10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

14. Ariel

14

ARIEL

Day one in Tuscan purgatory, and I’ve found a new nemesis.

A rooster is crowing like it’s personally offended by the concept of sleep. If I was going by volume alone, I’d guess that the feathered little bastard was parked right outside my window. Lucky for him that he’s not, because otherwise, I’d be strongly considering avian homicide.

I clamp a pillow to my head like earmuffs and try to go back to sleep. I’d been in the middle of a really nice dream about floating on a sea of icing in a rowboat made out of cinnamon rolls. If I can just find my way back there, then maybe?—

BOOMBOOMBOOM.

Someone’s knocking on the door like a freaking SWAT team. I wonder momentarily if it’s the rooster.

“What do you want, you cockadoodle-douche bag?”

“Get dressed.” Sasha’s voice, rougher than usual this early. “We’re going out.”

I squint at my phone. “It’s six in the morning.”

“Exactly. The best produce goes early.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about, Sasha?” I crack open an eye to look at him.

Big mistake. He’s leaning against my door frame in a black henley. His hair is damp like he just showered, and the forearms crossed in front of his chest are brawny and beautiful.

If roosters can be offended by sleep, then I decide I’m allowed to be offended by how good-looking he is. It’s not fair, dammit! He was up damn near half the night circling the property like a cotton-candy-drunk toddler buckled onto a carousel. The audacity to waltz in here like he stepped right off a GQ cover is insulting.

Especially because I know I look like death warmed over. My mouth is sticky with the sleep grodies and the bags beneath my eyes are puffy as hell.

He holds out a thermos. “Peppermint tea.”

I blink. “Are you poisoning me?”

“If I wanted you dead, I’d use something a lot more efficient than Lipton.”

I hesitate. But peppermint tea really does sound nice. So I take it from him and try one tentative sip.

“Good,” Sasha approves with a nod. “Now, get up. We leave in five.”

“You still haven’t explained where we’re going.”

“There’s a farmer’s market in Roccastrada. You need food that doesn’t come from a can.”

“I need sleep. ”

“You need folate. Iron.” His gaze drops to my stomach. “Protein that isn’t expired.”

I roll my eyes. “Please, tell me more about what I need, since you are such an expert on all things pregnancy.”

Sasha pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s already getting a headache. “Don’t make this hard, Ariel. Jasmine told me that your doctors said?—”

“I know what they said,” I interrupt with acid in my tone. “No unpasteurized cheese. No cured meats. Nothing that hasn’t been rinsed in holy water blessed by the Pope himself.” I jerk out of bed and plop myself in front of him. “Do you know why I know those things, Sasha? Because I’m the one carrying these babies. I’m the one who’s had to go to the doctors’ appointments, and watch my diet, and take all my minerals and supplements, and this and that and the other thing. You haven’t had to do any of that. And guess what? I was fine doing it on my own. So don’t act like you’re the one doing me a favor. You’re not.”

For a moment, Sasha’s face darkens, and I’m sure I’m going to get more of his usual bark.

Then it softens. Something else steals over him. “You’re right,” he concedes. “You have been doing this on your own. I haven’t been there.” His throat bobs with a swallow. “But I’m here now, and for as long as that lasts, I want to do right by you, Ariel. So let me. Let me try, at least.”

Oh, this manipulative asshole. Leave it to Sasha Ozerov to pull out the pity card when my defenses are already lowered by the pre-dawn blahs. Leave it to him to know that it would work.

Because it does.

As much as I want to snark back in his face, I can’t. He looks like he means what he’s saying. Authenticity—the greatest con of them all.

“Fine,” I mutter. “Give me ten minutes. I don’t want to scare any farmers away with my morning breath.”

When I get my hair into some semblance of order and make it downstairs, Sasha is waiting with a pair of bicycles leaning against the villa’s stucco walls.

I pause on the top step and squint at him. “Is this supposed to be my Eat, Pray, Love moment?”

He looks back at me with utter blankness. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“ Eat, Pray, Love? Like, the movie? Or, I mean, I guess it was a book first. But, like, Julia Roberts? She’s— My God, you really have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re a cyborg, I swear.”

He holds out a bike handle to me. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Do you know how to ride?”

“Yes, asshole, I know how to ride a bike.” I snatch it from him, throw one leg over—and promptly start to tip in the wrong direction.

But Sasha is there. He lunges forward to steady me with a hand on each hip before I face-plant in the dirt. His face hangs in my vision for a moment, contemplative, calm, with just the tiniest hint of a wry smile in the corner of his mouth.

“Are you sure?” he asks, amused.

My face burns. “There was a… pothole.”

He nods. “Right. Watch out for those. They come out of nowhere sometimes. In your case, quite literally.”

He keeps his hands on my waist for a second longer. I forgot over the last six months how easily his fingers span me. There’s more of me now to cover, as our babies grow inside me, but his palms still spread almost from hip to hip. I feel safe, nestled inside his grasp.

“You look beautiful, ptichka,” he murmurs.

Then he releases me. My cheeks are still hot as I watch him mount his bicycle and start to pedal. He gets maybe a hundred yards away, just beyond the fence line, before his voice floats back to where I’m still standing in place.

“Put some effort into it!” he calls. “Last one there gets the rotten eggplant.”

I swear he even laughs.

Gritting my teeth, I push off and get going again.

The ride paces peacefully enough. I keep an eye out for the rooster, just in case I get an opportunity to take him out while he’s crossing the road. But mostly, it’s rolling hills topped with vineyards and olive tree orchards, with an endless sky overhead. Tuscany is green and brown and blue in every direction. I couldn’t point us out on a map if my life depended on it, but I do know that it’s beautiful.

We coast down a long, slow incline and into a village clustered together at the foot of a hill. More traffic joins us as we get closer—farmers towing carts of fruits and vegetables behind unamused donkeys, a few other locals on bikes and foot. Occasionally, a car rumbles past and kicks up little whirls of red dust.

In the center of the village—Rocka-something, Sasha called it—are rows of stalls selling all kinds of things. Bread and cheese, jarred jams, dried meat hanging from twine. Sasha parks his bike behind a trio of nonnas gossiping in flowing Italian and waits for me to do the same.

“I was just starting to get the hang of French,” I say mournfully. “Back to square one, I guess.”

“ Ritorno al punto di partenza, ” agrees Sasha in a flawless accent.

I whirl around to scowl at him. “Do you seriously—? No, actually, don’t even tell me. My ego can’t handle it if you really do speak Italian.”

Face completely straight, he just shrugs. “Then I won’t say a word.”

He steps aside and gestures for me to lead the way. With a sigh, I do, though his hand comes to a rest on my lower back and I let it stay there.

The market erupts around us in a carnival of smells: sun-ripened tomatoes and crusty bread, lavender sachets fighting with pungent wheels of parmigiano. Old men in newsboy caps argue over artichokes while tanned women pinch peaches and talk right over one another.

We wander from tent to tent for a while. I let my cravings guide me, and Sasha is mostly content to let me pick where we go. He stays plastered to me like a shadow, but a quiet one.

Little by little, his arms fill up with the things I pick. Fresh figs. Sun-warmed tomatoes. Clusters of bright green herbs.

At a cheese stand, the vendor’s wife coos over my belly. I don’t understand the words, but her warm smile needs no translation. She presses samples into my hands—soft cheese, hard cheese, cheese I’ve never seen before.

“ Non posso ,” I try to refuse, but she waves me off.

“She says it’s good for the babies,” Sasha translates.

I sag and accept it. “Grazie .”

The woman beams, winks, and walks off.

“Alright, fine, I’ll bite: when did you learn Italian?”

Sasha chuckles. “The Ardizzone family and I had some… disagreements over some territory in Brooklyn a few years ago. I figured it was best to meet them at their level.”

“‘Disagreements’? I know what that’s code for.”

“I was expanding market opportunities through aggressive negotiations. They objected to my tactics.”

I snort and nibble at a fig. “That’s what we’re calling it now?”

His eyes crinkle at the corners. For a moment, he looks like my Sasha—the one who kissed me in library stacks and bought me an entire tabloid just to protect my reputation. Then his face smooths back into its usual mask.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as we move to the next stall. “With the pregnancy?”

I consider lying, but what’s the point? “Tired. Sore. The doctor in France said my blood pressure’s high, but…” I shrug. “Nothing too concerning yet.”

He nods, but the frown remains in place. “It’s getting warmer. Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

“Sasha, seriously, I’m?—”

But he’s already dragging me down an alley, the bag of groceries swinging at his side.

With a weary exhale, I let him.

We take a few twists and turns until the cobbled street spits us out into the courtyard of a chapel. Like the one we stopped at just over the border from France, this one is missing most of its pieces. One whole wall has collapsed, but the birds don’t seem to mind at all. They twitter around the exposed wooden ribs of the structure, flitting from nest to nest and singing the whole time.

He helps me into a seat and settles down next to me. Away from the hubbub of the market, quiet is king. After a while, though, Sasha twists so we’re face to face.

“Marry me.”

The words don’t compute at first. Then: “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Yes,” he rumbles. “Every day since you left.”

I scoot back. Rotting pew creaks under my weight. “Did Dragan hit you in the head and give you amnesia? Did you forget literally every single thing that happened?”

“I haven’t forgotten a single thing, Ariel.” His voice and face are scarily solemn. “I wanted to tell you. About Jasmine. Leander. All of it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I didn’t. Because I’m a selfish bastard who wanted to hold onto you for longer than I deserved. I thought keeping you in the dark would let me have that. But I was wrong, Ariel. Now, the universe has gifted me a chance to fix my mistakes. I want to. I want to fix them so fucking badly.” His eyes sear into me. “Can I? For us? For them? ”

I’m dumbstruck. It wouldn’t be right to say I wished for this—most of the time, I’ve spent my waking hours cursing Sasha’s name and wishing I’d never met him at all.

But I’ve dreamed about it. To see his eyes again, burning not with fury but with apology. I didn’t know—and I still don’t—how he could ever mend the gap he tore open between us. I wanted him to try, though. I dreamed he might.

So what do I do about it now that it’s here? Forgive and forget are three very simple words.

They’re insane words, though. They’re impossible.

“No, Sasha, you can’t.” I press my shaking hands to my belly to ground and comfort me. “These babies aren’t your redemption arc.”

For a heartbeat, I think he’ll kiss me. Crush the arguments between our tangled tongues.

Instead, he accepts what I said with a nod. “Okay. But I won’t quit on this, Ariel. I won’t quit on us. I won’t quit on them.”

The chapel breathes with the ghosts of better people. But the silence that was so nice a minute ago is killing me now, so I stand and start the long walk back to the bicycles.

Sasha follows me, though he stays at a distance. He does the same as we ride home. Close enough for me to feel him, to know he’s always with me. Far enough for him to know that some things can’t be undone.

I steal glances at him whenever we round a bend. My jaw stays clenched against hope, against fear, against the devastating weight of maybe .

Not yes . Never yes . But…

Maybe.