Page 12 of 10 Days to Ruin

“Leander’s probably throwing a fit,” I remark.

“Oh, let the old bastard get his panties in a twist. He’s just a diva; always wants to be wined and dined and 69’d.” Feliks barks a laugh. “The Greeks do love their pretty lies. Flowers. Champagne. A virgin bride.”

“Put a bow on my head then,” I mutter. “Though I’m no fucking virgin.”

The farthest thing from it. But tonight felt different. Tonight, fucking into her, feeling her clench and pulse around me, took a thing from me that I’ve never given to anyone before.

“Sasha…”

Feliks catches my arm as I turn. For a moment, we’re notpakhanandsoldat. We’re just two feral boys who clawed their way out of hell.

“Last chance to run, brother,” he tells me. “There’s no going back after this.”

Once again, she flickers behind my eyelids.Biting back moans. Clutching my shoulders. Wracking me. Ruining me.

But sentiment is assyklo’sindulgence.

I shake him off. “You know as well as I do we were never going back.”

Fee sighs at the truth of it. Then he jerks his chin toward the cooling body sagging in its zip-ties. “Burn it all down?”

I glance around. The place is worthless—just another lifeless husk in a city full of them. “No. Dump the body, scrub the kitchen, but leave the building as it was.”

He nods, grimly satisfied. That’s a funny quirk of this best friend of mine: he’ll gut strangers like landed fish, but he’s strangely tender with how he handles the bodies. Maybe he’s trying to pay some kind of atonement. Maybe he’s just a neat freak. I don’t ask and he hasn’t volunteered the information.

Either way, I turn my back on him and step out into the night once again.

Klaus conveys me back to the gala, the second trip as silent as the first, and when I emerge from the car, it’s like I never left.

As I step out, I leave behind Sasha Ozerov,pakhanof the Ozerov Bratva, man who breaks shins with crowbars and rinses blood from beneath his fingernails.

Here, I’m a cold, chiseled bastard in a Brioni suit and a bloodless tie. Here, I am a titan. Here, I am?—

“Mr. Ozerov!” greets a spineless Greek crony whose name I forget. He’s wearing a headset and clutching a clipboard. “Mr. Makris has been waiting for you. He urgently requests your presence.”

“I bet he does,” I mutter. “Lead the way.”

In front of us, the Met glows like a poisoned jewel. Silk and diamonds and rotting hearts. The flash of paparazzi bulbs taking my picture casts it all in an eerie, fluorescent glow.

The clock strikes midnight right as I re-enter the ballroom. As promised, Leander Makris is waiting by the ice sculpture with a girl in white.

His daughter. My noose.

Her back is to me. Chestnut curls bound hastily into braids. Slender neck. Smells like peaches.

Then she turns.

5

ARIEL

THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER

The door clicks shut.

My knees hit the bathroom tile before I even realize I’m falling. But even when I land, it’s with a pathetic “Oh.” Just that sad sound,Oh,like a limp balloon letting go of its last breath of air.

The hem of my stolen dress pools around me like white melted wax. I stare at my reflection in the stall door’s black lacquered steel—green eyes dilated wide, lipstick smeared into a clownish grin, that one braid still stubbornly determined to unravel all the way.

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