10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 54

A rock through the window breaks it easily.

I climb through to get out of sight, off the street. But once I’m inside, I pause for a moment and look back.

The jagged shards of glass that didn’t fall stick out of the opening like teeth. At my feet, the rest of them are a thousand tiny mirrors. In each one of them is an Ariel, and each of those Ariels is the same.

A fool.

An idiot.

A stupid, deluded dreamer in a stupid red dress who thought she could outrun her bloodline.

I tear my gaze away and look around me. It’s strange to see the library at night. It was always bright and clean by day and magical by dusk. Now, though, the shadows are long and thick. Shelves lurk, huge, seeming almost to curve in over my head.

A cold breeze blows through the wrecked window. I shiver, wrap my arms around myself, and hurry in.

Pretty funny that I should end up here, right? This is where all stories come to die. When they’re over, they get jailed in here and here they stay until the end of time.

My story is over. That fairy tale, that big, grand romance that Mama told me I deserved—it’s about to be sealed up in a leatherbound coffin. I’ve got a great line to finish it off, whenever I get around to filling up those blank pages Sasha gave me:

And then no one lived ever after. Certainly not “happily.”

I collapse into a study carrel, back pressed to walnut paneling. My hands won’t stop shaking. Sasha’s blood crusts under my nails from where I hit him.

Even funnier than my not-such-a-storybook ending is how I used to think I was Lois Lane. An intrepid reporter, a fearless heroine, a woman brave enough to take on the world and win. And, even though I fought it at first, I did truly come to think that Sasha might be my Superman.

But it turns out everyone is the same: liars, all the way down.

Him most of all. Liar. Fucking liar. Liar with his mother’s eyes and his father’s fists. Liar who hid my sister like a trump card. Liar who set my dad up to die on his knees in front of everyone he ever knew. Liar who made me love him in the gaps between truths.

He knew. Sasha knew. Sasha lied.

Artisan lies. Limited edition, bespoke deception.

Nausea crests in my stomach. I dig nails into my calves to stay silent.

Outside, the blizzard blurs the city into a chalk drawing. Somewhere out there, Sasha’s probably stitching himself back together. Planning his next play. And I’m here, unraveling in the one place that ever made sense—amongst rows of bound truths, silent witnesses to all the sins we humans convince ourselves are for the greater good.

I press my cheek to a dusty copy of The New York Times from 1997 that someone left out on the desk. The headlines scream about Princess Di, stock markets, a world that kept spinning after other tragedies.

Why does it feel like this will be the one that halts it on its axis?

Or, actually, is it worse if it keeps spinning? My world might be over, but no one else will care. They’ll just keep on going, falling in love, making babies, going to their sister’s houses for Christmas to laugh together in warm living rooms and give each other neatly wrapped gifts. I’ll be breaking into dark libraries and huddling my knees to my chest to ward off the cold.

I try to sleep. It goes poorly. Every time I close my eyes, I see Sasha there. He had ten days to convince me to marry him. And he did it. Against all odds, he fucking did it. I went from scratching and clawing to get away from him, to scratching and clawing to get closer to him.

And in those half-dreams, it’s more scratching and clawing I’m doing. Only this time, I’m scratching and clawing at coffin lids closing over my face. At gilded cell bars clanking closed around me. At darkness descending like a rag held over my face until I can’t breathe anymore.

Click goes the coffin.

Click goes the cage.

Click goes the…

Footstep?

I gasp awake and look to see a shadow standing in front of me. “I had a feeling this was the place,” he says.

His voice wraps around me like barbed wire. I look away. I have to. If I look at him now, with snow still melting in his hair and blood crusted on his knuckles, I’ll break.

“Go away, Sasha. For God’s fucking sake, just leave me alone.”

“No.”

The single syllable vibrates through my ribcage. “Why not? Why the fuck not?” I cry out.

He waits until the echoes of my wail fade away into the library stacks. “You know why I’m here.”

“To gloat? My dad is dead. You don’t have to marry me and you still get everything you want.”

He shakes his head. “No. Not everything.”

I pry open my eyes. He’s a step closer than he was. Enough to catch half a moonbeam peeking through the skylight. His blue eyes are bright, but his shirt is in bloody tatters and his posture is damn near broken.

“Don’t,” I tell him. “You don’t get to do that. Not after lying to me about Jasmine. Not after I just watched my father get fucking executed. Not after letting me believe you weren’t this… this monster who⁠—”

“I am a monster.” He catches my wrist when I try to shove him away. “But not that kind.”

I pull free. The motion knocks a book off the cluttered desk. The thud of it landing on the floor reverberates through the cavernous room.

“You framed Dragan. Let my family grieve for a decade. For what? A fucking alliance?”

“For survival.” His jaw ticks. “Same reason I did everything.”

“Bullshit. You had a dozen chances to tell me the truth. On our dates. In Paris. Even when you—” The words get caught in my throat. When you said you loved me.

Sasha steps closer into my space, crowding me against the carrel wall. “Would you have believed me? That first night? The second? How about the third, Ariel? Would you have believed me then?”

“I don’t know!” I lower my voice to a venomous hiss. “But you didn’t even try. You just… You let me fall for a fairy tale.”

His nostrils flare. “It wasn’t all a lie.”

“Wasn’t it?” I gesture around us. “The library date? The spa? The goddamn lingerie? All part of the long con, right? Keep the little wife happy while you⁠—”

He kisses me.

It’s not like before—no slow burn, no teasing dominance. This is pain. Punishment. His teeth catch my lower lip hard enough to draw blood as his hands cage me against the wall. I bite back a whimper, nails digging into his biceps through the ruined tuxedo shirt.

When he pulls away, we’re both shaking.

“Eto ne lozh.” His breath scalds my cheek. “None of that was a lie.”

I swipe at my stinging mouth and spit, “Prove it.”

“How?”

“Marry me.”

He stills. “What?”

“Right now. No contracts. No witnesses. No political gain.” I yank my mother’s engagement ring off my finger and hold it up between us. “Just you and me in front of some city clerk who’ll file the paperwork between coffee breaks.”

His gaze drops to the ring. “Ariel⁠—”

“If you mean it—if any of this was real—you’ll do it.” My voice cracks. “Otherwise, walk away from me and never look back.”

He says nothing for a while. In the distant guts of the library, a clock ticks toward oblivion.

I watch the calculations flicker behind his eyes—the pakhan weighing risks, the boy raised by a tyrant recoiling from vulnerability.

“Give me time to make things⁠—”

My heart shrivels to ash. “That’s your answer then. At least it’s an honest one.”

“Ariel. Ariel, wait⁠—”

He grabs for me again but I’m already moving, sprinting past fiction and romance and history and science. The library’s rear exit looms ahead, winter light bleeding through frosted glass.

“Ya tebya lyublyu!”

The Russian stops me cold. I turn slowly. He’s ten paces back, chest heaving, hair wild. A tsar brought to his knees.

“I love you,” he repeats in English, raw as an open wound. “But marriage… It’s not just vows. It’s power. Over each other. Over everything.”

I shake my head. “That’s your father talking.”

“He wasn’t wrong.”

“So that’s it?” The exit sign blurs through my tears. “You’d rather be alone than risk someone having power over you?”

“I’d rather keep you safe!”

“From what? Yourself?”

“From the world I built. The one that killed your father tonight.”

The words hang between us, poison gas in the musty air. I press a hand to my sternum, half-expecting to replace a bullet hole.

“You think I don’t know what this life costs?” My whisper is a hoarse croak. “I’ve been paying that price since I was eight years old, Sasha. But I was willing to pay it—for you. Because I thought… Because I thought you were worth it.”

“Ptichka.” He takes a step forward. “Let me⁠—”

“No, Sasha. You had your chance. Ten chances, actually. Now, you’ve ruined them all.”

The door slams behind me with finality. Snow stings my cheeks as I stumble into the alley, but I don’t look back. Can’t.

Somewhere between the dumpsters and Fifth Avenue, the ring slips from my numb fingers. I don’t stop to retrieve it.

Let the sewer rats have their shiny trophy.

Let it rot with the rest of his crown.