Page 59 of 10 Days to Ruin

“You’re staring,” he growls without looking up.

“Yeah. Trying to decide if you’re more wolf or watchdog.”

He leans back, assessing me. “And?”

I fork a bite of cake. “I’m thinking…stray.”

His lip curls. Not quite a smile, but almost. He doesn’t realize I’ve seen it. But for the briefest of moments, the mask slips.

I’m stupid enough to find it beautiful.

20

SASHA

An hour after taking Ariel back to her apartment, I find myself standing in a warehouse that reeks of gasoline and Serbian arrogance.

The flames have been put out, but the damage remains. Charred shipping containers slump like rotten teeth. Puddles of chemical runoff shimmer rainbow-slick under emergency lights. Half my shipment of pharmaceutical materials—thelegalshipment, the one meant to keep DEA auditors off my ass—is ash.

“Third strike this month,” Feliks mutters, kicking a melted pill bottle. “Thesesvolochiaren’t even trying to be sneaky anymore.”

I crouch, dusting soot off a blackened ledger. The numbers swim—losses stacked on losses, alliances stretching thin. My father’s smug face floats behind my eyelids.This is what happens when you play house instead of war, boy. Pathetic.

He’s right.

I stand, crushing the ledger under my boot. “Get a cleanup crew. Dump anything salvageable at the Brooklyn docks. And find out who leaked the shipment route.”

Feliks hesitates. “You think it’s another rat?”

“I think stupidity is contagious.” I stride past him, toward the corpse lying limbs akimbo on the loading dock.

The Serbian foot soldier, the only one we managed to snare today, can’t be older than twenty. I toe the kid’s shoulder, rolling him onto his back. Bullet between the eyes—clean work. My men know better than to leave a mess.

His jacket falls open, revealing a crude tattoo on his sternum—two-headed eagle, wings spread. The Serbian crest. Just in case I needed further proof of who’s daring to fuck with what’s mine.

“They’re escalating,” Feliks remarks as he joins me again.

“They’re desperate.” I straighten, wiping my hands on my coat. “Tell Viktor to triple the patrols. Shoot anything that moves.”

“And if they hit the other warehouses?”

“Then you’ve failed.”

Feliks’s jaw twitches, but he nods and steps away to do as I commanded.

The drive back to Manhattan gives me too much time to think. Too much time to ponder the taste of honey cake still simmering on my tongue. Blood and honey, honey and blood—the two tastes mix and meld and mingle in my mouth, a perfect metaphor for the two irreconcilable halves of my life right now. They don’t go together. They can’t.

Only one can last.

Rain sheets down, blurring the skyline into a watercolor bruise. Memories flicker like a broken film reel—Ariel perched on my desk, cherry-red nails tapping my laptop.Distracting.

Pathetic.

I press the gas, swerving around a cab. Horns blare. Let them. These streets are mine.Mine.

My phone vibrates. Leander’s name lights up the dash.

“Malaka,” I mutter. The last person I want to talk to right now, but one of the few I cannot afford to avoid. I answer via Bluetooth. “What?”

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