10 Days to Ruin (Ozerov Bratva Book 1)
10 Days to Ruin: Chapter 9

The fluorescent lights in The Gazette’s break room are doing their best impression of a medieval torture device. Honestly, hats off to them; they’re really killing it.

Killing me, too.

I woke up with the hangover from hell after Gina drank me under the table last night. The blissful darkness of the drunken abyss was nice for a little while, as were the first few moments when I woke up in my own bed.

I blinked, grainy-eyed, as I stared up at the ceiling. Same old mold patches. Same old water stains. Same old popcorn ceiling that looks vaguely like Richard Gere if you squint just right.

Then I remembered.

Or else what?

What’s coming next, Baba?

So break it, koukla. Break it all.

The weight of it all pinned me to the mattress. I was torn between screaming or sinking into denial, pretending I made it all up. I went with option three: I got up, got dressed, and went to work.

Now, I’m here, feeling like the wrong end of the Grim Reaper’s GI tract, wondering if death might just be the cleanest solution to all my problems.

The coffee machine gurgles merrily. I lean in close to it and whisper, “If you give me decaf, I will end you.”

“Talking to inanimate objects doesn’t scream ‘flourishing mental health.’” Gina sashays into the room. Unlike me, she looks infuriatingly put-together, per usual. Even now that we’re in our thirties, she can drink half the bar and wake up looking like she’s fresh out of a dermaplane facial.

“Very little in my life is flourishing right now, Gee.”

“Do tell.”

I turn to scowl at her. “I did tell. Last night. Do you really not remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I remember.” She licks PopTart frosting off her thumb. “But I also blacked out after the third shot, so just in case… tell me the whole thing again one more time?”

Before I can strangle her, our coworker Lora floats into the room like the rootless, carefree dandelion seed she is. Her polka-dot dress is inside-out, her hair defies gravity, and she’s clutching a mug labeled #1 Cat Aunt.

I’ve never envied someone more.

“Good morning, ladies!” she chirps at a pitch and decibel that might very well summon every dog in the borough.

I wince and plug my ears. Lora does not notice.

“Did you see John’s email?” Lora blows across her tea, sending plumes of steam toward the sagging ceiling tiles. “We’re all supposed to pivot to the Mayor’s new infrastructure bill. He wants six hundred words by three on community impact angles. Oh, and Ariel—he put you on the Brighton Beach team for interviews tomorrow. Yay, fieldwork!”

Gina chokes on her orange juice.

My fingers tighten around the scalding cardboard cup. The assignment should feel like a win—real reporting, finally. Instead, the words Brighton and Beach curdle in my gut. The last place I should go is anywhere near my father’s domain.

Lora, meanwhile, has started humming.

It’d be nice to live in her world for a little while. Mostly because “her world” is a snow globe filled with rainbow sparkles, where everything is “yay” and “woo” and never-ending sunshine beams.

No room in a place like that for men like Sasha Ozerov.

“Yay, fieldwork,” I grumble in a miserable monotone. “Can’t wait.”

Lora, in a shockingly perceptive move by her standards, looks over at me. “Is something the matter, buttercup?”

In response, I press my forehead to the cool laminate surface of the break room table. Everything is the matter.

“Ree here had a… let’s call it a ‘bad date,’” Gina answers for me.

“Bad date?” Lora’s eyes go wide with sympathy. “Oh, no! Tell me everything. Was it one of those awful Hinge situationships? I had the worst experience last week with⁠—”

“More like an arranged marriage situationship,” Gina supplies helpfully.

I lift my head just enough to glare at her. “Thanks for that.”

“Arranged marriage?!” Lora gasps, collapsing into the chair beside me. “That’s so romantic! Like a fairy tale!”

And that is exactly why Lora falls in love with every man she meets. It’s also why she writes the paper’s dating advice column, though she’s the last person on Earth anyone should take dating advice from. She’s a romantic, naive enough to still have hope that things work out.

I gave that up years ago.

“Less fairy tale, more horror story. This guy is the farthest thing from Prince Charming.”

“No man is,” Lora sighs in a very un-Lora-like fashion. “But I thought Ethan was The One, you know?”

Gina perks up like a shark scenting blood in the water. I know that look. It’s the same one she gets when someone mentions their cryptocurrency investments or healing crystals.

Pure, predatory delight.

“Tell us about Ethan,” she says, leaning forward. “I need a distraction from Ariel’s love life crisis.”

Lora rests her chin on her hand and gazes into the distance. “He… He… H-h-he…”

Is she having a stroke? Gina mouths to me.

I’m wondering the same thing. Lora looks like she’s malfunctioning. Sniffling, eyes welling up, cheeks flushing, shoulders starting to tremble…

“Oh, shit,” I hiss. “She’s…”

Crying.

No, not “crying”—she’s straight-up ugly girl sobbing.

As per usual, Gina started this whole mess, but as per even more usual, I’m the one who feels obligated to pick up the pieces. “Lora,” I venture, “are you okay?”

She sobs harder. “Yes! I’m fine! I’m— I’m just s-so happy for you⁠—”

I replace that hard to believe. Not because Lora wouldn’t be happy for me—she’s the single sweetest person on staff—but because these don’t exactly look like happy tears.

This is sobbing-widow-at-a-funeral behavior. This is…

“Lora,” I say carefully, “did Ethan break up with you?”

She blinks up at me. I can only watch in horror as her huge puppy dog eyes slowly fill to the brim with more and more tears… Then the dam bursts.

Lora hurls herself at me and starts full-on bawling. “I JUSD BISS HIM DO BUCH⁠—”

“She turned German from trauma,” Gina whispers.

I shoot Gina a withering glare and pat Lora stiffly on the back. “There, there. I’m so sorry. You deserve better.”

I don’t know any of that for sure. I’ve never even met Ethan, or Damian, or Connor, or Brett, or Alan, or whatever letter of the alphabet Lora’s currently on. She is the kind of colleague we exchange gossip with, but not much else. We grab drinks after work if the stars align. And she does such a good job of keeping us up with her love life drama that we don’t really have to go hunting for it.

Some unkind people—read: Gina—might call Lora a chronic oversharer. Me? I’m glad she spares me the trouble of talking about my own life.

“HE WAZ DE BEST THIG OB MY LIBE⁠—”

I exchange a helpless look with Gina over Lora’s heaving shoulders. “Fire escape?” I whisper. She gives me the thumbs up and we start to shepherd Lora that way.

The sign above the propped-open window says Emergency Exit, and this definitely qualifies as an emergency. Emotionally speaking, if nothing else.

I settle Lora down on the nearest landing, and eventually, she takes enough calming breaths to speak English again. “It just happened so fast.”

I frown. I was admittedly not paying very close attention when she first started talking about her “new beau,” but I’m almost positive she met him less than six weeks ago. Her tear ducts have no sense of time, apparently. I’ve lent her my shoulder to cry on. I wish I was speaking metaphorically, but my jacket has now become the dry cleaner’s problem. “I thought things were going great between you two?”

“They were! But then he started saying that he—that I—” Fresh tears well up and she dissolves again.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I say, patting her back. “We get it.”

Gina frowns. “We do?”

“Yes,” I snap, “we do. We all know the feeling of being dumped out of the blue. Isn’t that right, Gina?”

“I mean…”

“I said, Isn’t that right, Gina?”

Gee nods like a bobblehead on a dashboard. “For sure, yeah. Definitely been there. Happens to the best of us.”

Luckily, Lora’s lie detector skills aren’t the sharpest. “You think I’m the best of us?”

“I wouldn’t quite— Er, yeah, absolutely. Uh-huh.” Gina adds a double thumbs-up for good measure.

“I gave him all these gifts,” she sniffles. “Kept trying to surprise him, you know? Isn’t that what loving couples do?”

I wince. “Surprises are…” My nightmare. “… always a good move.”

“Right?” She sighs deeply. “I got him this huge ragu lasagna from Pacino’s…”

I frown. “I thought you said Ethan was vegan?”

“Lasagna is vegan.” Lora presses on. “I told him to close his eyes and spooned some into his mouth. I thought that was romantic.”

It takes everything in me not to exclaim, You hand-fed your vegan boyfriend pieces of dead cow!

“So romantic,” I agree.

“And I took him to this amazing show when the circus was in town. They even had lions!”

“But isn’t he…?”

“An animal rights’ activist?” Gina finishes for me.

“Exactly! He loves animals.”

Gina and I exchange glances. I’m starting to see poor Ethan’s side of the story.

Lora continues, blissfully unaware. “That was for our one-month anniversary…”

“Wait, you were together for a month?” Gina blurts out.

“Thirty magical days,” Lora confirms wistfully. “I was going to be his wife.”

“Did he tell you that?” Gina asks.

“No. I did.”

“Alright!” I cut her off, afraid of where this is going. Suddenly, my life doesn’t seem so bad. “It’s getting late, so we should go back to the⁠—”

“No, no,” Gina insists. “I want to hear what happened. You told him you’d be his wife?”

“Yeah.” Lora shrugs. “I planned a whole thing with the ringmaster and proposed.”

Gina’s jaw is hanging open in sheer glee. “This is the best day of my life.”

“Let me get this straight,” I interrupt. “You hand-fed your vegan boyfriend ragu, bought tickets to an animal circus, and proposed on your one-month anniversary? And then he broke up with you?”

God, who could blame him?

“You’re right,” Lora sighs. For a second, hope sparks in my heart—the hope that I’m about to hear anything remotely self-aware. Then: “… I do deserve better.”

Nope. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

She dusts herself off and rises. “Thanks, you guys. That actually made me feel a lot lighter.”

“Anytime,” Gina says. For once, I’m one-hundred percent sure she actually means it.

Lora gives us a smile and a wave, then disappears back through the window.

“You’re an awful friend,” I snap at Gina the minute Lora’s footsteps fade.

“Are you kidding? We need to hang out with her more.”

“I’m serious!”

She shrugs. “Didn’t hear you take Evan’s side, Mother Teresa.”

“Ethan,” I correct. But dammit, she’s right. “If that is what the dating pool looks like, maybe I should take my dad and Sasha up on the offer. That was bleak.” I sigh and crumple forward, head between my knees in the this-plane-is-gonna-crash position. “What am I gonna do, Gee?”

“Well, it sounds like Lora might have a contact at the circus, if you were thinking of joining up.”

I twist around to glare at her. “This is my life you’re mocking.”

She sighs and leans back against the metal grates, mischief fading from her face. “Fine. You want serious? I can be serious. You seriously have almost no options.”

“No, I have three.” I tick them off on my fingers. “One, I run. But Leander will replace me eventually. And if and when he does, he might actually follow through on his threats. To both of us.” I glance meaningfully at her so she remembers she has skin in this game, too. “Two, I play along and try to replace leverage like you suggested last night. But that could take months, and the wedding’s probably got some insane accelerated timeline.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because that’s how my dad operates. He doesn’t give people time to think or plan. He just…” I wave my hand vaguely, trying to replace the words. “Bulldozes. Steamrolls. Takes what he wants and leaves everyone else to deal with the aftermath.”

Gina drums her fingers on the iron stairs. “So what’s option three?”

“I tell him no. To his face. Make it clear this isn’t happening.”

“That’s suicide,” she says flatly.

“Maybe.” I drain the last of my coffee. “But at least it’s on my terms. And honestly? I’m tired, Gee. Tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of letting him dictate the terms of my life from afar.”

She studies me for a long moment. “You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I think I am.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“Absolutely not.” I grab her hand. “This isn’t your fight.”

“Like hell it isn’t. He threatened me, too, remember?”

“Which is exactly why you need to stay as far away from him as possible.” I squeeze her fingers. “I’ve spent fifteen years keeping my distance from that world. I’m not dragging you into it now.”

She opens her mouth to argue, but something in my face must stop her. Instead, she just asks, “When?”

“Now. Before I lose my nerve.” I stand, gathering my bag. “Cover for me with the bosses?”

“Are you definitely a ‘no’ on arson? ‘Cause I really do think fire might make this situation go away.”

I laugh. “Glad to know you weren’t too drunk to remember that. I’d hate for you to get yourself into trouble when I’m gone.”

She catches my arm as I pass. “Seriously, Ari… Be careful, okay?”

I try to hold my smile. “Always am.”

The drive to Brighton Beach feels like traveling backward in time. Every street corner holds a ghost: there’s the bodega where I used to buy candy with Jasmine, the playground where Mama would take us after school, the church where Leander would parade us on Sundays like his perfect little family.

I park a block from his office. My hands are steady as I kill the engine, but my heart is doing its best to crack my ribs from the inside.

Come on, Ariel. You can do this.

As I walk around the corner, I see the warehouse looming. A lopsided, corrugated nightmare. Something your eyes would glaze right over—and that’s intentional. Easier to do what you want when no one bothers looking in your direction.

But I know better.

I know that, somewhere in that building, Leander Makris is sitting in his leather chair, smoking his Cuban cigars, thinking he’s already won. Thinking his prodigal daughter will fall in line like all the others.

I’m going to march in there and tell him to his face:

Not a fucking chance.