10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 35

I don’t want to smell like him anymore.

That’s all I can think as Feliks escorts me up to my apartment and pushes me, kindly but irrevocably, inside. The door snicks closed and I know that it will not open until Sasha gives his approval.

But that’s fine, because I’m headed straight for the shower. I strip off clothes as I go, leaving a trail of cold-sweat-soaked leggings, the twisted figure-eights of my underwear and sports bra, and my shoes kicked haphazardly against the hallway wall.

I don’t wait for the water to warm up—I just jump right in, even though it feels like ice-tipped needles stabbing me. I don’t want to smell like him anymore.

The million-dollar question, though, is this: Which “him” do I not want to smell like?

Because Sasha’s scent and Dragan’s scent are both clinging to my skin. Which one is it that’s making me sick to my stomach?

I don’t have it in me to suss out the culprit. I just scrub and scrub until my arms are pink and lemon-raspberry body wash is the only thing in my nose.

Even when I’m done and sitting on the foot of my bed, though, I keep thinking I catch whiffs of them.

Sasha’s minty, cedar musk.

The smoky, acid tang of Dragan.

I shudder again and again, even though I’ve got a towel wrapped around my head, another around my torso, and the radiator heat cranked as high as it will go.

Every time I think I’m smelling Sasha, my insides quiver and my pulse roars in my ears.

Every time I think I’m smelling Dragan, I’m dragged back into a past I’ve spent fifteen years scrubbing out of my mind as desperately as I just scrubbed his touch off my throat.

Leander darkened my door. His under-eyes were baggy and purple, sagging low. I remember thinking that he looked like Eeyore. Winnie the Pooh’s friend.

“She’s gone,” he told me, not moving from the door of my bedroom.

“I know she’s gone,” I spat back at him bitterly. “I watched her get fucking dragged out of here.”

Cursing at age fifteen was new enough to still feel like it had some venom. Cursing at my dad was even newer than that. Leander wasn’t the kind of father you hurled profanities at.

“No, neraïdoula mou. I mean, she’s gone.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, the journal I was scribbling in fell from my hands. “Wh… what do… Baba, what are you talking about? Jas is— Jas is supposed to get married tomorrow.”

He just shook his head. “The wedding is canceled. She’s gone.” Then he turned and stomped away down the hall, as if that explained that and nothing more needed to be said.

I stared at the dark rectangle of the empty doorway for a long, long time.

Memory’s a funny thing. Easier to repress than people tend to think. I let myself erase Dragan Vukovic from the story, because as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t him that killed Jasmine. Not really.

It was my father.

So when I ran from home, it felt like I was doing the worst thing that could be done to the man who’d done the worst thing that could be done to me: depriving him of the last daughter he had left.

For fifteen years, I’ve let myself believe that I was doing justice for Jasmine.

Now, I’m remembering that there are other bloody hands out there.

And they just tried to touch me.

Seeing him again… It’s like my past was hitting me in the face. If that wasn’t already insane and horrifying enough, my present then punched my past in the face. Rarely do metaphors appear quite so blunt and literal.

But there they were, two of the three men who’ve most defined my life, brawling it out in the street.

Then one of them scooped me up and took me to a chilly stone fortress to do what: kiss me like he’d never get to kiss me again? Then blast me with the coldest anger I’ve ever felt?

How is that fair?

So, no—I don’t want to smell like Sasha, either. I’m furious with him. Terrified of him. In so many ways, he’s back to being what he was when he first shook my hand at that gala: a mystery I have no interest in exploring any further.

I just can’t. Some darknesses swallow you up and they will never, ever spit you back out.

I fall asleep like that, still turbaned and toweled.

I wake up hours later to my phone buzzing on my nightstand. I groan and peel myself off the damp sheets, then shuffle over to pick it up. When I see who’s texted, my stomach curdles.

SASHA [9:47 A.M.]: I will be at your apartment in twenty minutes.

SASHA [9:56 A.M.]: Eleven minutes away.

SASHA [10:08 A.M.]: Knock-knock.

SASHA [10:14 A.M.]: ?

The fact that he’s texting me is shocking in and of itself. Does he really think we’re going to keep going, after what happened last night?

No. The ten days bullshit is over with. I won’t do this. I’m calling Kosti back and telling him to book the tickets. I’m leaving this place and I’m not coming back ever. I’ll replace a way to take Gina and my mom with me, but Sasha and Dragan and Leander and all these power-hungry men can go fuck themselves. Let them marry each other, for all I care.

My fingers tap out an angry response.

ARIEL [10:15 A.M.]: I’m sick. Not coming.

His reply is immediate: Like hell you’re not.

I’m not doing this, either. This back-and-forth bickering. It’s just too exhausting. I leave my phone on the nightstand, shed the towels and step into ratty sweatpants and a too-big tee, then make my way to the kitchen to start brewing tea. My head hurts like I guzzled liquor last night and my throat aches from walking and talking for so long in the cold. Earl Gray is just what the doctor ordered.

But just when the kettle is starting to whine, there’s a knock at my door. I frown and go over. If it’s Sasha, I’m gonna tell him to eat shit, and I’m sure as hell not opening the door for him.

But I peek through the eyehole to see that it’s not Sasha. “Mr. DeMarco?” I ask, confused.

My building super is anxiously passing a key back and forth between his liver-spotted hands. “Hi, Ariel. You alright?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. Are you? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he says, still shuffling from foot to foot and rubbing that key in his palms. “Mind opening up? Quick question for you.”

“I’m, uh…” I cast around for a plausible excuse. “Really would prefer not to. I’m not appropriately dressed.”

“It’ll be quick, dear, I promise. I’ve gotta hurry; told the wife I’d be back downstairs in a jiff.”

I grimace. But the chain is latched and Mr. DeMarco is about five-foot-five on his best days, with a bum knee that makes climbing the stairs a marathon for him, so I’m not really worried about him doing anything crazy.

I undo the deadbolt and twist the knob. The door opens an inch, stretching the chain taut.

Mr. DeMarco looks at me apologetically. “I’m so sorry, dear. He said you were⁠—”

Boom.

I scream and leap backwards as the door explodes inward. The chain bursts and broken links go flying everywhere.

Sasha fills the frame, brows knitted together into a single dark slash. He’s in a black suit, black shirt, like he tripped and fell into an ink well on his way here.

His eyes lock onto my I Survived the Apocalypse and All I Got was This Stupid T-shirt tee, then the spoonful of peanut butter I’d been stress-eating straight from the jar.

“You asshole!” I snap. In the gap beneath his arm, I see Mr. DeMarco fleeing in terror down the hallway. “You just broke my door!”

“You tried to break our plans. It only felt right.”

“We have no plans!” I want to tear my hair out. “This has all been a bunch of bullshit! Fuck ten days, Sasha. I’m not marrying you! I’m sure as shit not doing a single day more of these ridiculous dates with you. How could you possibly expect me to⁠—”

“You’re angry with me.”

“Astute fucking observation,” I seethe. “What gave it away?”

“Because of last night.”

“Again, nothing gets past you.”

He frowns again. “And you think that gives you the right to break your word to me.”

“My—” Jaw, meet floor. Audacity, meet your master: Sasha Ozerov. “My word?!”

“You agreed to the deal, Ariel. Ten days. Ten dates. We have three to go. And I will not be denied.”

Before I can begin to parse the logical holes in that crock of shit, Sasha is moving.

One stride. Two. My peanut butter spoon clatters to the floor as he hoists me over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

“Sasha— what the— PUT ME DOWN!” I hammer fists against his back, his shoulders, anywhere I can reach. My knee clips his ribs; he grunts but doesn’t slow. “You can’t just kidnap me because I ghosted you!”

He kicks the ruined apartment door shut behind us. “Already did.”

The stairs rattle beneath his boots. I catch the flash of Mrs. Bernstein peeking through her door crack, her Yorkie’s manic yaps chasing us down to the lobby. Señora Gutierrez from 3B actually crosses herself.

Outside, Sasha’s black town car idles at the curb. Feliks is leaning against the hood with a to-go cup of coffee.

“I’ll fix the door, don’t you worry!” Feliks says cheerfully as he heads past us in the opposite direction, back toward my building.

I don’t get the chance to respond before Sasha dumps me into the backseat. I scramble upright, glaring as he folds himself in beside me.

“You’re insane,” I spit.

His jaw pulses. “Eyes forward, Klaus.”

The driver peels away from the curb.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I ask in disgust.

Sasha doesn’t bother to look at me. “Shopping.”

I guess Date #7 is a go after all.