Page 156 of 10 Days to Ruin

I did what I did tosavethat poor girl. And yes, I did it for selfish fucking reasons, too. Framing Dragan for Jasmine’s murder meant that Leander and the Greeks would never ally with the Serbians against me. I shored up my own empire, even though it’s taken fifteen long years since then to convince Leander that backing me was the right play.

I was so close to the finish line.Marry Ariel. Claim the docks. Profit from now until eternity.

But I fucked up along the way.

And I know why.

Because I did everything my father warned me not to. I let my heart pull me from the path. I did what my mother did.

Jumped.

Fell.

Shattered.

Is it any wonder that it hurts so fucking badly?

How fitting that I’ve endedhere,then. An ironic quirk of geography. The sign over the door gleams through the flurries of bone-chilling snow.

Babushka’s Lap.

I kick the door open, bell jangling. More of my blood drips a Morse code trail across the linoleum as I stagger into the restaurant’s kitchen like a ghost animating its own corpse.

Garlic and dill punch through the copper stench of my injury. Zoya looks up from hersolyanka, cleaver poised over a head of cabbage. Her face tightens.

“Sadis.”Sit.

I collapse onto a stainless steel prep table. “Don’t mother me.”

Her cleaver thunks into the cutting board. “If I don’t, who else will?” She yanks open a drawer, retrieving vodka and a suture kit with practiced ease. “Shirt off.”

The fabric peels away with a wetschluck. I have to bite my tongue so as not to roar in pain.

Zoya hisses through pursed lips when she sees the damage. “Pizdets.You never did do anything halfway, Sashenka. Did it go through?”

Rotating my shoulder sends white sparks across my vision. “Fuck. I think so.”

She sloshes vodka over the wound. I clamp down on a scream.

“It’s been a while since you limped in here, bleeding on my floor.” Her tweezers probe the exit wound. “I was almost starting to enjoy the silence.”

I can only grunt as fucking torture sears everywhere she extracts shrapnel.

“Where’s your shadow?” Zoya sets the tweezers down, picks up needle and thread, and starts to sew the wound shut.

“Feliks can take care of himself.”

“I wasn’t talking about him.”

I grab the vodka bottle she used as disinfectant and guzzle it. If it can clear bullet wounds, maybe it can clear away these fucking thoughts crowding my skull. And even if it can’t, it burns less than Zoya’s scrutiny.

“She’s gone.”

She squints at her handiwork, readjusts, and keeps going. The nip of needle going into my skin again and again feels like I’m being chewed alive.

“Gone?” she asks. “Orgone?”

The kitchen sways. I press a palm to the table. Steady. Always steady. “Does it matter?”

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