10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

25. Sasha

25

SASHA

The first glass of grappa goes down easy. The second, too. By the third, I’m almost starting to breathe again.

The taverna owner pours more amber poison into my glass without asking. Wise choice on his part. He obviously knows better than to interrupt a wolf chewing off its own leg.

The universe today seems intent on filing my fangs and telling me to have at it, though. Devour yourself. Why not? You’ve spent your whole life training to do exactly that. Between the debacle in the cellar, that cursed baby clothes boutique in Siena, and the sight I saw when I first walked into this little bar, I’ve got plenty of appetite for self-destruction.

I was barely a step inside the door when I felt a presence sweep past me from behind, scarcely knee-high. Looking down, I saw a little girl in a white cotton dress, dirty and grass-stained at the hem from playing outside. She beelined straight for a man in a corner booth who was laughing with his friends.

As soon as the man saw the little girl, he set down his drink and dropped to one knee. She hit his open arms with a delighted squeal as he peppered her with kiss after kiss.

A woman slipped in in the wake of the little girl, laughing just like them, carrying a rosy-cheeked babe in her arms. She went over to kiss her husband and daughter.

It was the light in their eyes that did me in. They were just so fucking happy to see each other. The husband was suntanned and sweaty from a long day’s work and the wife smelled like flour and laundry. I could see their entire life at a glance, in a single whiff.

Simple. Full. Satisfied.

They’re gone now. But across the room, the ghost of that family still lingers—the father’s booming laugh, the toddler’s sticky fingers smearing gelato on the checkered tablecloth, the little girl shyly asking her daddy for a sip of his wine.

The light in their eyes. The light in their fucking eyes.

I tip my glass back until the last drop hits my tongue. It tastes like kerosene. “ Yob tvoyu mat, ” I snarl at the empty chair beside me. The wood creaks like it’s judging.

The owner raises a bushy eyebrow. “ Problemi con l’amore? ”

I snort. L’amore ? No, this is not l’amore . L’amore is for men who don’t have blood under their fingernails.

I hold my glass out and grunt for him to refill.

I look up as he does. The mirror behind the bar shows every fucking mistake I’ve ever made. Unshaven jaw. Bloodshot eyes. The scar at my throat puckered and raw—Yakov’s final gift. And it just keeps on giving, doesn’t it?

I throw back most of the refill, then turn my eyes down to the dregs of the blonde liquid swirling in my cup. Is this cup four? Five? I’ve lost count. Numbers go blurry at the edges while I sit here and pity myself.

But when I glance up in the mirror again, it’s not just my own miserable face I see.

It’s hers, too.

Ariel stands framed in dying light, her hair an auburn wildfire against dusty glass. My fist tightens around the cup. Blink. She’ll disappear. Another grappa-fueled hallucination. If you don’t blink, you know what’s going to make you happy. She’s going to slide onto the stool next to yours, all fire and fury and that infuriating vanilla-peach shampoo. She’ll make you say it out loud—that you want the happy lie. The domestic farce. The right to come home to someone who doesn’t flinch when you touch them.

I blink.

I blink hard.

She doesn’t disappear.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell her without turning around.

“And you shouldn’t drink alone.” The stool beside me groans as she sits. Her knee bumps mine. Every muscle in my body tightens.

“Go back to the villa, Ariel.”

“Or what? You’ll brood harder? Keep this up and you’re gonna pull a muscle. And honestly, you’re in rough enough shape as it is.”

She isn’t wrong. Not by a long shot. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when this marriage was just about power, about securing Leander’s alliance. Now, look at me—getting drunk in an Italian taverna because I can’t handle seeing tiny fucking baby shoes in a window display.

She shifts on the stool, trying to get comfortable. Her elbow bumps the bar as she overbalances. My hand twitches with the instinct to steady her, but I force it to stay flat against the wooden counter. She doesn’t want my help. She made that much perfectly clear when she suggested we pretend the cellar never happened.

The dress she’s wearing is new. Something flowing and cream-colored that makes her look softer than she truly is. More vulnerable. The neckline dips just low enough to show the mark I left on her collarbone last night, and beneath that, the fabric stretches taut over her belly. My fingers ache with the memory of her skin.

Feeling her pregnant between us… Fuck, that changed things. That changed so many things that I’m trying to find answers at the bottom of a glass now.

“ Qualcosa da bere? ” the owner asks her.

“Just water,” she answers. Then, catching my sideways glance: “Though I’d kill for one of what he’s having.”

I snort. “You’re not a killer.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Ariel bites back a smile. “I killed your liver’s hopes and dreams just by showing up here, didn’t I?”

“You want my liver?” I rasp, tracing the glass rim. “Take it. Take whatever the fuck you want.”

She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. The mirror behind the bar shows a gruesome little trio—her haloed in taverna lamplight and pitying me; me hunched like a gargoyle and pitying myself; and, inside of her, a pair of lives that’ll be glad to have me as their father.

Call that t wo truths and a lie.

“Maybe not that,” she says. “I get the feeling you’re putting that poor organ through its paces tonight.” She pauses, then says, “I really am jealous, though. It’d be nice to have a sip of something. Just to take the edge off. Quiet things down.”

“If only it worked like that. I’m five deep and the shit in my head is louder than ever.”

“Well,” she sighs as the bartender slides a bottle of sparkling water to her, “maybe this will do the trick then.”

“You want a medal?” I mutter. “A plaque? ‘Here Lies Ariel Ward’s Self-Restraint’?”

Her laugh is a brittle thing. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Yes.” I swirl the grappa. “Thus the drinking.”

The silence stretches, strained as barbed wire. I don’t look at her. Can’t. If I do, I’ll see the dress, the swell of our children beneath it, the way her throat moves when she swallows. I’ll break all over again.

Her fingers drag through the damp ring my glass left on the bar. “You left before I could say?—”

“Don’t.”

“—thank you.”

I freeze.

“For taking me to Siena,” she says softly. “And also, for… caring enough to fight me on it.”

I throw back more of the drink. “It’s not care; it’s logistics. Healthy mother, healthy heirs. Simple math.”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit, Sasha.” Her eye-roll is scathing. But then she sighs and some of the tension goes whistling out of her. “There is some math to it, though. I’ve been… thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“About our situation.”

I arch a brow, though I still refuse to turn to face her. Her knee presses into my thigh, warm and deliberate. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. The grappa turns to acid in my gut as her fingers come to rest on my forearm.

“We’re adults,” she continues, voice pitched low. “We want each other. Why complicate it with feelings? That’s math, right? Subtract out the feelings. Add in the sex.”

Maybe I’ve had too much to drink after all. “You think fucking will fix us?”

“I think it’ll make the next ten weeks bearable, if nothing else.”

“What happened to hating me and everything I’ve ever done?”

“Hate’s a strong word,” she demurs.

“So is love. But we’ve already proven how well that one works out.” Her hand is still touching my arm. Five little points of contact that feel like fishhooks in my skin. I shake my head and pull away. “You’re either delusional or fucking with me. This can only end in disaster, Ariel. It can’t be what you want.”

“I want release.” Her eyes burn, bright and level. “You want a distraction. Seems fair.”

My scar tingles. “And the babies?”

“—are currently the size of eggplants and very uninterested in our sex lives.” She leans in, peach-vanilla shampoo drowning out the grappa stench.

Ariel has one thing down cold: The math is simple. Ten weeks of fucking versus fifty years of longing for what once was. Ten weeks of her nails down my back versus a lifetime of cold sheets and colder what-ifs.

I drain the glass and turn to seize her by the wrist, just shy of bruising, so she knows this isn’t a joke.

“If we’re going to play with fire, we need rules,” I growl. “No feelings. No sleeping over. No…” My thumb passes over the hickey I left last night. “… marks. ”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Deal.”

“And when it’s done…”

“We’re done.” She nods. “Scout’s honor. It’s a hate-fuck for convenience’s sake. It’ll never be anything more than that.”

The owner chooses that exact moment to shuffle back in from his smoke break outside, clearing his throat. “ Signori , we are?—”

A wad of my euros smacks his chest. He fumbles the catch, blinking at the bills fluttering down to his sawdust floors.

“Get out,” I bark.

It does not require translation.

He scurries away, still clutching my money. The door’s rusted bolt screeches when I slam it home behind him. Windows next—every latch twisted until my palm bleeds. Behind me, Ariel’s breath stutters.

When the outside world is barred away from us, I pivot to face her.

She’s all soft edges wrapped in cream silk, the dress clinging to every cursed curve I’ve tried to evict from my mind. Lamplight gilds the mane of her hair, loose curls spilling over her shoulders. That swollen belly mocks me. Her lips part on a frantic breath, glossy and bitten-red, and Christ, I want to ruin them all over again.

Every line of her screams mine —the way her hips tilt toward me, the flush creeping below her neckline. She’s a loaded gun in a lace-trimmed holster, safety off, and I’m done pretending I wasn’t born to pull the trigger.

I cross to her in three huge strides.

Her back hits the bar hard enough to rattle glasses. I cage her in, forearms braced on polished oak. The wood presses rigid lines into her thighs where my hips slot against hers.

Through thin cotton, her heart hammers like drums against my chest. Mine answers in kind. Her throat bobs when I drag my nose along her jaw.

It’s permission.

Collapse.

Surrender.

The first button pops easy. Two, three, and four reveal inches of skin at a time as I remember just how much I fucking missed this.

She gasps. Rolls her hips. “Sasha?—”

“Say it.” My thumb rasps over her nipple. “Why we’re here.”

Her head thunks against a liquor shelf. “Sex. Just… sex.”

“Just sex,” I echo, biting the lie into her mouth.

Through the streaked window, Tuscan night falls. My hand skims her belly—our shared little sin—as I hike her leg around my waist.

No feelings. Just friction. Just the chokehold of her thighs. Just the sob she swallows when I finally— finally —sheathe myself in her heat.