10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 32

“Put the gloves on.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sash, I really don’t feel like⁠—”

“Quit being a coward and put on the gloves, Feliks. I need to punch something and your face is the closest target I can reach.”

Feliks sighs, but he turns to the rack of gym equipment, plucks down his dusty pair of boxing mitts, and starts tugging them on.

I’m already laced up and ready. I’m still wearing the suit pants I wore to that fucking ridiculous Lamaze class, though I’ve stripped off the shirt and cast it aside, leaving my torso bare to the cold air whistling through the vents.

The gym is cold as a morgue, which is how I prefer it. Reminds me of the early days. Of the woods.

I bounce from foot to foot. “If you take any longer⁠—”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” protests Feliks. “Fuck, impatience is not a virtue of yours.”

He’s not wrong. But if he’d seen my performance tonight, he might change his tune.

For sixty minutes, I was as Zen as it fucking gets. Patience oozed from every pore. As I cradled Ariel in my lap. Cupped that absurd prosthetic baby in my arms. Breathed in and out, the scent of Ariel filling my lungs with every inhale and stupid, stricken dreams of this being real rushing out with every exhale.

That’s patience.

“Alright. Ready. Ready as I’ll ever be, at least.”

“‘Bout fucking time.”

I duck under the ropes and start shuffling around the ring, testing the air with jabs and uppercuts. I need to move and set these thoughts elsewhere.

I tried leaving them at Ariel’s doorstep when I dropped her off after the class. She lingered on the sidewalk for a moment after I helped her out of the car. Almost like an invitation.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d taken her up on it.

Want to come inside for a sec?

Just a second. It’d be a bad idea to stay longer than that.

Of course, she would agree. Very bad idea. Can’t have that.

Then we would have fucked like rabbits ‘til the dawn rose.

That’s how it goes in my head, at least. The fact that those fantasies are bubbling right below the surface, ready to surge out the second they spy a crack in my mental dam, is troubling. I don’t even want to know what might be happening in Ariel’s mind.

None of this is as simple as it was supposed to be. What ever happened to Seduce. Marry. Control? That was a simple, three-step process. Damn near foolproof.

The only fool left anymore is me.

I drop to the ground just in time to miss Feliks’s fist coming to knock my skull off its moorings.

“Blyat’, you mudak⁠—”

“You’re the one who wanted to get feisty. Don’t start throwing a hissy fit just because I got the ball rolling.”

“I’m going to get your skull rolling momentarily,” I snarl as I regain my bearings and advance on him.

Feliks laughs and slips one jab, then the next. But my low left hook buries itself in his gut, and the laughter comes wheezing out of him as he doubles over.

“You pay me too much to be a punching bag,” he grumbles as he dances backwards and gets set up again.

“Correction: I pay you enough to be a punching bag whenever I need one.”

His eyes gleam with that Oh, shit, there’s drama mischief as he dodges and scoots backward to the far corner of the ring. “Uh-oh. You need a punching bag, hm? I take it The Love Boat hit some rough waters?”

I bite down and charge toward him again.

Rough waters? No, that’s not it at all. The waters are too damn smooth, actually.

Maybe that’s why I feel the need to make something bleed. Feliks or myself—so long as something gets a little bit broken tonight, my world will be back to the way it should be.

All this niceness, this lavender-scented domestic bliss? That’s wrong. Way too fucking wrong.

Men like you don’t know what to do with happy endings, Sasha Ozerov.

We don’t deserve them in the first place.

The first round is pure exorcism. Every jab is another piece of that silly little dream getting shattered and bent beyond recognition. Feliks’ right hook grazes my temple when I linger too long on the remembered weight of Ariel pressed between my thighs.

“Focus, boss,” he pants, dancing back. Sweat glistens on his shaved head. “Or I’ll have to tell your bride I beat you up.”

I drive him into the ropes with an uppercut. “She’s not my bride yet.”

“Clock’s ticking, though. What’s left—four days, right?”

“Watch your fucking mouth.”

The second round gets uglier. I let him land a body shot that knocks the wind out of my lungs, just to feel something that isn’t the burn of my own shame. He pays for it with a nosebleed that splatters across the mat like Rorschach ink.

Feliks raises his face and grins like a madman. “You know your problem?” He catches my next punch in his mitt, leaning in close. “You’re still swinging at your old man’s ghost instead of looking at what’s right in front of you.”

I punch. I miss.

“That girl doesn’t make you weak, Sasha. She makes you hungry. And hungry men?” He ducks me with a wet laugh. “They’re the only ones who survive this shit.”

I freeze mid-jab, knuckles hovering an inch from his ruined face.

The bell rings.

Neither of us moves.

Then, finally, I sneer in disgust, strip my gloves off, hurl them into the corner, and stalk away.

Feliks joins me outside a few minutes later. My courtyard is as silent as the Upper West Side ever gets. No birds or scurrying things to break up the noise; just the distant moan of the city at large.

“I should be getting paid extra for these counseling sessions,” he remarks as he settles onto the bench at my side.

My sweat is almost frozen on my skin and my breath coalesces in silver mushroom clouds in front of my face. “Extra pay as a punching bag, extra pay as a therapist—you’re going to bankrupt me if this keeps going, Vasiliev.”

He chuckles and drapes an arm behind me. “I think it’s moral bankruptcy you need to be worried about, brattan. You’ve already got enough money to last ten lifetimes.”

I sigh and stroke my chin. He’s right about that. He’s right about too damn much tonight.

“I’m getting sick of your perceptiveness.”

“Oh, the curse of being highly intelligent and extremely good-looking,” he sighs. He gazes longingly into the distance. “And as if that’s not enough of a burden to bear, I’ve also got this giant, swinging⁠—”

He falls over laughing when I elbow him in the ribs.

But when he straightens up, his smile recedes. “I do mean it, though, in a way. Far be it from me to tell you to quit making money. You’re good at it, and it keeps me swimming in caviar and Corvettes. But… there’s more. There’s other things.”

“Is there?” I ask. I know what he’s going to say, but I let him say it anyway.

“Love.”

I squint at him blankly, waiting for a punchline. But Feliks just looks right back at me with a calm, level tranquility in his face.

“Love,” I repeat.

“Love,” he repeats.

“Love.”

“Love, Sasha. The reason we’re here at all.”

“I’m here because my father fooled my mother into thinking he was quasi-human for long enough to knock her up. You’re here because your mother dumped you in my lap when she got sick of looking at your ugly mug all the time. ‘Love’ had nothing to do with either case.”

His mouth quirks up in a half-smile. The other half, though, remains downturned in contemplation. “You keep getting things twisted. I know you were joking when you said I was perceptive, but… Shit, man, sometimes I really do feel like you are failing to see what’s right in front of your face. So things get forced on us. So circumstances sometimes dictate the cards we get to play. Does that mean you punt on the whole game and go cry about it?”

“Who’s cry⁠—”

“You are, in your own way. You cry with blood. You cry with spreadsheets. It’s a little depraved and disturbing, if we’re being honest, but hey, far be it from me to criticize another man’s coping mechanisms. I’m just saying that I see you, Sasha Ozerov. I see what’s in front of you. And I want you to see what I’m seeing.” He slumps back against the bench. “That’s it. Lecture over. I’m out of poetry for the night.”

I brood as his words echo in caverns in my head that haven’t seen light for a long time.

Love. He’s wrong. He has to be. It’s not that. It can’t be.

But after the endless day I’ve had, I’m not going to replace the flaws in his argument right now. I want to shower off this sweat and blood and go the fuck to sleep. Let tomorrow’s Sasha take up the sword of Love and all its many ridiculous implications.

Before I go, though, I do what’s become a ritual for six days and running.

“Check her detail.”

Feliks lofts an eyebrow. “And by ‘hers,’ you mean…?”

“If you make me spell it out, I’m going to punch you in the face again.”

“You barely even got me once tonight,” he grumbles, but he fishes his phone out of his pocket and starts to do as I asked.

I look over his shoulder as he cues up the security footage being broadcast from the body cams attached to the men I have stationed outside Ariel’s apartment.

Six feeds flicker to life, one for each of the Bratva soldiers guarding the block. I know the feeds by heart now. Every angle, fire hydrant, and bush lining the sidewalk in front of her building. Five of the feeds are empty.

But in the sixth…

Stands Ariel.

And she’s not alone.