10. Sasha
10
SASHA
The Italian border guard’s flashlight rakes across the car window. Kosti breathes quietly in the seat next to me. I keep my hands loose on the wheel, bloodied bandage carefully tucked beneath the hem of my shirt, eyes straight ahead.
When he turns his attention to the back seat, the guard’s gaze lingers on Ariel’s swollen belly, her death grip on the door handle, the way Jasmine’s arm drapes protectively around her sister’s shoulders like she’s twelve again and guarding her from their father’s drunken rages.
Family vacation, I want to sneer. We’re the fucking Partridge Family with bullet holes.
“ Passaporti, ” the guard barks.
Kosti leans over me and slaps a stack of euros into the man’s palm. “ Amici della famiglia, no?”
I wonder for a moment if he’s gone too far. The last fucking thing we need is to spend a night in Italian jail while immigration authorities decide our fate. The thought of this underpaid country boy popping open the trunk to find a full armory and knives stained with Serbian blood is darkly funny, though.
Then the flashlight flicks off.
“ Andate avanti tutti.”
Ariel’s exhale shudders through the car as we roll forward into the inkblot hills of Italy.
We stop to stretch our legs at a roadside chapel halfway to hell. Like the farmhouse, it’s a shell of what it once was. Moonlight bleeds through shattered stained glass, painting the Virgin Mary’s face in fractured blues. I lean against a pew splintered by termites and press my palm to the fresh blood seeping through my shirt once again.
Damn thing won’t stay shut. There’s probably a lesson in that, but I’m too stubborn to learn it.
Ariel and Jasmine settle into a pew in the back row, their heads bowed together as they whisper back and forth. I can’t stop looking over at her again and again, even though her face hardens every time she catches me watching.
It’s just that seeing her like this, pregnant with my children… Fucking hell.
My children. The phrase still feels foreign on my tongue, like trying to speak a language I’ve only heard in dreams.
Kosti spreads the map he took from the car’s glove compartment out on the altar. I join him at his shoulder as we scrutinize the twisting, squiggling highways of Europe.
His finger points at where we started, just north of the Spanish Pyrenees on the western coast of France. He drags it east, zigzagging through all the back roads we took, through the pass in the Alps that spat us out into northern Italy.
“Our options are scarce,” he says with a grimace. “You know where they’ll be.”
“At every fucking airport between here and Asia. Yes, I’m aware.”
“And even if we could find a plane?—”
Our eyes shift in unison to Ariel. “She can’t.”
Jasmine told us enough about Ariel’s blood pressure and what the doctor said about not flying to alter our plans. Ariel might still want to risk it—but I sure as fuck don’t. Those are my children in there. I intend to keep both them and their mother safe.
She’s glowing blue in the gloom, caught in a ray of moonlight arcing through the stained glass. Her belly looks like a globe resting on its axis. A whole world I never knew existed.
The women see us looking at them and frown. Jasmine helps Ariel rise and they shuffle over. “We can’t keep driving forever,” says Jasmine. “It’s not good for her.”
“We won’t.” I glance at Kosti, who knuckles at his tired eyes. When he looks back at me, he nods slightly.
“There’s a villa,” I begin to explain. “Deep in the Tuscan countryside.”
“It’s stocked,” Kosti adds. “Solar generator. Well water. Enough meat in the deep freezer to last us until Judgment Day.”
Jasmine frowns. “And we stay there until…?”
“Until it’s safe to do otherwise.”
“What a plan that is!” Ariel’s laugh couldn’t be more bitter. “We’re just all supposed to play house in the middle of nowhere like some happy family until what—until Dragan just gives up?”
“Until the babies come and you can make your own decisions safely,” I growl.
“My due date is ten weeks away!” Ariel’s hands curl protectively around her belly. “You expect me to stay trapped in some villa with you for ten weeks ? Have you lost your mind?” She turns and gawks at Kosti and Jasmine. “He has, right? He’s insane. That cannot be the plan.”
“Would you prefer Dragan find you?” I snarl. “This isn’t about what any of us want. It’s about keeping you—all of you—alive.”
“You keep acting like you’re in charge, when you’re literally the one who?—”
Jasmine steps between us, hands raised like she’s directing traffic at the gates of purgatory. “It’s alright, Ari. We can?—”
The chapel doors burst open as the midnight breeze picks up. Out of nowhere, wind howls through the nave, snuffing the candle Kosti lit. In the sudden dark, I see it—the way Ariel’s hands instinctively cradle her stomach, the tremor she thinks she’s hidden.
She’s terrified.
I step into the blade of moonlight cutting through the rubble. She’ll hate me for forcing her down this path, but what choice do I have? Every other road leads to ruin. So let her hate me.
At least she’ll be alive to do it.
“You’ll stay at the villa until the babies are born. I’ll handle Dragan.”
Ariel looks me up and down and snorts. “You look like you couldn’t handle a grocery list right now.”
Jasmine touches her arm. “He’s right, Ari. With your blood pressure, and the twins… We have to think through this.”
“I’ve had enough of men deciding what’s right for me.” Her face screws up into a furious scowl before smoothing out into exhausted resignation. “But fuck it, fine. I’m outnumbered on this one and I clearly don’t have a choice. I’ll say this, though: the second these babies are born and I’m cleared to travel, we’re gone.”
It’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie. We both feel in the marrow of our bones that, once those two little lives join our world, nothing will ever be the same.
But I don’t even know how to say those words out loud. And Ariel surely has no intentions of saying them, either. With one last skewering glare at me, she storms out, sundress snapping like a battle flag in the wind.
Kosti re-lights the Virgin’s candle, then ignites a cigarette off that flame. “She’ll come around.”
“Will she?” I watch through the broken window as Ariel paces the overgrown graveyard, muttering under her breath.
I’m not so sure.