Page 155 of 10 Days to Ruin

The wound in my shoulder screams as I give chase. Blood soaks my tuxedo jacket, warm and insistent.

Stupid girl. Reckless, stubborn, glorious girl.

Memories flash with every step. Her laughter in Zoya’s kitchen. The way she’d bite her lip when pretending not to watch me work. That first time she fell asleep in my arms on that mountain, trusting me with her nightmares.

I follow the blood smears past shattered display cases. Tiffany diamonds glitter in the carpet like trapped stars.

“Ariel!”

Silence. Then?—

“Stay away from me!”

Her voice comes from the Egyptian wing. I charge in that direction and find her crouched between two sarcophagi. The emergency lights paint her in hellish red. She’s clutching a ceremonial dagger from the Cleopatra exhibit—twenty-dollar gift shop garbage, but sharp enough to hurt if she manages to stick me with it.

“Put it down.” I step closer.

She brandishes the blade. “I mean it, Sasha.”

“You won’t use it.”

“Try me.”

We circle like wolves. Her back hits a display of canopic jars and sends them crashing to the ground. The dagger trembles in her grip, but her eyes never waver.

“You think I wanted this?” I snap. “You think I enjoyed lying awake, imagining your face when you found out?”

She shakes her head. “You don’t get to play hero.”

“I’m not. I’m the villain, remember? The monster who blackmails and manipulates andlies.”

I lunge. She’s faster.

I manage to block the downward hurtling blade, but her other hand punches my wounded shoulder. White-hot agony blots out the world as I go staggering backwards. When my vision clears, she’s at the emergency exit.

“Ariel—”

The door slams. The lock engages.

Through the wire-reinforced glass, I watch her run—barefoot, bleeding, beautiful—into the waiting storm.

53

SASHA

Blood on snow. Red on white. A trickling trail down alleys, like script on the ice, readingSasha Ozerov ran this way.

I do what I can to cover my tracks, doubling back to lose the Serbian pursuers. It costs me precious seconds of chasing Ariel down, but if I’m dead, I’m no use to her. Fuck knows where Feliks is, where any of my men are. This is an unmitigated disaster.

But it’s not the pain in my shoulder that’s killing me, though my tuxedo jacket has fused to the wound with a mix of sweat and clotted blood. It’s not the loss of the alliance that’s darkening the edges of my vision.

It’s her.

I can’t see beyond the step in front of me and that frozen-still image of tears crystallizing in Ariel’s eyes as she looked up at me and spat,You knew.

I knew.

Yes, I fucking knew.

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