10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 29

Fuck.

Now, what?

Hiking with Sasha was supposed to be the final nail in his coffin. Me as my worst self, schlepping through the woods in designer heels and a sequined crop top, bitching about bugs and blisters until he snapped—that was supposed to do the trick.

Instead, it turned into… whatever that was. Lost. Cold. Huddled in his arms, drenched in rain, wondering why I wasn’t quite as miserable as I should’ve been.

And what’s worse? When the stars came out, so did the truth serum. Orion, Ursa Major, The Big Dipper—it was like my sister was at my side again for the briefest of moments.

There was no sarcasm when I told him how Jas and I used to sit out on the roof while Mama and Baba screamed at each other one story below. No bite. No snark. Just… sharing.

Central Park undid me further. That was more of the same. Or rather, more of the not-same: No agenda. No posturing. Just mustard on his thumb and a shockingly normal laugh. For one stupid, sunlit hour, we weren’t at each other’s throats.

We were just… us.

And that terrifies me more than any arranged marriage.

Mama’s advice didn’t help. “There are no wrong choices; only different ones,” she said, licking ice cream off her spoon. As if hearts aren’t just overripe peaches, bruised or bursting at the slightest pressure. Hers led her straight into Leander’s bear trap. Mine keeps flip-flopping between wanting to shove Sasha off a cliff and wanting to shove him against the nearest flat surface.

I’m a reporter. I hunt truths for a living. So why can’t I pin down the truth of him? Is he the monster he swears he is, or the man he seems to be when he thinks I’m not looking? Does he pluck lilies or break fingers?

Do I loathe him?

Or do I—God, I can’t believe the words are even in my head right now—do I see a way I could one day love him?

But then I remember what happened to the women of my family. If I let Sasha in, will I end up a cautionary footnote, too? Will I be Jasmine—a ghost in the wind, a chalk outline where my sister should be? Will I become my mother, painting on a smile as the walls close in?

I’m not sure which scares me more: a lifetime bound to him… or a lifetime without this dizzying, dangerous high.

Today’s date invite was as cryptic as the rest of them have been. A courier showed up at The Gazette offices with—get this—not a flower, but a fire-charred stick with a single leaf at the end. He handed me a note to go with it.

A memento from the mountain. Meet me at the New York Public Library. 7 PM.

Leave the glitter at home.

—Sasha

I knew, even as I left work early to go home and change, that it was a bad idea. I should’ve sent the courier back with a message that said, Shove this stick up your you-know-what.

But I didn’t.

Now, I’m here and Patience and Fortitude are judging me. The stone lions have seen a century of New Yorker’s mistakes and regrets, but they seem to sigh as I climb the library steps.

Really? their frozen snarls say. You’re gonna make us watch you pretend to do this whole charade again?

Speaking of judgmental faces, Sasha is leaning against a pillar, all black coat and sharp cheekbones. He’s scrolling through his phone, but when he spots me, he slips the device into his pocket. His eyes do that thing—the slow drag from my scuffed Docs up to the messy topknot I spent twenty minutes making look careless.

“You’re—”

“Late. Yes, I know. We do this song and dance every time. I am not a punctual person. You will have to get used to it.”

A sudden breeze screams down the sidewalk. Acting on pure instinct—or maybe it’s muscle memory from our sleepover on Mt. Regret—I step into Sasha to hide from the chill.

As if his body remembers too, he encircles me with both arms and plasters my cheek to his chest.

The wind passes.

One awkward millisecond later, we spring apart.

“It’s December in New York,” he says with a scowl as he surveys my outfit. “You didn’t think a coat was appropriate?”

“That’s rich coming from Mr. Funeral-Chic himself. Do you own anything that doesn’t scream ‘moody vampire’?”

The corner of his mouth ticks up. But instead of more of his trademark withering condescension, he reaches out to pluck a stray eyelash from my cheek, holding it on his fingertip. “Make a wish.”

I think for a second, then I blow it away. “Too late,” I lie. “My wish lists are tapped out.”

“Hm.” His eyes rake over me in a way that makes me feel colder than any Manhattan winter breeze ever could. “Unfortunate. Because mine just came true.”

Heat spreads through me, treacherous and sweet. I swat his hand away from my face. “How many women fall for that line?”

“None. You’re my first. Feeling special yet?”

“Especially annoyed, maybe. But beyond that, it’s just a cold, dead void where my heart should be.”

I roll my eyes and turn my back on him to march up the stairs, leaving Sasha in my rearview mirror, where he can’t see the way my cheeks are burning red.

I step through the front doors and breathe in the sacred scent of old paper and lemon polish, a goofy smile spreading across my face.

God, I love this place. The vaulted ceilings, the golden light leaking through arched windows, the way every whispering footstep against the stone floors sounds like a secret being kept. Mama used to bring me and Jas here sometimes on rainy Sunday afternoons. We’d play for hours, reading and chasing each other up and down the reference aisles where it was quiet and no one minded two little girls being little girls for a while.

I miss those days.

I peek back at Sasha. He’s doing the same thing I am: gazing up at the roof arching overhead, at the stacks of books running endlessly into the distance. He looks like he loves this place every bit as much as I do.

Which is exactly why I have to ruin it for him.

“So!” I spin around, nearly clotheslining a grad student carrying a teetering stack of Proust. “What’s on today’s agenda? You gonna show me the rare books collection? Read me sonnets by candlelight? Ooh, maybe we can play footsie under the⁠—”

He grabs my elbow, steering me toward a spiral staircase. “You talk too much.”

“Is this a preview of our marriage?” I muse sarcastically, just loud enough for a pair of old ladies shuffling by us to peer over in concern. “You dragging me hither and thither and telling me that women should be seen, not heard?”

“Christ, you’re in rare form today,” he mutters. “I’m trying to do a nice thing.”

Sasha Ozerov and nice things—well, if that doesn’t terrify me, nothing ever will. I suppress a head-to-toe shiver and silently repeat the only mantra that’s going to get me through this fraudulent “date.”

Remember to hate him.

I have to keep my eyes on the prize. I have to hate him. I have to chase him away so he doesn’t sink his claws into my heart in a way that I can’t undo.

I need to stick to the plan: be annoying, be unbearable, be unlovable.

Because Sasha Ozerov loving me might be the worst thing he could possibly do.

I yank free of his grasp and pull out my phone. “Hold on, I need to document this travesty for the ‘Gram.”

I snap a shameless selfie with the Murder Death Kill-Bot 3000 lurking in the background, making sure to frame his scowl nicely in the corner of the frame. Caption: When your arranged fiancé takes you to a library like he’s not functionally illiterate. #mobwifelife #sendhelp

“Ariel.”

“Shh, I’m curating my existential crisis.” I angle the camera lower, pouting. “Do I look more ‘damsel in distress’ or ‘future corpse in a true crime podcast’ here? It’s a hard balance to strike.”

But right as I’m about to snap the shot, the phone vanishes from my hand.

“Hey—!”

I turn just in time to see Sasha tuck it into his inner coat pocket. “When you’re with me,” he snarls, “you’re with me.”

A shiver rolls through me. I cover it with an eye-roll. “Wow, did you get that line from a Nineties rom-com? You’ve Got Mail called—it wants its toxic masculinity back.”

He crowds me against a shelf labeled 19th-Century Russian Literature. Leather-bound Tolstoy digs into my spine as his breath tickles my ear.

For one terrifying, exhilarating second, I think he’ll kiss me. Here. Now. In front of a wheezing librarian re-shelving books.

Instead, he reaches over my shoulder to pluck Anna Karenina off the shelf and hands it to me. “Read.”

“Excuse me?”

“Page 763. Second paragraph.” When I gape at him, he adds, “Unless you need me to sound out the big words for you.”

“Asshole.” But my skin is still flushed from When you’re with me, you’re with me. As much as I mocked it, something about that line did something to me.

I really would like to not inquire further as to why that is. I get the feeling it’ll stir up a lot of stuff that’s best left dormant.

So, grumbling, I flip to the page and start to read. My voice comes out shaky at first. “‘He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun…’”

Sasha leans in, rumbling the next line from memory. ‘‘… But he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.’”

My throat goes dry. The air between us crackles, charged with something deeper than lust.

Something that tastes an awful lot like vulnerability.

He takes the book back, fingers brushing mine. They stroke down the spine like a lover. “My mother read this to me when I was seven. Only way she could get me to sit still.”

The unprompted mention of his mom takes me off-guard. Historically speaking, that kind of thing has only come out under extreme duress and cover of darkness, and even then, he’s reluctant to add details.

But now that I look closer, there’s something… off about him today. Like he forgot to close a door in his personality. There’s a softness… a way in.

I gulp. “Did it work? Did you sit still?”

He nods as he stares into the distance. “Yeah. For every word. I cried when Vronsky’s horse died.” A shadow passes over his face. “Then my father saw me doing it and he beat me until I stopped. After that, I didn’t cry anymore.”

I’m dumbstruck. But maybe that’s a good thing. Some words aren’t meant to be followed up by other words. How could they be? How can I respond to that? What could I possibly say that won’t scare him off or shut him down—or worse, open up a matching can of worms in me?

I mean, I could tell him how quiet it was without Mama and Jasmine in my world. How hard was it to sit still without Mama’s stories? How many tears did I shed?

And what did my own dad tell me when he caught me sobbing? Stop crying, Ariana. Tears won’t bring anyone back.

If I don’t know what to do with those memories of my own, I sure as hell don’t know what to do with Sasha’s. Or with this version of him, the one who knows Tolstoy by heart and mourns horses that only ever existed as words on a page. The one who lets the cracks in his armor show in front of the woman who’s determined to shove him away.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

So I do what I’ve always done when faced with hard matters of the heart.

Deflect.

“Ah, I’m starting to see the full picture.” I gesture to his entire… everything. “The brooding mobster thing is just daddy issues.”

He snaps the book shut. “Careful.”

“Or what? You’ll have me whacked?” I push off the shelves, channeling Gina’s most obnoxious Basic Becky voice and despising myself even as I do. “Omigawd, does that mean I get some of those cute concrete shoes? TikTok would die.”

“You’ll need better material if you want to scare me off.” He starts walking, tossing words over his shoulder. “Though I’m curious—what’s your master plan? Annoy me to death with pop culture references?”

“It’s working so far!” I trot to keep up as he leads me into a secluded alcove. “… Right?”

He stops so abruptly that I run right into him. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

I frown as I step away, the smell of him swirling deep in my nose and brain. “Yes, you are. Unfortunately, so am… Wait, where are we?”

Sasha pushes open a heavy oak door with the library’s seal carved into its center and ushers me inward.

I make it two steps before I freeze in my tracks.

I feel like I’m seeing something so beautiful it should be forbidden. Too many eyes on something this pretty would ruin it, as if every stare takes something away from the things it sees.

Golden afternoon light filters through leaded glass windows, catching dust motes in a slow waltz. As far as the eye can see, towering mahogany shelves stretch toward a coffered ceiling painted midnight blue, with constellations picked out in gold leaf. Velvet ropes cordon off cases displaying illuminated manuscripts—pages so delicate they look like they’ll dissolve if I breathe too close.

I say nothing.

It’s the kind of space that demands silence.

My fingertips ghost along the glass edge of a case containing a gorgeously gilded psalter. “How did you even…?”

“Patronage has its perks,” Sasha says simply, lingering near the doorway.

I’m still not sure what to say. How did he know? Those memories of Mama and Jas, of running up and down the bookshelves and laughing… they’re not the kinds of things I blab about casually. Like this room, I’m afraid that sharing them too loudly or too widely would make them crumble away.

So how the fuck did he know this would move me?

I turn and gawk at him. Hands shoved modestly in his pockets, he meanders over to the study table in the center of the room, pulls out an upholstered chair, and sinks into it.

“Take all the time you’d like,” he says. “Cry if you want, laugh, sing—it’s ours for the evening.”

Tears prickle in my eyes. Sasha watches me, silent. He doesn’t smirk or prod. Just lets me feel the moment having its way with me.

And for as long as that moment lasts, I submit to it. I let the illusion shimmer: us as ordinary people, him as someone capable of tenderness.

Then I rip away and stride down the nearest set of stacks.

This is how monsters trap you, Ariel. Not with threats, but with the lethal poison of being seen.

I skitter my fingers down the spine of one book after the next, letting my heart rate even out. When I’m ready, I call over the shelves, “I never took you for such a bookworm romantic, Sasha. Next thing I know, you’ll be throwing rocks at my window and reciting Rumi from memory.”

“Would that work?”

“On a woman with weaker knees? Maybe. On me? I’d throw the rocks back at you.”

Sasha laughs, then falls quiet. I keep wandering down the aisle. Something in me wants to touch all the books that aren’t locked away behind display cages.

Stories have souls, Mama used to say. I want to feel every one pulsing beneath my fingertips.

The stained glass above us fractures the evening sunlight into jewel tones. As minutes pass and it dwindles, I become aware of a presence following me, though he stays one row away.

Until he doesn’t.

I turn a corner and he’s there, leaning against the shelves, eyeing me thoughtfully. He’s abandoned his coat and cuffed his sleeves to the elbow, so I can see tattooed forearms folded across his chest.

“Your mother brought you here,” he murmurs.

I whirl towards him. “How did you— Did my father tell you that?”

He doesn’t even dodge the question, just ignores it entirely. Like I never said a word. “Have you ever thought about it? Being a parent?”

My heartbeat thuds in my chest. The way he says it implies… “Do I need to?”

Sasha doesn’t answer for a few long breaths. When I turn back, he’s still looking at me, as if to say, You know you do.

I start to sweat and stammer. “Th-that wasn’t p-part of the…”

“Come on, Ariel. You know better than that. You know how these things work.”

I clutch the nearest shelf for support, because my knees suddenly feel a little untrustworthy. “Just to be clear, you’re talking about…?”

“You’ll bear me an heir within the first two years. It’s in the fine print, ptichka. Your father agreed.”

I wheeze a deranged-sounding laugh.

“But I didn’t. I recall signing exactly zero demonic pacts lately.” My laugh comes shriller than intended. “What’s next? Swear a blood oath at the altar? Brand me with your initials?”

Sasha reaches for me, but I lunge backward so his hand swipes through empty air. “Don’t be dramatic. It’s simple logistics. Leander needs heirs. So do I. It’s in the contract.”

With a mind of its own, my hand drifts to my stomach. I yank it away. “You’re insane if you think I’m incubating your little crime lordlets.”

“It’s in the contract, Ariel.”

Heat creeps up my neck. “Oh, please,” I scoff. “Like you’re not just making up all the rules as you go.”

He steps into my space. “The contract stipulates⁠—”

“Fuck your fucking contract, Sasha!”

The shout echoes, double-time, triple-time, until the ceiling finally swallows it without a trace.

Lowering my voice, I jab his chest. “You want a prop wife? Fine. But my uterus is a goddamn democracy. I decide whose babies I have. Not you. Not anyone else.”

His gaze drops to my lips. “Careful. You’re starting to sound like you’re considering it.”

I am.

That’s the fucking problem.

His thumb brushes my inner wrist—chaste and yet devastating. Because inside, my mind is doing the devil’s work in making this all sound so unbelievably reasonable.

It conjures forbidden images: Sasha’s scarred hands cradling a swaddled newborn. Him bringing me coffee at 3 A.M. feedings. A triple chorus of laughter—him, me, and something that’s a little bit of both of us—ringing loud in a backyard that doesn’t reek of blood money.

Horror blooms under my ribs. “You’re disgusting,” I whisper.

He doesn’t deny it. Nor does he look away. His eyes are sapphire blue in the gloom. “I told you a long time ago what I am, Ariel.”

A monster. He said it. Multiple times. But no matter how hard I squint, the man in front of him does not match that description.

I see it then, the same thing I thought I saw earlier. That softness, that light, that way in. It’s joined by something else, too: a flicker of want in his eyes that matches my own.

It’s not just lust. It’s deeper than that. Dumber.

Far more dangerous.

I twist free, fleeing toward the exit. Three steps. Five. Then my traitor feet stall and I come to a halt.

Sasha’s reflection looms in the glass of the nearest display. A copy of the Kama Sutra, funny enough. The world’s oldest babymaking how-to guide. “Ariel⁠—”

“How are you even considering this? The things you’ve done…” My throat bobs. “The people you’ve hurt. And you want to bring a child into that?”

He sighs wearily. “Imagine how safe they’d be. Protected by both our families’ reach.”

My fingers curl. Fifteen years ago, Jas sat on our roof and said, Baba wants me to marry. He says I have no choice. Six weeks later, she was gone.

Now, Sasha stands here talking about safety. Where was he when she needed protecting? How can he say those words now?

His shadow blankets me. “You’re afraid. I get that.”

“Don’t tell me what I am.”

“You’re wondering how this could possibly work.”

“I said, don’t tell me⁠—”

“But you’re hopeful, too, and that’s maybe the worst thing you could be, because hope is the deepest cut and the slow bleed that would follow if you let it slice you open is what terrifies you most of all.”

I shove back against his chest as he approaches me, but it’s like pushing a brick wall. He comes closer instead of farther. I can’t back up, either; I’m just pinned against a glass cage as Sasha looks down at me with the scariest light of all in his eyes: hope bright enough to match mine.

He cradles my face in his hands. “I didn’t bring you here to frighten you, ptichka. I brought you here to show you it doesn’t have to hurt.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Falling.”

Then his mouth crashes into mine. It’s not claiming; it’s erasing. Rewriting every awkward fumble, every indifferent, unsatisfying blunder of my past and replacing it all with him, him, him. His teeth catch my lip, pulling a ragged sound from my chest as his hands bracket my hips—anchoring me against history itself.

His kiss says, Let me be the villain you deserve.

My kiss replies, Never.