10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 41

I’m zipping up my knee-high boots when the knock comes. “Hold on!” I yell. I clomp like a horse to the door and pull it open.

Sasha is standing on the other side. He’s winter incarnate. Snowflakes cling to the inky waves of his hair like diamond dust. The black cashmere scarf does nothing to soften that razor-blade jawline, only amplifies the brutal symmetry of his face. His coat—tailored, wool—hangs open, revealing a thick black sweater that looks like a really nice place for me to nuzzle my face for a while, if he’d let me.

“I said dress warm,” he tells me with an amused glance.

I scowl at him. “I’m wearing boots and a peacoat, and I brought gloves. What’s not warm about that?”

He shrugs. “Paris is cold this time of year.”

My hand freezes on the doorknob. “Paris, as in…?”

“Surprise!” Mama pops out from behind Sasha wearing a beret she definitely just bought at the bodega downstairs. Her eyes are suspiciously shiny. “Road trip!”

“Plane trip,” Sasha corrects. “Belle said she wanted to see Paris again.” He shrugs a shoulder, but his eyes track my reaction like a hawk. Under his breath, he adds, “Leander took that from her. I’m giving it back.”

I cross my arms and give him a feisty glare. I’m putting on a front because if I gave him a real glimpse at what this gesture is doing to my insides, we’d never make it out of my apartment. Mama would have to stand in the hallway while I showed Sasha just how much I appreciate his thoughtfulness. From my knees.

“You must think this is winning you a lot of brownie points, sir.”

Sasha laughs. “If I wanted points,” he purrs, stepping into my space, “I’d have gone about this in a much different way—and it would certainly not involve your mother.” He kisses my forehead. “Besides, I’m getting something out of this, too. Paris has excellent champagne.”

Something twists behind my ribs. Dangerous. Delicious. “What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll fly there alone and drink it all myself.” He tweaks my bottom lip with his thumb and grins. “But we’re going to be late if you don’t hurry up.”

I’m still looking back and forth between the two of them, utterly baffled. “I just… I mean… Paris?!”

“Yes, Ariel. Paris.” He steps inside to loop one arm around my waist and pick up my woefully inadequately packed duffel bag. “Hope you packed your thermal underwear.”

At that, finally, I can give him a wicked grin. “Joke’s on you,” I tell him as Mama goes skipping down the aisle ahead of us, the sheer glee turning her into someone fifty years younger. “I didn’t pack any underwear at all.”

Sasha’s strangled groan is exactly what I’d hoped for.

The plane hums all around us. Sasha is sprawled across from me in a cream leather seat, ankles crossed, flipping through a Russian architecture magazine like this is all just another day in his impossibly charmed life—which, I suppose, it is. At my side, Mom’s glued to the window, tracing cloud shapes with her finger.

I can’t remember the last time I felt so happy.

Sasha looks up. “If you’re cold, Ms. Ward, there’s a blanket beneath the seat right there. I could also have the attendant bring us tea, if you’d like a drink…?”

My mom laughs giddily. “Tea time at forty thousand feet sounds delightful. Thank you.”

Nodding, Sasha rises and goes to talk to the cabin crew. As soon as he’s a step away, Mama clutches my elbow and does the squeeee noise she’s been emitting at regular intervals since we went wheels up. “This is so magical, Ari. Leander never⁠—”

I can’t help but wince. “Let’s not compare them, Mama. Better yet, let’s leave Baba out of it altogether.”

“Why not?” She nods at Sasha, who’s engaged in a rapid discussion with the flight attendant on how Belle takes her tea. “He listens. Leander just… took.”

The plane lurches. My stomach drops faster than my common sense.

Six hours later, we’re landing. Paris unfurls below us in a mille-feuille of ivory snow and amber streetlights. Wild curves, elegant streets, sugar-spun ice dangling from arches and spires. Mom still has her nose pressed to the window as she gasps again and again.

Sasha’s hand replaces mine, squeezes once, and lets go.

We step from the plane right into a waiting van, and from the van into the Four Seasons Hotel George V. Our suite occupies the entire top floor. Belle drifts through rooms trailed by soft “ohs,” her fingertips brushing silk wallpaper and gilded door handles. When she disappears into her bedroom to unpack, I corner Sasha by the marble fireplace.

“What’s this costing you?”

He tops off his cognac. “Less than you’d think.”

“Bullshit.” I grip his wrist. “Why are you doing this?”

Glass clinks as he sets the decanter down. Somewhere down the hall, Mom hums La Vie En Rose. “Because you deserve to see that it’s a beautiful world, Ariel. And because your mother deserves better memories.”

My throat tightens. “And you? What do you deserve?”

His smile could frost the Seine. “We’re not here to talk about me.”

Through the window, the Eiffel Tower glitters behind a veil of falling snow—twenty thousand golden fireflies drunk on Christmas magic.

Sasha leans forward to kiss my temple. “C’mon. Let’s go explore.”

When Mama is ready, the three of us go downstairs and meander down streets dusted with glittering snowfall. Sasha doesn’t let go of my hand for a second as we duck in and out of shops. By the time night descends, we’re found our way to the foot of the Eiffel Tower. It looms overhead like a delicate iron finger pointing at the moon. I keep looking back and forth between it and my mom’s retreating figure as she goes gallivanting off in search of pastries and coffee to ward away the cold. Even from here, I can see how she’s still vibrating with joy.

A busker starts up with an accordion in one corner of the courtyard at the foot of the Tower. Grinning, Sasha twirls me in his arms and starts to slowly sway us back and forth. “Still think romance is dead?” he murmurs against my temple.

What a question.

I used to think romance was withered roses at a strip mall cemetery—all wilted clichés and empty gestures. But lately, I’m thinking differently. Because Sasha has blown romance’s coffin open with a smolder and a simple kiss to the cheek. Romance is a bandaged hand in a bathroom. Romance is dragging my mom to Paris in a snowstorm because her eyes dimmed when she mentioned a time in her life things were simpler. It’s brutal hands learning gentleness, Russian curses spilling like love poems between bites of sinfully good dumplings.

It’s terrifying, this grenade of a feeling blooming in my chest—a kaleidoscope shrapnel of what if. What if it grows, a rose in this garden I thought was dead? What if it blossoms? What if we let it?

I gaze up at the man who taught me all of that. “I’d say it’s showing signs of life.”

His smile melts me. “There’s that optimism I know and love.”

I snort and butt my head into Sasha’s chest as he spins me out and back in, the accordion player in the courtyard coaxing his instrument to wail soulfully into the night. “You’re not exactly a ray of sunshine yourself, pal.”

“The farthest thing from it,” he agrees. “And yet you’re here with me anyway. What does that make you?”

“Insane, probably.”

“Most certainly. But what’s light without some shadow, hm?” He winks. “Each one needs the other.”

He gazes down at me as a violin player in the opposite corner of the courtyard starts up her playing. At first, the accordion player frowns. Then the violinist falls right into his rhythm. Two voices that don’t belong together replaceing a tune that neither one anticipated. So much more beautiful than either one would’ve been alone.

And as the music swells, and as the night is chilly around us but I’m still warm in Sasha’s arms, and as snow kisses my cheek and then Sasha does the same, and as one moment I never anticipated runs headlong into the next, and into the next, and into the next, I replace myself looking up into blue eyes that I hated not so long ago and opening my mouth to say something that’s been true for a while now but never this true, never this real, never this certain and undeniable deep in my chest:

“Sasha, I lo⁠—”

His mouth smothers mine. It’s a breathless kiss, and I’m almost panting when he breaks away. “I know I keep telling you not yet,” he whispers, “but it’s not because I— It’s not because I can’t— It’s just… Fuck.”

I brush my fingers against his lips. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “We’ll know.”

He nods. So many things seem caught behind the steel bars of his face, and it looks like he wants so badly to set them all free.

But not yet. Not now.

Soon, maybe.

He kisses me again, like we have an audience. Which, it turns out, we do—Japanese tourists are snapping photos while a street artist sketches our silhouette.

“Lots of Peeping Toms in Paris,” I grumble.

Sasha chuckles right into my mouth. “Let them be.”

Let them be. Let them watch and gawk and ogle. Let the whole city see how a monster holds his bride-to-be: one hand tangled in her hair, the other clutching her hip like she’s the last life raft on the Titanic. Let that stubborn rose shove its way up through graveyard soil.

Mama comes back just as the song ends, mouth gaping wide with a yawn. “That’s bedtime for me. Don’t stay out too late, lovies.” Her wink leaves scorch marks. “I’ll replace my own way back to the hotel, don’t you worry.” She pats Sasha’s cheek, then mine, then goes dancing away into the night.

I watch her go. “She really is happy here,” I say in amazement.

“Are you?”

I look up at Sasha and smile. “Yeah. I am.”