10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 53

Blood on snow. Red on white. A trickling trail down alleys, like script on the ice, reading Sasha Ozerov ran this way.

I do what I can to cover my tracks, doubling back to lose the Serbian pursuers. It costs me precious seconds of chasing Ariel down, but if I’m dead, I’m no use to her. Fuck knows where Feliks is, where any of my men are. This is an unmitigated disaster.

But it’s not the pain in my shoulder that’s killing me, though my tuxedo jacket has fused to the wound with a mix of sweat and clotted blood. It’s not the loss of the alliance that’s darkening the edges of my vision.

It’s her.

I can’t see beyond the step in front of me and that frozen-still image of tears crystallizing in Ariel’s eyes as she looked up at me and spat, You knew.

I knew.

Yes, I fucking knew.

I did what I did to save that poor girl. And yes, I did it for selfish fucking reasons, too. Framing Dragan for Jasmine’s murder meant that Leander and the Greeks would never ally with the Serbians against me. I shored up my own empire, even though it’s taken fifteen long years since then to convince Leander that backing me was the right play.

I was so close to the finish line. Marry Ariel. Claim the docks. Profit from now until eternity.

But I fucked up along the way.

And I know why.

Because I did everything my father warned me not to. I let my heart pull me from the path. I did what my mother did.

Jumped.

Fell.

Shattered.

Is it any wonder that it hurts so fucking badly?

How fitting that I’ve ended here, then. An ironic quirk of geography. The sign over the door gleams through the flurries of bone-chilling snow.

Babushka’s Lap.

I kick the door open, bell jangling. More of my blood drips a Morse code trail across the linoleum as I stagger into the restaurant’s kitchen like a ghost animating its own corpse.

Garlic and dill punch through the copper stench of my injury. Zoya looks up from her solyanka, cleaver poised over a head of cabbage. Her face tightens.

“Sadis.” Sit.

I collapse onto a stainless steel prep table. “Don’t mother me.”

Her cleaver thunks into the cutting board. “If I don’t, who else will?” She yanks open a drawer, retrieving vodka and a suture kit with practiced ease. “Shirt off.”

The fabric peels away with a wet schluck. I have to bite my tongue so as not to roar in pain.

Zoya hisses through pursed lips when she sees the damage. “Pizdets. You never did do anything halfway, Sashenka. Did it go through?”

Rotating my shoulder sends white sparks across my vision. “Fuck. I think so.”

She sloshes vodka over the wound. I clamp down on a scream.

“It’s been a while since you limped in here, bleeding on my floor.” Her tweezers probe the exit wound. “I was almost starting to enjoy the silence.”

I can only grunt as fucking torture sears everywhere she extracts shrapnel.

“Where’s your shadow?” Zoya sets the tweezers down, picks up needle and thread, and starts to sew the wound shut.

“Feliks can take care of himself.”

“I wasn’t talking about him.”

I grab the vodka bottle she used as disinfectant and guzzle it. If it can clear bullet wounds, maybe it can clear away these fucking thoughts crowding my skull. And even if it can’t, it burns less than Zoya’s scrutiny.

“She’s gone.”

She squints at her handiwork, readjusts, and keeps going. The nip of needle going into my skin again and again feels like I’m being chewed alive.

“Gone?” she asks. “Or gone?”

The kitchen sways. I press a palm to the table. Steady. Always steady. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it fucking matters, you idiot!” Zoya slaps down the needle and jabs a finger in my face. “You come here—bleeding, shaking, smelling of her perfume—and pretend it doesn’t matter? You think you are so tough, Aleksandr Ozerov. But I held you when you were this big.” Her hands span a loaf of bread’s length. “When Yakov…”

“Don’t.”

“… would put cigarettes out on your arm for crying. I cleaned this wound, too, don’t forget.” Her finger jabs the scar across my throat. “I⁠—”

The bottle shatters when I hurl it against the steel walk-in. Vodka dribbles down dented steel. “I said don’t.”

Zoya couldn’t be less intimidated. “Ach, well, I’ve never been a good listener.”

“Being there for parts of it doesn’t make you an expert on what I’ve survived. You know nothing.” I jump up and advance on her. The motion pulls free a few of her looser stitches, causing hot blood to drip down my arm.

She plants her fists on her hips and scowls at me. “I know this: When Yakov died, you came here. Do you remember? You sat in that exact seat. And do you know what you said that night, malchik?”

Our reflections hover in the reflective surface—her a smoking crater of a woman, me a bloodied shadow of a man.

“I said I’d piss on his grave.”

“No.” Zoya shakes her head. “You said, ‘Now, she’s safe.’”

I turn and sink back onto the wobbly stool. My head is throbbing in time with my shoulder now. Both hurt like hell. “Blyat’,” I spit at myself. “Ssyklo. Fucking ssyklo.”

Now, Zoya is the one who advances on me. “You, Sashenka, are a man who protects what he loves. Even if it means spilling your own blood to make it happen. So ask yourself: does this feel like it ‘doesn’t matter’ to you?” She runs a finger through my pooled blood and holds it in front of my eyes. “This looks like blood to me, malchik. Do you regret spilling it for her?”

I press my forehead to the prep table surface and close my eyes. Thump. Thump. Pain, everywhere. “She hates me for what I hid, Zoya.”

“So? Hate is just love that’s still breathing.” She cups the back of my head and sighs mournfully, the air whistling out of her in a long, sad stream.

“Nothing’s left breathing, Zoya. Leander’s dead. The alliance is dead. It’s all fucking dead.”

“Nyet, child. Nothing is truly dead until you give up on it. Do you think your mamochka is dead? Or is she here?” When I look up, I see Zoya spreading her arms wide to encompass the whole kitchen, the restaurant. “She’s right here with us. In me. In you. And this Ariel… What you have with her is not dead unless you choose to let it die. Go to her. Beg. Grovel. Live.”

A guttural noise escapes me—part growl, part sob. “She’ll shoot me on sight.”

Zoya’s smile curves like her cleaver. “So be ready to duck.”