10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

Epilogue Ariel

EPILOGUE: ARIEL

SIX MONTHS LATER

The twins’ hungry cries pulled me from sleep before dawn today, same as every morning. I’ve learned to love it. The quiet early hours, the stillness, the moments of just me and them when they’re too sleepy to truly put up a fuss—those are the things I’ll remember when I’m old and they no longer fit into the crooks of my elbows.

We stayed at Mama’s house last night, just for a change of pace. It’s nice to get out of the heart of the city sometimes. Quieter out here. Prettier in some ways, too. Sunlight slants through her lace curtains, gilding the dust motes swirling above Natalie’s downy head.

Nat’s the easy one. She does not play when it comes to nursing time. Eyes on the prize like a wartime general, sometimes even with a fist raised in victory. Leo, my restless revolutionary, keeps unlatching to glare at the world that dared remove him from the warmth of the womb.

I look up at the wall to check the time. Mama’s French cuckoo clock, the one Sasha fixed, is perfect down to the second.

Leo frowns and starts murmuring at the shift in my posture. “Shh, little man,” I whisper, stroking his cheek. “Your sister’s being so good. See?”

He sighs and settles back in, thank God.

Once they’re comfortably nursing again, I return my attention to my computer screen, where a Word doc has my story waiting for today’s words. It’s hard enough to type with one baby, much less one in each arm, but I find a way. Feliks calls it “double dribbling.” I think that’s a basketball joke, but I’m not completely sure. To be honest, I don’t think he knows, either.

My fingers hover over the keys as I stare at the scene I’m trying to write. The church in Roccastrada looms dark in my memory—rain and mud and broken saints watching from above. Hard to believe these same babies entered the world in such chaos. Sometimes, I wake up gasping, thinking I hear thunder. But then I feel Sasha’s arms around me, hear the twins breathing in their bassinet, and reality settles back into place.

I look down at my children— our children. Natalie with her father’s ice-blue eyes, Leo with my green ones. Both of them with Sasha’s nose and my stubborn chin. They’re our best story yet, written in flesh and blood instead of words.

My fingers fly across the keyboard again, weaving fiction from truth. Some details, I keep exactly as they happened—the weight of Sasha’s hands as he helped me breathe through contractions, the way Jasmine’s violin sang just before our world imploded.

Others, I soften, blur, transform into something less sharp-edged.

The truth is in there, though, between the lines. In the spaces where I pause to remember. In the moments when my hands go still over the keys, and I simply watch my children nurse, marveling at how something so gentle could come from so much violence.

The clock ticks on, keeping perfect time. Outside, Brooklyn wakes up slowly, but in here, it’s just us—me and my babies and our story, unfolding one word at a time.

Leo’s fist raps on my sternum. “I know, agapi mou ,” I murmur, adjusting his angle. “The world’s unfair. Write a strongly worded letter to management.”

Natalie pops off with a satisfied smack. I shift her to my shoulder, patting the gas bubbles she’ll deny having. The motion jostles Leo again, who retaliates by clamping down.

“ Malysh ,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “we talked about this.”

Footsteps creak in the hall. My mother appears with two mugs, her silk kimono whispering against the doorframe. “They’re conspiring against you,” she remarks, setting my coffee down for me.

I sniff the steam—hazelnut creamer, heavy on the cinnamon. “They’re Sasha’s children. Scheming’s in their DNA.”

She hovers, because doting is in her DNA. Her fingers twitch toward Leo’s wayward foot. “Do you need?—?”

“You can steal them from me once they’re done.”

She grins guiltily, caught red-handed in Grandma Mode, then nods and slips back down the hall. When the door clicks shut, I exhale slowly. Natalie’s head lolls against my neck, milk-drunk and dreamy. Leo’s grip on my thumb loosens as sleep claims him, too.

The cursor blinks, waiting.

Eventually, I run out of both words and milk. When Mama knocks on the door to check on me, I offer her the children. She scoops them both up with obvious glee and starts singing as she ferries them away.

Time to do some of my other work. The screen is a maze of notifications, mostly from The Phoenix’s Slack channel, where Gina and Lora are tag-teaming updates about our latest story’s impact. Our exposé on Midwest Pharmaceuticals’ price-fixing scheme has exploded. Major networks are picking it up, citing our reporting. My chest swells with pride. Twelve months ago, The Phoenix was a sleazy tabloid printing celebrity nip slips. Now, we’re making corporate giants sweat.

A message from Gina pops up: CNN wants an interview!!!! Call me when the tiny humans release you from boob duty.

I can’t help but unleash a goofy grin, even though I’m all alone in my mother’s den. They’ve been invaluable—Gina’s razor-sharp editing, Lora’s surprising talent for following money trails. Who woulda thought that Lora the Ditz knew accounting so well?

Together, we’ve built something meaningful from the ashes of the trashy rag Sasha bought me.

Speaking of meaningful transformations, there’s a text from Feliks: Latest sweep came up empty. No sign of the Serbian snake anywhere. If he survived, he’s long gone.

My fingers tighten around the phone. Part of me wants to believe Dragan died in that church, crushed beneath that poor, tortured Peugeot that the rental company will never see again. But bodies have a way of turning up —or not—in our world.

Still, six months of silence speaks volumes. I choose to believe he’s gone for good.

I scroll down to find a video in the family group chat from Jasmine. She’s at her new studio in Manhattan bright and early this morning, helping a young student correct their bow grip. The difference between this Jasmine and the one who fled to France is stark. Her shoulders are straight, her smile genuine as she guides small hands into proper position.

First student showcase next Friday, reads her caption. You’re all coming, right?

“Of course we are,” I murmur. Teaching violin might seem like a small thing compared to running from demons, but I know better. Every note her students play is another brick in the wall between her past and present.

I sit back and look around me. The room glows in that fragile hour between dawn and true morning, pale light rinsing everything of colors. But even when I’m this calm, this meditative, I still don’t hear Sasha until his thumb brushes the nape of my neck.

“Ah!”

He laughs and bends down to kiss where he just touched.

He smells like New York in winter—diesel exhaust and snowmelt clinging to his leather jacket—with an undercurrent of the vetiver soap I bought him after Dr. Nguyen suggested we incorporate anchoring rituals into our daily routines. His scar catches the screen’s blue light as he leans over my shoulder, reading.

“Still fictionalizing me as the brooding antihero?” he asks.

“That’s fiction?” I minimize the document before he can spot the paragraph where his hands are described as ‘ twin oaks grafted from war and tenderness. ’ The last thing he needs is an ego boost. “You’re here early. I thought you said you had Bratva business until noon.”

One shoulder lifts in a half-shrug. Snowflakes float from his collar onto the keyboard. “I figured wife business was more important.”

I pull him down for a proper kiss. “You figured correctly, sir. We’ve got… fifteen minutes, maybe, until Mama needs reinforcements. So…?”

He groans hungrily, but when I reach for his belt, he tucks my hands back in my lap instead of doing what I wanted, which is banging me senseless on the closest flat surface. “You don’t know how bad I want that. But fifteen minutes isn’t enough for me, Ariel. I need so much more time with you. Tonight.”

His palm cups my jaw, guiding my gaze to his. Therapy has sanded some edges off his intensity, but the core remains—that fractured-bright gaze cataloging my every microexpression.

“Fine,” I say, pretending to pout. I can’t be too upset, though. Sasha has never, ever let me down when he’s promised that “later, there will be more.”

I trace the puckered scar along his ribs through his shirt. “Dr. Nguyen said you skipped yesterday’s one-on-one. Everything okay?”

His pulse leaps under my fingertips. “Had a… visitor.”

“Another dream?”

When he hesitates, I thread our fingers together—Dr. Nguyen’s grounding technique #3. His exhale warms my temple.

“It was Moliets-et-Maa again,” he rasps. “You in that alley, Dragan’s knife at your throat. Only when he turned… it wasn’t Dragan. It was Yakov.”

I run my finger through his hair. “You should’ve woken me.”

“Not a chance; you were actually asleep for once.” His forehead meets mine. “My vow stands, moya zhena . Your nightmares take precedence.”

I like when he reminds me of the promise he made me in that garden. Who has to be shadow and who gets to be light. Some burdens in this life can be shared. Some can’t. But that’s okay. We always have each other to lean on.

I let him pull me into the wingback chair, his legs pillowing mine. Dawn pinks the room as I curl into him. As we breathe softly together, just enjoying each other’s touch and company, the muffled notes of Mama’s singing float down the hallway toward us.

“It’s a good life we have, you know,” he murmurs suddenly. “It’s a good, good life.”

The steam from Zoya’s feast rises in swirls, staining the air with the tang of beets and nostalgia. I watch Sasha’s scarred thumb swipe a dollop of sour cream from Natalie’s chin—a gesture so ordinary it steals my breath. Our daughter giggles, smearing borscht across the Ozerov family crest tattooed on his wrist.

“Careful,” I warn the little princess as I pass my husband and claim a seat at his side. “That’s a historic artifact you’re defacing.”

“Not much longer for this world,” he agrees, glancing at the crest again.

Feliks snorts. “You keep saying that and I keep not believing it.”

Bouncing our daughter on his knee, Sasha looks as serious as ever. “I mean it. The Ozerov Bratva has lived long enough. It’s time for it to die. That’s how we make room for now things.”

“I know, I know. I get it.” Sighing, Feliks shakes his head. “I’m mostly upset about having to wear a suit to work every day, now that we’re actually legit.”

“I’m not upset about that in the slightest,” cuts in an obscenely pregnant Gina. “Suits are like lingerie for men.” She cups Feliks’s cheek, the light overhead flashing in the depths of the emerald engagement ring she’s been showing off all night. It’s big enough to require its own mining permit.

Feliks picked well. He knows his woman, I’ll give him that much.

Across the table, Leo squirms in Jasmine’s arms, making grabby hands at the dumplings on her plate. My sister deftly redirects his attention with a spoonful of pureed carrots. “There we go, agapi mou ,” she coos, her voice gentle in a way I never thought I’d hear again. “Just like that.”

Belle appears at my shoulder, ladling more soup into Sasha’s bowl. “Eat,” she orders him. “You’re skin and bones again.”

Zoya comes in and thunks down a carafe of kvass. “Skin, bones, and bad decisions.”

“But my bad decisions match my tie.” Sasha flicks the silk monstrosity that Lora gifted him for his birthday—neon pink with dancing tacos that are saying, Guac Out with your Tac’ Out . Leo grabs for it, shouting with glee.

“It’s such a beautiful tie,” Lora sighs. I’m pretty sure she missed the joke, but that’s okay.

Pavel, holding her hand dutifully, just shakes his head. He knows better than to intervene.

The empty chair at the end of the table looms large. It’s for Kosti, though no one says his name out loud. There’s a rule at Sunday night family dinners: No talking about ghosts. We set places for them instead. Let them linger in the clink of spoons against porcelain, in the way Feliks still pours two shots of vodka—one vanished, one consumed.

My uncle made bad choices. But he did it out of love. If that’s an unforgivable crime, then I’d never be able to live with the man who gave me his name and his children. Because he made bad choices, too. But he loved us all hard enough to make up for them.

Kosti didn’t get the chance to leave his sins in the past. Sasha did, though—and he tells me every single day how grateful he is that the world showed him mercy that he never showed the world.

Gina leans into Feliks’ shoulder, her voice carrying. “We’re thinking of a Halloween wedding. With costumes! I’ll dress as Medusa; he’ll go as the idiot who looked at her.”

“Romantic,” I deadpan.

“You’re one to talk.”

I laugh and rest my head against Sasha’s shoulder in a silent touché. Natalie bangs her spoon in agreement, splattering beetroot across his taco tie.

Suddenly, her little face screws up and she starts to wail. Sasha looks down and sees that she slammed her fist into a fork tine and opened up a tiny little cut.

“Ah, poor malysh, ” he croons as he rocks her until her sobs calm down. Zoya hands him a Band-Aid from the cabinet and he puts it on our daughter’s hand. “Better? There, there, that’s so much better.”

He glances at me and winks. “Like mother, like daughter,” he murmurs, and suddenly, I’m back in that Met bathroom, watching him tend to my injured hand with such unexpected gentleness.

Who was that woman, so determined to resist him?

Who was that man, so certain he could never love?

Who are we now?

That answer remains unclear. But I do know where we are and what we’re doing. We are in a warm kitchen filled with food and laughter, surrounded by love. We are watching our children grow, building something neither of us thought possible.

We are healing. We are hoping. We are happy. We are here.

Sasha’s hand finds mine under the table, his thumb tracing the scar on my palm where it all began. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asks softly.

I squeeze his fingers, watching as a miraculously healed Natalie tries to grab his nose. “Just thinking about the beginning.”

His laugh is quiet but real. “It was a touch-and-go start.”

“Nothing about us has ever been straightforward,” I reply, leaning into him as Belle starts passing around more bread.

Babushka’s Lap glows golden in the setting sun, filled with the sounds of our cobbled-together family—Feliks’s barking laugh, Gina’s snort of derision, Jasmine humming as she coaxes another spoonful into Leo’s mouth. Even the empty chair feels less like a wound and more like a reminder that love persists, complicated and messy as it may be.

I rest my head on Sasha’s shoulder. It’s mint. Cedar. Home.

I tried to fight all this, once upon a time. I fought it tooth and nail, kicking and screaming. I’m not fighting anymore. I surrendered.

That’s how I know it’s real.