Page 133 of 10 Days to Ruin

I sigh as I watch frost spiderweb across my windows. There’s a phrase dancing in the recesses of my mind. Has been for a while now. So long as I think it in Russian, it feels safe enough, though only for a second.Lyublyu tebya.That’s enormous in its own right, but bearable.

But translating those words… letting them be spoken aloud in a way whereshecould understand… I just don’t fucking know. It’s dangerous. Reckless. Everything Yakov beat out of me.

It feels less reckless if I let my eyes close and Ariel appear there, though. I’ve started collecting her quirks like precious little relics. The way her nose wrinkles when she’s fibbing. How she snorts mid-laugh. The exact shade of pink her cheeks turn when she’s trying not to come beneath me.

This is how hearts get cleaved open.

I sit up, knuckles white around the edge of the mattress.Say it here,ssyklo. Say it now. There’s no one here to hear you. You can say it like a fucking man—if you dare.

I open my mouth.

And…

And…

… Almost.

I rise and step into the shower to start my day. But as I bask in hot water, that stupid smile still simmering in place, three syllables dangle on the tip of my tongue.

Almost.

My phone is vibrating when I step back out with a towel wrapped around my waist. Feliks’s name flashes on the screen.

“Boss.” Feliks clears his throat when I answer. “You need to see today’sPatriot Press.”

I frown. It’s not like him to bother me with such petty bullshit. “The fuck would I want that rag for?”

“Rag though it may be, they struck a nerve this time. Viral shit. People are talking, and it’s only been on the newsstands for an hour. Front-page exposé on you.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s not the first time someone’s tried to?—”

“—They’re talking about Ariel, too, Sasha.”

There it is again. Rage. White-hot. Coursing from tips to toes. “Text me the link. Now.”

The notification dings. My knuckles bleach around the device as I read the headline.

THE BUTCHER’S BABE: REPORTER ARIEL WARD EXPOSED AS CORRUPT MOB MISTRESS

Below the text: a blown-up photo of Ariel stumbling down the jet stairs, wide-eyed and disoriented. Beside that is a grainy shot of me slamming that photographer against the pillar. The byline credits some hack named Marty DiLaurentis.

“Call every fucking lawyer I own,” I bark into the phone, already yanking on last night’s slacks. “Shut down every vendor selling this trash. Burn every copy.”

“I’m doing my best, man, but it’s out of hand already. It’s… everywhere, Sasha.”

Ice floods my veins. I can picture Ariel now—hunched over her in her gloomy bedroom, watching her life implode through Twitter notifications. That fierce, fragile pride she guards like a fucking Fabergé egg crumbling to dust.

“Pick me up downstairs,” I snap. “Ten minutes.”

The city blurs outside the Bentley’s tinted windows. Feliks hands me the hard copy of the tabloid without a word. I rip it open in disgust.

Page after page dissects Ariel’s life: her job at the Gazette, her estrangement from Leander, even her goddamn college thesis on Watergate. They’ve spun every scrap of her identity into a sordid mob fairy tale.

We screech up to Ariel’s building. I take the stairs two at a time, ignoring Yuri’s greeting as I jam my key into her apartment lock.

The sight freezes me in the doorway.

Ariel sits cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by shredded newspaper. Her hair hangs in greasy curtains, face puffy and bare of makeup. A half-empty carton of Ben & Jerry’s melts near her knee. When she looks up, the hollows under her eyes almost shatter me.

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