10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 52

The world narrows to the fracture spreading across Ariel’s face. Her lips part—not in a scream, but a silent shattering.

“Ari—”

She recoils from my outstretched hand. “Don’t. Don’t.” Her heel catches on the hem of that obscenely red dress as she stumbles back. “You let me mourn her. You let me bury her.”

Her uncle grabs her elbow. “We need to go, koukla. Now.”

My instincts scream to break his wrist. My heart—that traitorous, atrophied muscle—keeps me rooted. “Ariel. Let me explain.”

“Explain what?” Her laugh carves through me. “How you let me think I lost her? How you—fuck—” She presses shaking fingers to her mouth. “You knew. All this time. You knew.”

The ballroom’s ambient murmur crescendos into a roar. Half of it is aimed at us. The other half flows in a different direction.

It’s not until I look to the stage that I see why.

Dragan Vukovic is climbing the dais steps, his tailored tuxedo straining over shoulders still thick from years spent breaking bones in Belgrade’s fighting pits. He drapes an arm around a gray-faced Leander’s shoulders and beams.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Dragan’s voice booms through the mic. “What a touching family moment. Let’s give the happy couple a round of applause!”

Leander sways beside him, pupils dilated wide. The pills, whatever they are, are no longer doing the trick. He looks like he’s staring into the maw of a nightmare.

Ariel spins toward the stage. “Baba, don’t⁠—”

“Now, my friend, onto more important matters!” Dragan claps a meaty hand on Leander’s shoulder. “I think it’s time to tell them. Tell them all. Tell your allies what your precious future son-in-law did.”

Leander’s gaze locks with mine. His jaw works timidly, like the words taste repulsive on his tongue. “Sasha… helped… Jasmine…”

Dragan snatches the mic. “He helped your daughter fake her death! Framed me for her murder! All to steal your alliance!” Spittle flies as he jabs a finger at me. “This svinja played you! Played all of you!”

The crowd erupts.

In the midst of the mayhem, Ariel tries running toward the stage where Leander collapses to his knees in horror. “Baba!”

I catch her around the waist. “No.”

She slams her stiletto into my shin. “Let me go!”

Leander crawls toward the edge of the dais, hand outstretched. “Ariana… neraïdoula mou…”

Dragan kicks him in the ribs. “You weak fucking prick. You swallowed his lies then. Swallow this bullet now.”

“No!” Ariel is going feral in my arms, thrashing, screaming. “No. Baba! No⁠—”

I’m dragging her backward when the shot rings out.

Leander jerks.

Croaks.

And topples into the orchestra pit.

Ariel’s scream curdles my blood. Feliks shoves us behind a toppled table as doors burst open and Serbian soldiers begin to flood into the ballroom. Every last man, woman, and child in here is screaming or roaring, pulling out weapons, fleeing in whatever direction they can reach. “Sasha, we need to get the fuck out of here!”

“Get the others out, Feliks.” I clamp a hand over Ariel’s mouth, muffling her sobs. “Now.”

She bites my palm. I feel the spurt of blood. “You bastard. This is your fault!” She’s screaming, clawing, a wild thing unraveling in my arms. My grip tightens—not enough to bruise, never enough to hurt—but she twists like a gutshot animal.

“Listen to me!” I roar over the gunfire.

Her elbow cracks against my ribs. “You lied!”

Across the ballroom, Feliks drags Gina behind a marble column. Pavel’s got Lora slung over his shoulder, sprinting for the service exit. Good. My men know their roles. But my role—the one that matters—is crumbling in real time beneath my hands.

Ariel bucks against me. “Let me go to him!”

“He’s gone,” I tell her. “Your father’s gone, ptichka.”

She stills. For one second, I think she’s finally hearing me. Then her palm cracks across my cheek.

“You don’t get to call me that.” Her eyes are twin supernovas—green fire collapsing into black voids. “You don’t get to call me anything ever again.”

A bullet shatters the ice swan beside us. Shrapnel peppers my neck.

“You want the truth?” I snarl, ducking us behind an overturned banquet table. Silverware skitters across the floor, dancing with the thunder of the crowd’s panicked footsteps. “Your sister begged me to do what I did. Cried on her knees on that dock, terrified Dragan would track her down if I didn’t set her free. Your father would’ve sold her back to that animal to keep his precious alliance. She had to die in order to be free.”

Her breath hitches. “You don’t know that.”

“I saw the bruises!” The memory surges unbidden—Jasmine’s trembling hands unbuttoning her blouse in that safehouse, mottled fingerprints circling her throat like a necklace as she showed me what he did. “You think I enjoyed lying to you? Letting you mourn? Don’t you think I wanted to tell you? I tried to bring you as close as I could without risking her life. Ariel… who do you think played the violin in Paris?”

Another volley of gunfire. I count the shooters by the cadence—half a dozen Serbians ready and waiting. Dragan’s voice booms over the din, rallying his men in that guttural mother tongue of his.

Ariel’s fingers dig into my forearms as she sobs silently. “You could’ve told me.”

“And risk your father replaceing out?” I crush her closer, shielding her body with mine as bullets chew through the table. “He’d have torn Europe apart to drag her back. Dragan, too. No one could know. This was the only way.”

Her laugh scrapes raw. “The only way to manipulate everyone. To use us.”

She’s not wrong. I open my mouth—to apologize? To justify?—when a shadow looms behind her.

Instincts override thought. I spin us, taking the bullet meant for her heart.

The impact punches through my left shoulder. Ariel screams. The shooter—some Serbian grunt with a face like spoiled meat—smirks as he racks another round.

He doesn’t get to fire it.

My pistol barks twice. His smirk dies with him.

“Sasha—” Ariel’s hands flutter over the wound. “You’re⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter.” I shove her toward the service corridor. “Move!”

She stumbles, heels catching on her ruined dress. I catch her elbow, propelling us forward. Blood slicks my fingers—hers or mine or the Serbian’s, I can’t tell.

Her chest heaves. For a heartbeat, I see the girl from the bathroom stall—wide-eyed, trembling, so fucking alive that it hurt me to look at her.

Then her gaze hardens.

“Go to hell.”

She knees me in the thigh. Not the groin—a mercy or a mistake, I’m not sure—and bolts.

“Ariel!”

Chaos swallows her. Society wives are busy trampling each other for the exits. Gunmen duel between ice sculptures. Somewhere, Feliks is shouting my name.

By the time I spot her again, Ariel is halfway up the grand staircase, scarlet train billowing behind her. She glances back once—hair tumbling from its pins, mascara bleeding down her cheeks—before vanishing out onto the mezzanine.

The wound in my shoulder screams as I give chase. Blood soaks my tuxedo jacket, warm and insistent.

Stupid girl. Reckless, stubborn, glorious girl.

Memories flash with every step. Her laughter in Zoya’s kitchen. The way she’d bite her lip when pretending not to watch me work. That first time she fell asleep in my arms on that mountain, trusting me with her nightmares.

I follow the blood smears past shattered display cases. Tiffany diamonds glitter in the carpet like trapped stars.

“Ariel!”

Silence. Then⁠—

“Stay away from me!”

Her voice comes from the Egyptian wing. I charge in that direction and replace her crouched between two sarcophagi. The emergency lights paint her in hellish red. She’s clutching a ceremonial dagger from the Cleopatra exhibit—twenty-dollar gift shop garbage, but sharp enough to hurt if she manages to stick me with it.

“Put it down.” I step closer.

She brandishes the blade. “I mean it, Sasha.”

“You won’t use it.”

“Try me.”

We circle like wolves. Her back hits a display of canopic jars and sends them crashing to the ground. The dagger trembles in her grip, but her eyes never waver.

“You think I wanted this?” I snap. “You think I enjoyed lying awake, imagining your face when you found out?”

She shakes her head. “You don’t get to play hero.”

“I’m not. I’m the villain, remember? The monster who blackmails and manipulates and lies.”

I lunge. She’s faster.

I manage to block the downward hurtling blade, but her other hand punches my wounded shoulder. White-hot agony blots out the world as I go staggering backwards. When my vision clears, she’s at the emergency exit.

“Ariel—”

The door slams. The lock engages.

Through the wire-reinforced glass, I watch her run—barefoot, bleeding, beautiful—into the waiting storm.