaten so much in my life,” I say for the fifteenth time. Zoya once again pretends she doesn’t hear me. Instead, she tops off my shot glass with still more vodka.

“Za lyubov! For love!” she cries out as she throws hers back.

Sasha downs his in one swallow. I let mine sit.

For a lady who must be pushing at least eighty-five, she can put ‘em back like a freaking pirate. Even with the ten thousand calories I’ve eaten, I’m woozy from the two shots she didn’t let me talk my way out of.

Zoya sets the shot glass back down, mumbles something about “checking on inventory in the pantry,” and disappears. I keep my eyes fixed on my plate, pushing food here and there with my fork. Sasha does the same.

“So.” I brave a spoonful of soup. It’s heaven—beets and dill and something smoky that reminds me of rainy days at my yia-yia’s house, back when I was too young to know that Baba stashed us there for the weekends because he had “business” to attend to.

“So,” he echoes back. It’s barely a word. More of a grunt, really. Monosyllabic would be an improvement.

But after the day I’ve had, I’m gonna go insane if I’m forced to sit with my own thoughts. So I press on. “Your mom… She owned this spot?”

He nods, then tears a chunk of black bread with his teeth. “Yakov—my father—hated it. Called it a ‘distraction.’ My mother called it her soul. Maybe it was.”

I tread carefully. “Is she…?”

“Dead.”

“Right.” Duh, Ariel. “I’m sorry for your⁠—”

“Don’t bother.”

We lapse back into an awkward silence. The oven hisses as it cools, old gears settling back into place now that Zoya is mercifully done turning me into foie gras.

“Sashenka learned to cook here,” Zoya announces as she bundles back in the room suddenly, making it painfully clear to all of us that she was eavesdropping the whole time. “Every Sunday, he’d knead dough until his arms shook. He’s a better son than his father deserved, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Enough,” Sasha snaps.

But Zoya’s in storyteller mode now, and by the way she greeted us when we first entered, I’m thinking she might be the only person alive who can steamroll right over Sasha’s direct orders and get away with it. She carries on, undeterred. “Fifteen years old, and already making pelmeni better than I ever have. Your mother wept the first time you made them, didn’t she?”

His jaw flexes. “She cried because I used too much pepper.”

“Oh, don’t be so humble.” She raps his forearm with a wooden spoon. “She cried because her little wolf learned gentleness.”

The dumpling slips from my fork. Gentleness and Sasha Ozerov don’t belong in the same sentence. Does not compute.

Zoya pats his cheek. “Ah, don’t look so sour. She watches over you, your mamochka.”

“Dead people don’t watch anything.”

“Says the boy who leaves lilies on her grave every month.”

He stands abruptly, chair screeching. “I need air.”

I’m almost relieved to see him go. I might need some air, too. Seeing Sasha interact with someone who clearly loves him, someone loud and fun and kind, has my brain scrambled. I don’t know what to make of it.

But because Zoya is all of those things, she won’t stand for Sasha being upset on his own. Without looking at me, she nudges me off my stool and towards the back door. I open my mouth to argue, but she shakes her head and winks.

Whatever she thinks I’m going to do out there, it won’t make Sasha feel better. It’ll probably make it worse. But I shuffle down the hallway and through the back door anyway.

The alley reeks of brine and garbage, but Sasha’s leaning against the brick wall like it doesn’t bother him. I hover by the dumpster, unsure whether to offer comforting words or a restraining order.

“Your babushka’s a chatty old bat,” I say after an uncomfortable stretch. “I like her a lot.”

“Not my babushka.” He doesn’t look at me. “She was my nanny. Mother hired her when I was four.”

“That’s basically family.”

“I wouldn’t do Zoya the dishonor.” His laugh is bitter. “Family is a knife you don’t see coming.”

The air shifts. This isn’t mob philosophy anymore—this is personal. I step closer, drawn to him against my will. “What happened to her? Your mom, I mean.”

Cold gray eyes meet mine. “You’re a reporter. You tell me.”

“I’m asking. Not interrogating. I’m off the clock, and anyway, I didn’t bring my notepad.” I make a show of patting my bathrobe’s nonexistent pockets. It’s a weak joke, though, and neither of us laugh.

A muscle jumps in his jaw. The scar along his throat pulses faintly under the flickering street lamp. I’m sure he’s going to tell me to mind my own fucking business. And then⁠—

“She jumped,” Sasha says flatly. “From our apartment building. They said she left a note—Forgive me—sprayed with her favorite perfume. Not that I ever saw it.”

My stomach curdles. “So you don’t believe it.”

He stares at something over my shoulder—a memory, a ghost. “When I found her, her hands… They were bruised. Broken fingers. Like she’d tried to…”

He lets it hang in the night air, unfinished.

“He killed her,” I whisper. “Your father.”

His gaze snaps to mine. “I don’t want your pity, Ariel.”

“I wasn’t— I mean, I… I was just going to say that I can relate. I know how⁠—”

“Bullshit.” Something dangerous flashes in his eyes. He pushes off the wall, caging me against the damp bricks. “Your father sells daughters. Mine sold souls. Which is worse?”

The vodka on his breath mixes with his cologne. Cold as I am with only a bathrobe to keep me safe from the winter, my body arches into his heat. “Why are you telling me this?”

His thumb brushes my collarbone. “You want to play psychiatrist? Fine. Here’s your diagnosis: I’m broken. Violent. Unfit.” His lips ghost my earlobe. For the span of a breath, I let him pull me closer. Let his fingers skate up my arm, his gaze drop to my mouth. Let myself imagine how it would feel to help put Sasha Ozerov back together, one broken piece at a time…

Then I remember who I am. Who he is. Why we’re here. I remember why I can’t let myself keep falling into these daydreams, these nightmares, these twisted fantasies that he’s anything but a monster pushing me to the ledge.

How come Mama never warned me the devil would look so good?

I twist free before Sasha’s darkness swallows me whole. “We should go back inside,” I murmur. “Zoya is making dessert.”

Zoya doesn’t say anything when we come back inside, just serves us honey cake drowned in sour cream. Sasha picks at his, the picture of brooding menace. But now, I see past the armor.

There’s a boy in there somewhere. One who kneaded dough until his arms ached. Who leaves lilies on a grave. Who became exactly what his father made him.

“You’re staring,” he growls without looking up.

“Yeah. Trying to decide if you’re more wolf or watchdog.”

He leans back, assessing me. “And?”

I fork a bite of cake. “I’m thinking… stray.”

His lip curls. Not quite a smile, but almost. He doesn’t realize I’ve seen it. But for the briefest of moments, the mask slips.

I’m stupid enough to replace it beautiful.