Page 60 of 10 Days to Ruin

“Heard about the fire,” he says by way of greeting. “Tsk-tsk. Hard to keep the lights on without friends, no?”

“I don’t need friends. I need Serbian corpses.”

“Ah, but corpses don’t marry your daughters.” A pause follows, thick with implication. “Speaking of which, how is my daughter? I worry still, Sasha. She is… troubled. Troubled by what happened. Troubled by Jasm?—”

“I get it, Leander. She’s fine. Everything is under control.”

My grip tightens on the wheel.Troubled.Yes. The way she’d looked at me in that alley behind Zoya’s—not with fear, but with pity. As if she’d peeled back my ribs and seen the rot inside.

“Hm.”

“Ten days, Makris. That was the deal.”

“Ten days,” he agrees. “Very well. Keep me updated. We will put the Serbians where they belong—once the wedding date is set. Until then… well, take care.”

The line goes dead.

I slam my fist against the steering wheel.Take. Take. Take.Take care, take heed, take cover. Isn’t that what I’ve always done? I took my father’s empire. Took his enemies’ throats. Took and took until even the act of taking felt hollow.

But Ariel…

Am I doing the taking? Or is she?

I cut across three lanes, ignoring the symphony of middle fingers in my wake. She’s not the only one trying to take from me. The Serbians are testing borders. My pill processing plants upstate were raided last week. Two dealers vanished in Queens—they’re probably hogtied in some Balkan butcher shop while Serbian bastards carve them into ribbons.

Leander’s docks are the only way to move product without Serbian interference. His cops. His judges. Hisprotection. Once I have all that, this war will come to a swift and brutal end. The price to bring that all under my banner seemed so simple when I struck the deal.

A ring. A vow. A pretty bird to keep in my bed.

Nothing seems quite so simple anymore.

The memory of Ariel underneath me, gasping, clawing—it should disgust me. Or bore me, at the very least. Instead, it surges in my gut, hot and relentless and un-fucking-forgettable.

It takes, too. And takes. And takes.

By the time I reach the office, the rain has iced over into sleet. I shrug off my coat, the scars on my back pulling tight. Yakov’s voice echoes.Softness is a cancer. Cut it out. Cutherout.

I need a drink to clear my head. But whiskey barely burns anymore. Even when I pour three fingers, drain it, pour three more—it doesn’t touch the chaos raging in my skull.

This shit cannot continue. I need to do what I’ve always done: draw a line in the sand and defend it with my fucking life. The plan must remain the same as it was from the start:

Seduce. Marry. Control.

So if Ariel has decided that she wants to fuck with fire? So be it. I’ll reduce her to cinders. Let her sob my name into Egyptian cotton. Let her claw my back raw. Let her trick her own body into mistaking lust for love.

But I won’tgiveher love.

I can’t.

Love is the first domino, and I turned my back on that the day I wrapped barbed wire around my father’s throat and pulled.

I take out my phone and text her. Then I put it away. As I do, I see something: a single thread of auburn hair peeking out from under the couch.

I pick it up.

Then I put it in the trash where it belongs.

21

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