10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

6. Ariel

6

ARIEL

I’m up in the middle of the night again, blue light from my laptop painting my face. Sleep was too full of dreams and the summer air is too sticky to be comfortable for a beach ball with bladder control issues like me.

The cursor on my screen blinks. It hasn’t moved in three days.

Dear Sasha,

They have your nose.

“Fuck this,” I mutter under my breath. I pause to make sure Jasmine didn’t hear me. But the steady murmur of her breathing continues unbothered.

I rise, careful not to scrape the chair over the floorboards, and waddle to the door. It’s surprisingly smooth to slip out of the apartment, given my current girth. I may be a whale, but I’m a ninja whale.

Once I’m outside and down the stairs, I can breathe again. I just needed a little distance from that folder filled with bits and pieces of love I’m going to give to children who will never know their father. It was suffocating me, full-on claustrophobia.

Out here, though, the world is wide open. The breeze is cool and salty and the sky is filled with stars.

I make for the beach. No one and nothing else is out, not even clouds, so the sea churns with shards of white glass that get consumed and born again with each new set of waves.

The sand is cool between my toes. Midnight tides hiss and retreat, hiss and retreat, like the ocean is trying to scrub the shore clean. My flip-flops dangle from one hand, a half-melted Snickers bar from the other. The twins have been demanding chocolate all day, and I’m nothing if not their humble servant.

I press a palm to the side of my belly where a tiny heel juts. “Easy, slugger. Mama’s walking.”

The kick softens.

I take another bite of Snickers and stare at the black water. Back in New York, the Hudson never looked like this—all hungry and endless. Here, the Atlantic is a living thing. It breathes. It watches. It knows.

Just like him.

Stop it.

I crush the candy wrapper in my fist. Six months. Six months of pretending the ache in my chest is heartburn, that the hollow behind my ribs is just the twins stealing all my organs for legroom. Six months of biting my tongue every time Jas says, He deserves to know, like it’s a fucking Hallmark card I’d be sending him and not a live grenade.

Another kick, harder this time. “You, too, huh?” I mutter. “Taking her side already?”

I keep walking, but when I reach the pier, I decide that’s far enough and I turn back toward home. I see my first creature—a ghost crab—but it scuttles away across the white sand as soon as it hears me coming.

He’d hate this place, I think, crunching a seashell underfoot. Too quiet. No shadows to own.

My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out to see Jasmine’s name lighting up the screen.

JAS: Where’d u go?

ARI: walking on the beach. be back soon.

JAS: You scared me. Woke up and you weren’t here.

ARI: I’m fine. go back to sleep, worrywart.

JAS: Mkay. Love you.

It’s another few minutes of quiet walking, my bare feet skimming across the sand, before I make the turn inland, crest the dunes, and go down our street. The moon is behind me now, casting a silhouette that somehow manages to make my belly seem even bigger than it is in real life.

I laugh, rub it, and ask the night, “Does this shadow make me look fat?”

I’m still chuckling as I round the corner of our block—when a double flicker of orange snags my eye.

I freeze.

Cigarettes glow. Three of them. Three orange pinpricks, floating in the dark at the foot of the building’s stairs.

For a second, I’m fifteen again—standing in the cathedral, looking at a casket that didn’t hold my sister’s body. It’s the same icy trickle down my spine. The same copper stink of wrongness in my nose.

The twins roll, a slow, tectonic shift that leaves me breathless. “You’re being paranoid,” I tell them.

Their silence isn’t reassuring.

I peek out again. I don’t see anything at first. Are they gone? Were they ever even there in the first place? Am I hallucinating, dreaming, or?—?

There.

I lunge back behind the corner of the building, out of sight. This time, I’m sure I saw them. A trio of shadows too tall for the squat French buildings. Parked motorcycles glinting under the moon.

I pick up a broken bottle lying in the gutter and use it as a reflection so I can peer around the corner without sticking my head out. It’s shoddy, but good enough to confirm everything.

My blood turns to slush. The Snickers wrapper slips from my fingers.

Serbian license plates. Black leather jackets. The glint of a gold chain ? —

No. No, that’s impossible. We’ve been careful. Changed our names. Paid cash. Never stayed anywhere more than?—

One of the men turns. Moonlight slicks across the tattoo crawling up his neck.

A double-headed eagle.

Dragan’s mark.

I grab the stone wall of the fish market to keep from falling. My pulse thunders in my ears, drowning out the waves. They found us. They fucking found us.

Move. Move, you idiot.

But my feet are concrete. My lungs are origami. Half a block away, in the bungalow, Jasmine is sleeping with her bedroom window cracked open, utterly exposed behind a door that we never bother to lock.

I text Jas with fumbling fingers.

ARI: GET OUT NOW

She doesn’t answer.

The man with the eagle tattoo says something in Serbian. His companions laugh, low and mean. They’re looking at our door. At the easy latch. At the dark windows.

My hand flies to my belly. “Okay,” I whisper. “New plan.”

The dumpster yields a splintered oar. I heft it like a baseball bat. It’s heavier than my old Louisville Slugger from my high school softball days, but weekly prenatal yoga must finally be paying off, because it goes smoothly when I give it a test swing.

“Stay with me, guys,” I murmur, creeping along the wall. The men haven’t spotted me yet. They’re too busy arguing over a crumpled photo. Even from here, I recognize Jas’s smile.

Rage burns through the fear. These pricks took my father. My career. My whole damn life.

They don’t get to take her, too.

But even as I approach, I think the name I swore I wouldn’t let myself think anymore: I wish Sasha was here.

He’d know what to do. He’d bash these bastards’ skulls together and make lasagna of their brains. He’d stand between me and danger, between Jas and danger. He’d keep us safe. He swore he’d always keep us safe.

But he’s not here, is he? He isn’t here and he isn’t coming. It’s just us. Just me.

I take a deep breath and heft the oar high.

Ready.

Set.

G—

Then hands reach out to drag me backward into the dark.