Page 130 of 10 Days to Ruin

Mama comes back just as the song ends, mouth gaping wide with a yawn. “That’s bedtime for me. Don’t stay out too late, lovies.” Her wink leaves scorch marks. “I’ll find my own way back to the hotel, don’t you worry.” She pats Sasha’s cheek, then mine, then goes dancing away into the night.

I watch her go. “She really is happy here,” I say in amazement.

“Are you?”

I look up at Sasha and smile. “Yeah. I am.”

42

ARIEL

Sasha makes love to me that night, slow and soft and tender. When I come in his arms, it feels like falling through clouds.

I fall asleep soon after, still warm from his touch. We wake at midnight to do it again, half-asleep and blindly fumbling through the dark, and again when dawn slants through the shutters.

His scars have never looked more beautiful to me than they do then. They’re practically glowing, and I can’t stop myself from tracing each one from start to finish. I save his throat for last. My fingers linger on the cut of his jaw, and when his Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow, I smile.

What hurts is the crash landing back in reality.

Not the actual landing in New York—that goes smoothly, probably because Sasha would spike the pilot’s head on a stake in his front yard if he so much as jostled Mama’s tea the wrong way. But as soon as we step foot off the jet…

Pandemonium.

The first flash goes off like a bomb. The second, third, and fourth are like the moments in a war movie when the heroes realize suddenly that they’re exposed and under enemy fire.

The voices follow, shrieking like zombie seagulls. I’m still dazed with sleep and trans-Atlantic brain fog, so I stop halfway down the jet’s stairs and look back in terror at Sasha.

“Blyat.” His entire body tenses. His arm snakes around my waist, yanking me behind him. Meanwhile, from the horde on the tarmac, flashes erupt like landmines. At least two dozen ravenous paparazzi swarm us—shouting, jostling, iPhones thrust through the gaps in the thickets of arms all reaching toward us.

“Mr. Ozerov! Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Is it true you’re connected to the Brighton Beach shootings?”

“Ariel! Look here! How’d a nobody reporter bag the Butcher of Brooklyn?”

Sasha’s fingers flex against my hip. I can feel the earthquake building in his chest. Mama, holding my hand, looks every bit as confused and terrified as I am.

“Keep moving,” Sasha growls. Feliks shoves his way through the crowd to meet us at the bottom of the stairs, gripping Mom’s arm to steer her through the chaos. But the pack follows us, rabid. They hedge closer, and closer, grabbing and plucking, until a beefy guy with a telephoto lens shoulder-checks me in his haste to reach Sasha.

That’s when Sasha snaps.

He pivots so fast I get whiplash. One second, he’s a marble statue; the next, he’s got the photographer’s collar in his fist, slamming him against a pillar in the hangar. The camera smashes against the floor and plastic shards go skittering across polished tiles.

“You touch her again,” Sasha snarls, his scarred throat flexing with every word, “and I’ll feed you your own fucking camera.”

The photographer gurgles in Sasha’s grip. “I-I’m sorry, man?—”

“Not to me. Apologize toher.”

The man’s bloodshot eyes dart to mine. “Miss?—”

“Forget it,” I choke out. My hands won’t stop shaking. “Just let him go, Sasha. He’s not worth it.”

For a long, taut moment, I think he won’t. Violence rolls off him in waves, that coiled Bratva rage I’ve only glimpsed in dark alleys and blood-slick boardrooms. Then he releases the man with a shove.

“If I see your face again…” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.

Feliks herds us toward the exit, barking orders in Russian at the security team who come charging up to surround us. The paparazzi fall back, cowed but still snapping shots from a safer distance. Sasha keeps his palm pressed between my shoulder blades, hot through my coat.

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