10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

53. Sasha

53

SASHA

The ruined church in Roccastrada stabs up from the mud like a rotten fang against the gaping maw of the storm-black sky. Rain pelts my face as I take my feet off the bike pedals, letting momentum carry me the last few yards through squelching, ankle-deep mud.

Of course it’s here. When the coordinates from Kosti’s phone dropped a pin on the map at this spot, I could only laugh out loud.

Almost ten weeks ago, Ariel and I sat in the pew here and I asked her to marry me.

These babies aren’t your redemption arc, she told me then.

She was right. They’re not. Jasmine is not. She is not.

But does that mean I cannot be redeemed?

Fuck if I know. It’s not like my mind is clear enough to sort through things like that right now. I’m a half-drowned rat. The ride here was a wet, frigid hell and my hands still have Ariel’s blood caked under the fingernails—but I could swear I catch the milk-sweet scent of our children still clinging to my clothes.

I catch something else, too, as I leap off the bike and abandon it in the courtyard: Jasmine, slipping through the doors of the church as they loll wide like black tongues.

Feliks catches up to me and dumps his bike next to mine. “Sash?—”

But I’m already chasing after Jasmine. I call her name, but she can’t hear me over the storm. She disappears inside.

Fuck.

The place is dying to give up and collapse in on itself. Frescoes loom eerily in the lightning flash—saints with their eyes clawed out. The ivy-choked facade is more crack than not, with gaping holes where stained glass windows once filtered light into sacred spaces. Now, those holes just let the storm howl through like a demon’s choir.

I’m half a step in the doors, hot on Jasmine’s tracks, when I freeze.

“—should’ve stayed buried, kurvo .”

I’m still housed in enough shadow to stay out of sight. But halfway down the aisle stands Jasmine.

On the altar is Dragan Vukovic.

Kosti is at his side, looking more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him before.

Jasmine cuts a proud figure in the gloomy, rain-drenched dark. Feliks’s gun shines bright in her hand, reflecting the sputtering firelight from the sconces that Dragan has lit.

I want to throw myself between her and them, but we’re all spread too far. Dragan would bury a bullet in my skull before I even got halfway there.

So I start to edge around the perimeter in search of a better angle. It’s slow-going, though, and with this much shattered glass and debris underfoot, one wrong step could tell them I’m here. Every step must be careful.

“You don’t get to call me that,” she calls out.

Dragan chuckles. “ Kurvo. Kukavico. Daughter of a fucking corpse.”

She shakes her head, wet hair slinging back and forth. “Do you feel good when you say those things? Do you feel like a man when you curse at me? When you put your hands on me?”

Kosti clears his throat. “Jasm?—”

But her name isn’t even halfway out of his mouth before Dragan turns and pistol-whips him with the butt of his gun.

I feel it like I’m the one who was struck. A tooth of Kosti’s goes flying, followed by a spray of blood. He drops to one knee, coughing, wheezing.

Slowly, Dragan revolves to face Jasmine once again. “What do you expect to happen here tonight, little one?” He spreads his arms wide. “How would you like for this to go?”

Jasmine raises the gun. Her hands are quivering and the tip of the gun spirals wildly out of control.

Dragan smirks. “You think pointing that toy makes you brave? I remember how you screamed when?—”

She fires.

The bullet grazes his ear. He laughs, blood threading his jawline. “That is about what I thought,” he says with a nod.

Beside him, Kosti looks like he’s aged a decade in a minute. His shoulders are a broken slump. When lightning flashes through, I catch the shine of tears on his whiskered cheeks.

“Jasmine,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry. I never meant?—”

“Shut up!” Her voice cracks like thunder. “Both of you, just… shut up.”

The gun trembles harder. I recognize the telltale signs of someone unused to holding that much death in their hands. I’m maybe fifty feet shy of where I need to be before I can make a move. At the rate I’m going, it’ll take another three minutes, maybe four, to get in position. God only knows how far back Feliks is.

“For fifteen years,” she croaks, “I’ve lived in shadows. Jumped at every noise. Changed my name so many times I sometimes forget who I really am.” Her laugh is bitter as grave dirt. “I’m remembering now.”

Dragan’s laugh echoes off the crumbling saints. “You think pointing a gun makes you strong? I remember the first time you tried to fight me. That little kitchen knife.” He tsks. “You couldn’t even hold it straight.”

Jasmine swallows. “You broke my wrist.”

“And yet you still made me breakfast the next morning.” His grin is a jagged sickle moon. “ Slatko. So obedient once you learned your place.”

For a moment, I see her as she was fifteen years ago—bruised face, cowering in a silk nightgown, clutching a shattered rib. Please, Sasha. Please.

“You’re nothing,” she snarls. “A rabid dog who only knows how to bite.”

Dragan steps closer to her. Glass crunches under his boot. “Yet here you are, draga , still flinching when I move too fast.”

She fires. The bullet punches a chunk from the altar.

He doesn’t blink. “Missed.”

“The next one won’t.”

“Ah, but your hands shake. Like they did when you’d beg me to stop.” His gaze flicks to Kosti, crumpled and bleeding. “You should thank me. Without my lessons, you’d still be that simpering girl your father sold.”

“I’m not her anymore.”

“No?” He takes a step forward, and even from here, I can see how she flinches. “Then what are you, kurvo ? What are you now but the ghost of what I made you?”

“I’m what survived you,” she declares. “Every mark you left, every bone you broke—I lived through it all. And now…” Her finger tightens on the trigger. “Now, I get to decide how this story ends.”

But I see what she doesn’t—shadows detaching themselves from the darkness behind the nave. Dragan’s men take shape around her.

Jasmine notices too late. She spins, the gun swinging wildly between targets. “Stay back!”

The nearest thug snorts. “Or what, krasivaya ? You’ll miss us, too?”

She fires in a panic. Like the others, the shot goes wide, pocking the wall harmlessly. They all laugh—deep, rumbling chuckles that shake dust from the rafters. Dragan’s laugh is loudest of all.

He nods to his men. “Disarm the bitch.”

The largest one lunges. Jasmine screams, finger whitening on the trigger until— click . Empty. The mudak wrenches her arm behind her back. The gun clatters to the floor.

“No!” She kicks, thrashing, but another man pins her free arm. Her breaths come in ragged, wet heaves. The sound guts me.

Dragan circles her. “All these years, and you still fight like a cornered kitten.” He trails a knuckle down her cheek. She flinches so hard her skull cracks against the thug’s collarbone. “Remember our wedding rehearsal? You dropped the rings. I made you crawl through broken crystal to find them.”

Jasmine’s pupils blow wide. A tremor wracks her from scalp to soles—the same violent shaking I saw when I pulled her from his penthouse all those years ago.

“You… you held my face in the shards,” she whispers.

“And you bled so prettily.” He grabs her jaw, forcing eye contact. “Just like you’re bleeding now.”

A thin trickle of red snakes from her hairline. Her chest hitches—the prelude to hyperventilation.

“S-stop?—”

Dragan feigns shock. “But we’re just getting reacquainted!” He yanks her head back, exposing her throat. “Tell me, nevjesta —do you still wake up screaming? Still check the locks a dozen times before bed? Do you dream of me, little one?”

She can only whimper.

Dragan presses closer, lips grazing her ear. “You should’ve stayed dead, Jasmine. At least then, you were interesting.”

Her knees buckle. The Serbian goons hold her upright like a doll.

My muscles coil, ready to spring. I’m almost there. Almost close enough. Almost. Almost…

Dragan pulls a knife from his belt. The blade catches storm light as he presses it to Jasmine’s jugular. “Don’t worry. I’ll make it quick.”

Her breath stops.

So does mine.

Now.