10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

31. Sasha

31

SASHA

It’s storming again.

Lightning flickers through the villa’s warped windows as Zoya’s fingers dig into the knot beneath my shoulder blade. My jaw clenches, but I don’t make a sound.

She’d love that. I can just picture how wide she’d grin if she made me grunt in agony. But I’m as stubborn as she says I am. Won’t give her the satisfaction.

The massage table creaks as she shifts her weight, moving to a particularly tender spot where Dragan’s bullet tore through muscle. Rain starts to patter against the glass, marking time with each stab of pain.

The room reeks of her homemade liniment, all camphor stinging my nostrils. “Christ, malchik . You’re even more of a mess than I thought you were.”

Her fingers find the bullet wound and test it. Puckered flesh remembers how it felt—steel chewing through meat, concrete rising up to kiss my skull. Fuck, that alley was so cold.

I grind my molars as her palm presses down, checking the give.

“Still favors the left,” she tsks. “Gonna walk crooked if you don’t?—”

“Enough, Zoya.”

“ Ebat’ , you always were a shit patient.” But her hands gentles on the next pass. We both stare at the window where rain blurs the forest into green smears.

The back door creaks open downstairs—Ariel’s laughter tangling with Jasmine’s as they both run in from where they’ve been gardening in the rain. My pulse jumps. Zoya’s smirk digs fresh furrows into her face.

“There,” she says finally, patting my unmarked shoulder. “That should help with the stiffness. Though God knows you’ll just undo all my work the next time you sneak into that girl’s room at night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ Ach, liar, liar, Sashenka. The whole villa has ears, you know.” Zoya sits on the foot of the makeshift massage tables. “These old walls, they talk. Especially at three in the morning.”

I focus on the rain against the window and say nothing.

“Not that it matters to an old woman like me. You’re the one doing the walk of shame every sunrise.” She taps a wrinkled finger at her lips. “Though I suppose shame requires actually feeling something.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?” I grit out. “Weather? Taxes? Nothing at all?”

She slaps my foot . “ You’re worse than your father at talking about feelings.”

“I am nothing like him.”

“No? I see a few similarities . He also thought feelings made him weak. That love was a luxury he couldn’t afford.”

Pain lances through me, but it’s not from the wound. “This isn’t about?—”

“Everything is about that. Every wall you build, every heart you push away.” Her voice softens. “You think I don’t see how you look at her? At her belly?”

The storm crashes closer, thunder shaking the villa’s bones. Or maybe that’s just me.

“What if I become him?” The Russian slips out before I can stop it, barely louder than the rain. “What if I hurt them like he hurt us?”

Zoya’s hands are still on my back. For a long moment, there’s only the sound of the storm and my ragged breathing. “The fact that you’re asking that question,” she says finally, “means you never will.”

Quarter to four in the morning finds me doing the same walk I’ve done every night for weeks now. I know all the creaking spots in the floorboards, how to jump from side to side to avoid making a peep. Ariel’s door swings inward silently. I’m halfway to her bed, already hard, when?—

The lamp clicks on.

Golden light spills across Ariel’s face, catching the sheen of tears before she can wipe them away.

I freeze halfway there. “I’ll go.”

“No!” Her hand darts out, fingers hooking into my belt loop. “Stay. Please.”

Please. She’s never said please.

I study the anchoring grip on my jeans. Smell her shampoo clinging to the bedsheets. Hear the hum of the villa settling around us—Jasmine’s soft snores down the hall, Belle’s wind chime clinking in the storm.

Traitorous things, all of them. Witnesses to this unraveling.

“I know what you’re afraid of,” she whispers. “I heard you talking to Zoya.”

My first thought is to get the fuck out. My second and third thoughts are more of the same.

But the longer I stay there and look at Ariel’s face—open, honest, completely free of judgment—the more I feel little clock gears in my face winding down. A cuckoo bird of the heart chirping that now is the time for this kind of thing.

She sits up, sheets pooling around her waist. The swell of her belly catches the lamplight.

“How do you do it?” I ask hoarsely. “How do you stay… good, after everything your father did to you?”

She lets out a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I am good. Sometimes, I wake up terrified that I’ll look in the mirror and see him looking back.” Her free hand curves over her stomach. “That these babies will grow up seeing the same monster in me that I saw in him.”

“You could never be?—”

“That’s my point, Sasha. Neither could you.”

The silence stretches between us, filled with all the things we never say. All the fears we pretend don’t exist in the dark.

“I’m just as scared as you are, you know,” she says. “They already look like us. Your nose. My chin. What if they get your eyes, too? Or my stubbornness? Or our stupid, reckless grief?” She turns her face up to me. “Or worst of all… What if they’re perfect, Sasha? What if they’re so utterly, completely perfect that it takes your breath away just to look at them—and then we ruin them anyway?”

The lamp flickers as power dies from the storm outside. Shadows dance across the ultrasound taped to Ariel’s mirror—two blurry shapes curled like commas.

Our mistakes. Our miracles.

“Ariel—”

“It’s okay.” She presses a finger to my lips. “I’m not really asking. I know you don’t have the answers. Just… stay tonight. No sex. No jokes. Just… stay.”

Her breath steadies first. Soft. Even. Trusting.

Idiot woman. You don’t know what you’re asking me.

But when she tugs me toward the bed, I follow.