Page 15 of 10 Days to Ruin

Fuckone door closing and another opening.This would be one cell door opening, throwing me inside, and shutting that same door again.

I shouldn’t ask. I won’t ask. I can’t?—

“What’s coming next, Baba?”

He tucks the cigar into his breast pocket and scrubs both flat, wide, meaty palms over his face. Knuckles at his eyes like he’s so tired he can barely stand. Then he looks at me again. “I will say it one more time, not because I think you’ll believe me, but because?—”

“—what’s coming next, Baba?—”

“—but because I’ve always had your best interests at heart, whether you or your mother or your sister believed that or not?—”

“—what’s coming next, Baba?—”

“—and everything I do, everything I’ve done, it’s always been for you, for my girls, my loves?—”

“Tell me what the fuck is happening!” I scream.

He stops. His eyes are rimmed in red. “I’ve arranged for you to be married.”

For a moment, all I hear is the drip of the faucet, the distant murmur of the gala’s string quartet. They’ve left Dvorák behind and I don’t recognize whatever they’re playing now.

But I recognize this scene. A version of it, at least—because I watched Leander do this to Jasmine fifteen years ago.

“Married,” I whisper, touching my swollen lip like that’ll help make sense of the word. “You’ve arranged for me to be… married.”

He steps closer, his shadow swallowing mine. “A union with the Ozerov Bratva. A merger of interests. Stability for both our families.”

“What part of this is ‘stable’ for me?” I ask aloud, though I know he doesn’t know the answer and couldn’t care less about it.

“You’ll want for nothing. You’ll be wealthier than that gossip rag could ever make you, and free of that roach-infested apartment you call home. Most of all, you’ll besafe.Safe from?—”

“Go to hell.” I back into the sink, the marble edge biting into my ass. Fifteen minutes ago, a man’s hands held me there, hot and huge, strong and safe. Now, all I feel is cold, lifeless stone. “Go to fucking hell.”

“In so many ways, I’m already there,neraïdoula mou.” He smiles, but it’s a cracked thing. “You think I want this? You think I enjoy groveling to that Russianmalákas?”

“Then don’t! Call it off!”

“And lose the docks? The warehouses? The respect?” He barks a laugh even as he shakes his head sadly. “Your sister spat the same naïveté. Look where it got her.”

“I told you not to talk about her.”

“Why?” He crowds me, the cigar in his pocket crinkling. “Because you’d rather pretend she’s sipping mai tais in Miami? That she isn’t rotting cold in some unmarked?—?”

My palm cracks across his cheek before I realize I’ve moved. The sound echoes.

A slap thirty-three years in the making.

Baba doesn’t flinch, though my handprint is red and stark on his bearded cheek. “Feel better?”

I’m quivering with rage. “Go. To. Hell.”

“In due time, my daughter.” He grips my wrist, pressing hard against the bandage Sasha wrapped. Blood blooms through the gauze as he squeezes. “But first, you’ll walk out that door. You’ll smile. You’ll take Sasha Ozerov’s hand. And you’ll thank him for the honor.”

I wrench free. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

“Kill you?” He tuts. “No,koukla. You are my daughter. But that little friend of yours—Gina, is it? The one who lent you this dress?” His smile widens as I freeze. “How long do you think she’d last in Hunts Point?”

That dread is back worse than ever, clutching my innards in its cold fingers and squeezing, squeezing. “You… you wouldn’t.”

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