10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

11. Sasha

11

SASHA

The gravel crunches beneath our tires like broken bones. I kill the engine and stare up at the villa through the dusty windshield.

It’s exactly as Kosti described: a pigeon-shit-stained tomb, a stucco sarcophagus, crouching in the Tuscan hills like a stone gargoyle with its wings clipped. Vines strangle the stone walls and shutters dangle by single nails.

Under different circumstances, it might be idyllic.

Right now, it just looks like a prison.

“Home sweet home,” Kosti announces, popping his door open. The smell of rosemary and damp stone invades the car.

Ariel doesn’t move. Six months pregnant and she still looks like she could cut my throat with that jawline. I get the feeling she wouldn’t mind trying to do exactly that.

I step out into the oppressive heat. Cicadas scream in the olive groves. My wound pulses in time with their shrieks—a fresh blossom of pain with every heartbeat. I probably ought to be in a hospital. Instead, I’ve been smuggling a pregnant woman and her fugitive sister across Europe in a car that smells like fear, sweat, and blood.

My father would’ve laughed at the weakness.

If you can stand, you’re not broken, Yakov’s ghost whispers through the churning heat. And yet you waver? Pathetic.

Ariel’s car door creaks open. She moves like tectonic plates shifting—slow, inevitable, earthshaking. Her sundress strains across the curve of her belly. Our eyes meet through the dust haze. I see the twins in that look—twenty pounds of future squirming between us, binding us tighter than any ten-day vow ever could.

“Don’t,” she says when I reach for her bag. “I’m pregnant, not crippled.”

Kosti shoulders past with two suitcases in hand. “If you two are going to stand out here and bicker, I’m going to take the best bedroom for myself.”

Ariel looks at me. Scowls. Then drops her bag at my feet and stomps her way inside.

The villa’s interior is rich with mildew. Sunlight slants through cracked shutters, illuminating dust motes dancing above a threadbare rug in the living room. Jasmine drifts toward the stone fireplace, trailing fingers across the mantel. Her smile fades when they come away black with soot.

“Four bedrooms upstairs.” Kosti drops the luggage with a thud.

Ariel plants herself in the arched doorway. “Which one’s furthest from his?”

“Ari—” Jasmine starts.

Kosti rubs his neck. “End of the hall. Rose wallpaper. Watch for hornets’ nests, koukla, okay? It’s been a while since this place had guests.”

She’s halfway up the crumbling staircase before he even finishes speaking. Each step makes the wood groan. We listen in silence until a door slams hard enough to shake more dust from the rafters.

Jasmine exhales through her nose. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Don’t waste your breath.” I drag a hand through sweat-damp hair. The motion pulls at my stitches with a painful twang. “Let her stew. It’s what she wants.”

“You’re both impossible.” She disappears upstairs, leaving Kosti and me standing awkwardly.

He lights a cigarette off the stove’s gas burner. “Ten weeks, neania . Think you’ll make it?”

That’s the question of the year. Every protective instinct in my body screams to follow her, to ease her burden, to prepare for the arrivals that will change everything.

You just watched the mother of your children go wheezing up the stairs with a hand braced against her lower back so gravity and exhaustion didn’t drag her down onto the fucking floorboards, you miserable bastard. So what if she tells you to leave her alone? So what if she despises you? Since when do you let that dictate your actions?

But the gulf between us is huge and growing, and try as I might, Ariel won’t let me do the right thing. I tell myself it’s better this way. She doesn’t want my help—and anyway, Dragan demands my full attention. I should be plotting, scheming, preparing for war.

Instead, I find myself wondering about cribs and blankets, imagining tiny fingers wrapped around mine.

I look around to see Kosti gazing at me thoughtfully as he puffs on his cigarette.

“Will I make it?” I repeat. “It doesn’t seem to me like I have a choice.” Then I turn and stride toward the door.

I immerse myself in all the things that need doing—checking the perimeter, inventorying supplies, flicking the generator to life to check that it’s operational.

It’s a meditation of sorts. If nothing else, it’s easier than dealing with Ariel. Circuitry doesn’t throw temper tantrums. Wells don’t look at you like you’re the worst thing that ever happened to them. So long as I can focus on those things, the world takes on a manageable shape.

It’s when I run out of tasks that shit takes a turn for the worse. As I sit in the kitchen late into the night and fiddle with an ancient clock that doesn’t actually need repair, I start remembering things I haven’t remembered in months.

Barbed wire biting into my throat as Yakov pulled tighter. “Fight, you coward! Fucking fight it! Show me you’re a man!”

Would you do the same? I press two fingers to the migraine thudding in my temples. If the twins are soft? If they cry? If they ? —

A floorboard squeaks. Ariel stands in the doorway, backlit by moonglow. Her hands cradle the underside of her belly.

“Your children don’t like sleeping any more than you do, apparently,” she says.

I look up. Framed like this, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a pair of faded pajamas she must’ve scavenged from the dresser, she looks like a fragment of a dream I don’t deserve to have.

“Good,” I growl, turning away. “Sleep is when your enemies catch you with your guard down.”

“Oh, Jesus. Planning their induction into the Bratva already?”

I rotate a gear between my fingers. “They’ll need Bratva training if they inherit your sense of direction.”

“Fuck y— Ow. ”

I’m on my feet before I even begin the intention of moving. Ariel braces herself against my arms, face screwed up with pain.

“Are you?—?”

“I’m fine,” she interrupts. “They just get rowdy when you’re around. Rowdier than usual, I should say.”

Her breath hitches, then eases as the pang goes away. My fingers twitch with the need to feel it. To catch that movement against my palm, just once.

The ache spreads into parts of me I’ve never felt before. “Do they… have names?”

Her arms cross over the swell. Defensive. Always defensive with me. “Jasmine keeps suggesting things. I haven’t picked anything yet.”

My throat tightens. “Why not?”

“I’m waiting.”

“For?”

“A sign they won’t inherit their father’s talent for destruction, among other things.”

The knife twists deeper. “Ariel, if I could?—”

“Sasha, you have to stop.” She steps back, shadows swallowing her whole. “I just really don’t have the energy for any more serious conversations tonight.”

I open my mouth to argue, then stop and let it fall slack instead. “Alright. Go get some sleep.”

She stills. “Why do you even care? You’re taking care of us—yes, fine, I can at least understand that. But why do you… Why do you keep trying to talk to me?”

The truth sits heavy in my mouth. Because if you collapse, I’ll use my last breath to carry you. Because these ten weeks are all I get. Because I’ve memorized the exact shade of green your eyes turn before you cry, and I’d like to never, ever see that shade again.

“Enlightened self-interest,” I say instead. “Can’t fight Dragan if I’m stuck babysitting.”

Ariel laughs miserably and shakes her head. “There’s the bastard I remember.” She turns, sighs, and starts the slow trek up the stairs.

I could follow her. Maybe we could have a real conversation, an honest one, one where we stop hiding our bullshit and let the real truth come out, even if it’s ugly.

Or, if not that, then maybe I could get some sleep of my own. I’m running this broken body with nothing but fumes, and if I keep pushing it, sooner or later, everything will fail on me.

Instead, I make for the front door to do another lap around the perimeter. Checking for danger in every shadow.

In the darkness, I can almost convince myself that this temporary peace will be enough. That I can be content with just keeping them safe, with being a shadow at the edges of their lives.

Almost.

But as night thickens and the villa grows quiet, I hear one noise that’s worse than anything my enemies could ever produce: the soft sound of Ariel crying in her room. My hands knot into fists at my sides, nails biting into palms.

Ten weeks until I have to let them go.

Ten weeks to remember why I should.