10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 38

The morning light makes the gold shopping bags in my living room glow like radioactive waste. I press an ice cube wrapped in a dish towel against my inner thigh—which is bruised all to shit, courtesy of Sasha’s teeth—and stare at the mountain of silk and lace spilling from yesterday’s haul.

The image swims before my eyes and turns into something else: memories of my own face dissolving into one never-ending moan while Sasha fucked me from behind, his belt black around my throat, his hand clamping over my mouth…

Snap of it, for God’s sake. I keep having these unholy sex flashbacks. My body has not forgotten the damage, either. I barely made it from bed to bathroom for a midnight pee, because the first two steps had me bowlegged like a cowboy.

Ruin is too clean a word for what Sasha did to me in that dressing room.

Not that I’m upset about it. It’s pretty hard to get upset when you lose track of how many times you orgasm. There’s maybe a tiny tinge of shame bubbling in me, if only because remembering how easily I begged for him to destroy me runs counter to my Greek Orthodox upbringing.

But that pales in the face of how good it felt to be with him. To be for him. To offer my body up to Sasha and have him claim it—not to use the way he’d use an object, but to consume like an offering at the altar.

I wanted so badly to be something that made him feel good.

Judging by the ring of bruises around my throat, I’m fairly sure I succeeded.

I leave my cup of tea in the kitchen to steep so I can go shower. But I’m barely two steps into the Naked Limp through my living room in that direction when keys jangle in the door (which, somehow, Feliks managed to fix in less than a day).

My heart swells. Is Sasha⁠—?

“Honey, I’m home!” calls Gina as she butts into the door and pirouettes inside, her Doc Martens clomping on top of last week’s unopened mail. “I brought you goodies, too. Cinnamon roll from Mazzola’s and— Oh, sweet Jiminy Cricket.”

She stops to ogle me. I can only wince, because I know exactly what she’s seeing. I’m crouched in a bare-ass half-squat like a nudist hobgoblin, with a frozen dish towel cramped between my legs, as more than a million dollars’ worth of haute couture forms a golden mountain on top of my couch. The sex-crazed hair, numerous hickeys, and lukewarm, Jell-O-like quality of my facial expressions are all self-explanatory.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I lie shamelessly, if poorly.

Gina raises a brow. “That walk of shame’s looking more like a hobble of shame, girl. Did you even pretend to play hard to get?”

“It’s not that! I, uh… fell.”

“Mhmm. Onto his dick, maybe.” She sets the baked goods down on my coffee table and scowls at me. “Ariel, you look like you just rode a Clydesdale bareback through Central Park. If you don’t unload every single detail right this damn second, I’m going to scream.”

“Gee, I⁠—”

“I swear I will, so help me God. Three, two, one⁠—”

“Okay! Okay! Okay, I— Shit, ow.” Trying to lunge to stop my best friend from yodeling at the top of her lungs is even more painful than anticipated. I end up getting less than halfway there before collapsing in a wheezing pile on the couch.

Fortunately, Gina takes it as the sign of surrender that it is and sits next to me. She’s even nice enough to drape a blanket on top of my body, so I’m not both naked and humiliated at the same time.

“The people are waiting, Ariel, and they want to know. Details are gold.”

I bite my lip. “We… we… well, we had sex.”

Gina rolls her eyes hard enough to alter gravitational fields. Then she plugs her ears and opens her mouth to start screaming again. “Ahh⁠—!”

“Stop!” I snatch her wrist and drag her back to reality. “I’m going to tell you, I promise. But you really cannot scream like that. My neighbors all already think I’m into some very bizarre shit.”

Gina eyes me warily. “Judging by the hickeys, I’d say they’re not so far off.”

My face reddens. But there’s nowhere else to go from here, so I take a deep breath, then start to tell her everything.

“So this whole plan of ours…” Gina licks a whirl of cinnamon roll frosting off her fingertip. “Total dumpster fire, huh?”

“It’s bad.” I take a savage bite of croissant. “Call the fire department. Evacuate the city.”

“Ari… I’m worried.” Gina sighs and cups my hand between both of hers. “You’re playing tag with tigers, babe. Very cute stripes. Very sharp teeth.”

“It’s not that bad,” I protest.

“No, you’re right,” she agrees. “It’s worse. Tell me something: When’s the last time you filed a real story?”

“It’s not my fault John keeps assigning me puff pieces!”

“It is your fault that you stopped asking for hard leads, though.” Gina tenderly brushes a lock of hair that’s escaped from my bun. “I just hate to see you losing yourself to something you swore you never wanted in the first place. I’m happy you’re happy, I am. I just… I just want to know that you know what you’re doing.”

Yeah fucking right. I haven’t known what I’m doing since the beginning. Run, kicking and screaming; bite and claw if necessary—that’s pretty much been the extent of a plan. Is it any wonder I ended up here when “borrow from Lora’s bag of tricks” was the best tactic I could come up with?

“Maybe I don’t, Gina. Maybe this was hopeless from the start.”

“I know that Ariel Ward is not talking like that. My girl is a fighter. Not a quitter. And look, I’m not even saying you have to turn your back on him forever. It’s just, like—knowledge is power, y’know? And I don’t think you really know him yet. Like, know him know him.” She purses her lips. “We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I say you test him.”

I’m about to say, Isn’t that what we’ve been doing, but before I can, she presses a finger to my lips. “Test the man behind the mask, Ariel. You want to know if there’s a soul attached to that dick, and I don’t blame you. So take him somewhere that’ll give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. What’s he made of? Who is he really? Don’t let your rose-colored glasses fool you. Maybe you like what you see and you end up riding into the sunset with this prince among men. Or…” She sighs and fixes me with one of her rarest, hardest looks. “Or maybe not.”

She leaves it at that. We yap for a little while about what’s going on in her life and at the office. Lighter fare, a palate cleanser. Then I get dressed—with her help, like I’m some Victorian lady who needs help zipping her own slacks—and we take the subway into work together.

She has a meeting, so we part ways with a promise to meet up for lunch. But on the journey to my desk, something catches my eye.

I stop in front of the community bulletin board. It’s a riot of ads and flyers for yoga classes and lost cats. My real target is stuck in the bottom corner: a sun-bleached pamphlet for Safe Harbor Women’s Shelter.

I’m reaching for it when Lora emerges from the supply closet behind me, arms piled high with reams of printer paper. I immediately change course and pluck a “private investigator for hire” flyer instead. Private Dick Will Do the Trick! it screams in bright green font.

Double entendres and questionable copywriting choices aside, it’s not exactly the nothing to see here selection I was hoping for, in terms of making Lora keep going on her merry way. Sure enough, she pauses at my side.

“Oh, no! Did you lose something?” she asks.

“Er… no. Well, kind of. I’m…” Sighing, I pin P.I. Richard’s flyer back to the board and point at what I was really interested in. “Have you ever heard of this place? Safe Harbor?”

I’m ready for any of the classic Lora responses. Safe Harbor—is that, like, a boating club? or Shouldn’t all women have shelter? Isn’t that in the Constitution?

What I’m less prepared for is how her face suddenly freezes. Her ever-present smile dies. “Yeah, I know it,” she murmurs, which is probably the shortest and coldest sentence I’ve ever heard from her.

I’m surprised. I turn to face her, still jarred by how wrong that frown looks on her. This is glitter-snow-globe Lora, it’s-always-sunny Lora. It’s a crime against humanity for her not to giggle between every inhale and exhale.

She fidgets in place, her gaze dropping to the floor. “When I was… Like, for a little while, my mom and I lived there. While my daddy was… not being very nice. ‘Too much beer’ is the short version of the story.”

It’s funny how one little thing can change your whole view of a person. I suddenly feel hideously guilty for ever judging her, for ever laughing at her. You’re a bitch, blares a voice in my head. It’s not wrong.

I can see right here in my mind’s eye her whole life, laid out like a completed puzzle. Wanting love, begging for love, and getting doors slammed in her face again and again.

No wonder she wants it so badly now.

No wonder we all do.

“Anyway,” she says with a sniffle, “it’s a nice place. There are a lot of really lovely women who work there. Why? Were you thinking of volunteering?”

“Kind of, actually, yeah.” Gina’s questions from this morning echo in my head again. What’s he made of? Who is he really?

This is one way to replace out.