10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 33

I press my back against the brick wall of my building and watch Sasha’s black Aston Martin disappear around the corner. My fingernails dig semi-circles into my palms. Every nerve ending under my skin crackles like live wires, still sparking from that godforsaken fake baby and Sasha’s hands spanning my hips. All my oxytocin-drunk, oxygen-starved brain cells were screaming kiss me, kiss me, KISS ME⁠—

“Fuck.” I peel myself off the wall. The bright glass doors of my apartment beckon, but I set off in the opposite direction instead. The thought of going upstairs is depressing. It’s gonna be empty and quiet up there, and house plants make for shitty company.

Besides, I feel like walking. Motion is lotion, as the overly peppy personal trainer that Gina drags me to every now and then likes to say.

Although the thought of lotion makes me think of Sasha and the spa room, and that makes my cheeks burn and my thighs clench, so maybe I’ll stick to motion just being motion after all.

But motion for motion’s sake is a good thing. Motion means going away from one thing and towards another, right? And that’s what I’m trying to do.

Away from Sasha Ozerov. Away from my dad and all the many twisted things he’d like to shape my life into.

As for what I’m headed towards? Excellent question. Do not have an answer.

For now, lacking a true ethical north to orient myself, I head geographically west instead, cutting through Bedford-Stuyvesant with a vague plan of making it to see the East River sparkling in the night.

My reflection bounces off darkened boutique windows as I pass them—messy auburn ponytail, flushed cheeks, dreamy eyes gazing into a future that isn’t really there. I look like I just sprinted through a romance novel.

“Get a grip, Ari. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

It’s cold as all hell outside, but the remnant aura of Sasha’s heat is keeping me warm enough not to mind. So is putting one foot in front of the other, again and again.

There’s a nice rhythm to this, to walking. I’m pleasantly lulling myself to sleep with a thing that humans have been doing since we first descended from the trees.

Then my phone vibrates against my thigh. I yank it out, ready to scream profanities at whoever’s interrupting my fragile grip on sanity.

But I crack a smile when I see the burly mustache lighting up the screen.

“Uncle Kosti? As in the one and only Konstantin Makris? To what do I owe the rare pleasure? You never call this late.”

“My little night owl.” His gruff chuckle crackles through the speaker. Static hisses between us—probably calling from one of his encrypted lines. As warm as his smiles are, he’s still my father’s brother, and with that DNA comes heaps and heaps of paranoia. “You think because I’m old, I go to bed with the pigeons?”

I lean against a dumpster, the metal frigid against my lower back. “You told me the Metamucil knocks you out by nine.”

“Metamucil is for frightened little schoolgirls. I drink ouzo and piss excellence. Doctors hate me.”

“And men fear you and women throw themselves at your feet, I’m sure.”

I can hear his smile. “That’s why you’ve always been my favorite niece, koukla. You know how to make this old man feel special.”

“Is that why you called? To fish for compliments?”

“I’ll never say no to them,” he declares. “But… no. No, that’s not why I called. I mean, yes, of course, I want simply to check on you. But, given… everything… well, there’s no point keeping you in the dark. You’ve been given a big enough bite to chew on anyway. Unfairly so, in my opinion, but then again, that brother of mine has never given much of a rat’s ass about my opinion in the first place.”

I grip the edge of the dumpster for support. “Get to the point, Uncle Kosti. What’s going on?”

He hesitates. “Your father is getting… cranky, Ari.”

The scowl that rips across my face is withering. “Because I’m not spreading my legs fast enough for his favorite mobster? What happened to ‘ten days’?”

“Because his enemies are getting bold.” The playfulness bleeds out of his voice. “Serbians hit two of Sasha’s warehouses this week. They’ve begun sniffing around the Makris docks, too. Your wedding’s supposed to unite the families, shore up alliances… but every day you stall⁠—”

“Is a day someone tries putting Leander and Sasha in early graves?” I kick a pebble into the dark. It pings off a fire hydrant and goes rolling into the nearest storm drain. “Let them. Maybe one’ll get lucky and solve all my problems.”

The silence throbs like a fresh bruise.

“You don’t mean that,” Kosti says finally.

Don’t I?

No. No, I don’t.

Not entirely, at least. The image of Sasha’s scarred knuckles cradling that plastic infant flashes behind my eyes. My thighs squeeze together of their own accord.

“I don’t know what I mean anymore.” I exhale and rub at my tired neck.

“Have these days changed nothing in your heart or your mind?”

“It’s not that. There’s… chemistry,” I admit through gritted teeth. “Doesn’t mean I want to be his Suzie Homemaker and baby manufacturing machine.”

“Chemistry.” Kosti snorts. “That’s what your mother called the tequila shots that led to you.”

“Gross.”

“Ach, you’re probably right. Sometimes, I forget you’re my niece and I’m supposed to watch what I say to you. But Ari…”

He pauses again, long enough that I ask, “Yes?”

“If you… if you really don’t want this… if you reach the end of these ten days and you truly, in your heart, in your soul, cannot go through with it… I will help you.”

The pulse is thudding in every extremity of my body now. In the soles of my feet and the tips of my ears, I feel it.

Ba-boom. Ba-boom.

Cautiously, I ask, “What does that mean, Uncle Kosti?”

“It means I’m offering you an out, koukla.”

I still. A rat scuttles past my sandals, but I’m too dumbstruck by what my uncle is saying to even bother with a scream. “What kind of out?”

“Passports. Cash. New identity. If you say the word, I will erase you so completely that neither Leander nor even God will ever replace you.” His tone hardens. “But once you go… you don’t come back. Not to New York. Not to your mother. Not even to my funeral. It’s goodbye forever, darling.”

The alley tilts. I cling to the dumpster’s edge. “Jesus…”

“This life is…” Kosti coughs—a wet, rattling sound that makes my stomach drop. “It’s a hungry beast, koukla. Doesn’t matter if you’re blood or not. You owe it flesh. Leander gave it Jasmine, but that didn’t get him what he was after. So now, he’ll feed it you.”

Streetlights bleach the pavement bone-white in my vision. I just keep staring at a single piece of ancient gum stuck to the ground, blackened by Lord only knows how many sets of footprints. It’s the only thing still tethering me to reality.

To say goodbye

“I need time,” I whisper.

“You’ve got four days. Then even I can’t help you. Take your time; think it through. I won’t let you suffer needlessly. Talk soon, koukla.”

He hangs up.

I stare at the phone. My lock screen is a selfie with Gina, the two of us smizing outside the Gazette. My chest constricts. If I run…

It’d mean goodbye to that.

It’d mean goodbye to everything I’ve scratched and clawed for: my crummy apartment, lattes for Sportswriter Steve, my Lois Lane pipe dreams. It’d mean goodbye to New York and to my Mama.

It’d mean goodbye forever to Sasha Ozerov.

Is that what I want anymore?

I turn around and start heading for home. Suddenly, all I want is to be amongst my things. My meager, stupid IKEA furniture and all the wobbles and unevenness that came from building it myself.

But I built it myself, dammit! Jas wasn’t here to help me and Leander would sure as hell never bother, even if I was inclined to let him. I built this life myself, and it was freedom, and that’s all I ever wanted.

I don’t know how to give that up.

The alternative swims before my eyes: a veil blurring the sight of Sasha before me. I do’s, murmured in the rasped baritone that sends shivers down my spine no matter how many times I hear it. That’s terrifying. So are all the things that would come after it. Blue-eyed babies and baptisms in cathedrals cold enough to mist your breath. A place at Sasha’s side as he waged war across the city.

Could I make that work? What would it take to accept that?

What if he looked at me like he did in the library when he said, Falling doesn’t have to hurt?

What if he touched me like he did in the spa, his hands slick with lotion, his hips flush with mine?

What if he cuddled me like he did on the mountainside, or groaned for me like he did in his office, or settled his weight behind me while I brought his son or daughter into the world?

Would that really be so bad?

My feet are carrying me automatically, so I don’t even realize I’m back on my block until I accidentally run headlong into someone right on the corner.

I grunt in shock and stumble backwards, but strong hands keep me from tumbling ass-over-teakettle on the frozen concrete.

“Whoa there!” an accented voice says, startled. “You came around that corner with some speed.”

“I’m so sorry,” I blurt as I orient myself. The cold is drawing up tears in my eyes, so I have to dig the heel of my hand into them until my vision clears up.

When it does, I see it’s a man I’ve collided with. Late forties, maybe—just a few years older than Sasha, if I had to guess. Black hair shot through with silver and a beard to match. He’s dressed nicely, in a long, camel hair jacket that sweeps just above his ankles, and his hands glisten with a set of silver rings. At his throat, through the gap in his black scarf, I see the upper half of a tattoo: a pair of eagle’s heads, joined at the neck.

“It’s quite alright, young lady.” His eyes sweep over me. They’re a dark espresso, almost black in the night. His nose bends left, then right, like it’s been broken and reset so many times that he just shrugged and gave up on it ever aligning again. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Er, home,” I say awkwardly. New York is full of weirdos, and you learn early on that it’s best to politely but firmly disengage at the early possible opportunity and be on your merry way. Nothing good ever comes from fanning the flames.

The man’s gaze flicks up to the building, then back down to me. “It’s a nice home. Very safe.”

The first prickles of Something is wrong start to crop up in my belly. After all, how does he know that this is where I live? I could’ve just been passing through.

“Y-yeah,” I say. “It’s nice. I’ll just⁠—”

“Hold on.” His hands clamp on my shoulders, pinning me in place. “You look familiar.”

I look at him. The scarf is halfway over his mouth and his felt newsboy cap is tugged low over his forehead, but even with all those obstacles, I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen this man in my life.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met, sorry.”

“No, no, we have,” he insists. He’s still not letting go, and his grip is starting to hurt. “It was a long time ago. Fifteen years or so. You don’t remember me?”

Thud. Thud. My heartbeat is ratcheting up to concerning levels again. Those born-and-raised New Yorker Spidey senses are tingling that I should get the hell away from this creep, STAT.

“Nope. Sorry. And I really do need to go now, so if you could just⁠—”

I knock his hands off me, duck under his outstretched arm, and do my best to bolt for the doors of my apartment.

I don’t get far.

Before I even make it under the awning, a pair of hulking silhouettes separate from the shadows clustered in the nearby alleyway and scoop me up by the armpits. My feet pedal in the air like a toddler getting shunted into the bath against her will.

They carry me back and plop me down in front of the bearded man. He sighs and peels off his scarf. As he does, I see more of the tattoo on his chest and throat.

And with that, I remember.

Double-headed eagle inked across his torso. Silver rings. Eyes brown, no, black, no, blacker than black.

“I’m here for Jasmine.” Darkening the doorstep like the bad guy in one of Mama’s fairy tales.

“You can’t have her!” I screamed, planting myself in front of her. Baba peeled me away, hauled me upstairs, tossed me in my room. Jasmine could only watch.

We’d always known that arranged marriages were a possibility. But it had always seemed so abstract. What does “one day, you’ll be wed off” mean to a little girl? Nothing, of course.

But little girls grow up. “One day” gets closer and closer.

And today was Jasmine’s day.

An arranged marriage. The link between the Greek mob and the Serbians. Jasmine as the sacrificial lamb to make the whole thing come together. Did she want it? Who cared? None of the men striking the deals ever asked our opinion.

As I stood in my room in horror, I heard those same men thumping downstairs. Their voices felt like the earth shaking. I ran to the window and watched in blurry-eyed horror as my father and the bearded man carried Jasmine down the sidewalk. They put her in a black van. The door closed.

I never saw her again.

“Relax, ptičica,” he croons, brushing a stray hair out of my face. “I just want to talk.”