Page 89 of 10 Days to Ruin

I’m on him in a fucking instant, shoving him against the brick. His shoulder blades crunch the crumbling mortar. “You don’t look at her.” My thumb digs into his windpipe. “You don’t talk about her. You don’tbreathenear her. Understood?”

Feliks grins from ear-to-ear. “Y’know, for someone who allegedly doesn’t care, you’ve sure got a hard-on for this charade.”

I release him, scowling at how easily I took his bait. I should know better. Idoknow better. But when it comes to Ariel, I just… react.

He coughs, rubbing his neck. “Make it make sense, Sash. If this is just a power play…”

Thunder growls above us. Itisjusta power play. It has to be. I need this to get Leander’s loyalty. No bride means no alliance. No alliance means no victory. No victory means I spend the rest of my life exterminating Serbian rats in various filthy warehouses, fighting a war of attrition that leaves everyone worse off in the end.

“You ever think…” Feliks unwraps a new stick of gum and pops it into his mouth. “What if it was real?”

“‘Real’ is overrated. My father taught me that.”

“Cool story. But you’re not Yakov.” He lobs the gum pack at my chest. “What I’m saying is, what if you stopped sabotaging this thing? What if you let yourself want her instead of scheming ahead of time how to survive losing her?”

A foggy chill soaks through my shirt.

“Or does that scare you too much?”

I stare at the puddle spreading around my boots. For a minute, I’m twelve years old again, knees bleeding through my school uniform. Father’s voice rasping in my ear like rusted barbed wire.Crying’s for bitches and orphans. You’ll be both if you don’t shut up.

I crush a stray piece of trash under my heel. “You’re getting sentimental in your old age, man.”

“Says thessyklo.”

The warehouse door clangs open and the cleanup team shuffles out with a pair of body bags. We watch them load both into the black van idling at the curb, then clamber in and drive away.

Feliks braces his hands on his knees. “I’ll say one more thing and then I’m done, I swear. Jasmine made her choice. You gave her that. You think you’re honoring her memory by martyring yourself on this shit?”

I say nothing. At my throat, my scar burns.

“It’s been fifteen years,” he says. “Let. Her. Go.”

When I close my eyes, I see Ariel licking mustard off her thumb in the park. Lips chapped from the cold. Snowflakes caught in her lashes.

I see other things, too.Endgame. Wedding bells. Her in white lace, trembling as I slide a gold band onto her finger. Pretending it’s only for the cameras.

Then what? What happens five years from now? Ten? Does the war you’re fighting stain the hem of that pretty white dress? Does she start looking at you with hate in her eyes instead of lust? Or worse—what if she looks at you withlovein her eyes? Think you can handle that burden, Aleksandr?

Feliks stands, joints popping. “You deserve a life, brother. Not just an empire.”

“She’ll destroy me if I do that,” I whisper under my breath. I don’t mean to say it out loud, but it just slips out.

I brace for what Feliks might say. He could mock me, belittle me, echo the voices in my head that are already doing the same thing.

Instead, he claps a hand on my shoulder and grins. “Maybe she will. But what a way to die.”

29

ARIEL

Fuck.

Now,what?

Hiking with Sasha was supposed to be the final nail inhiscoffin. Me as my worst self, schlepping through the woods in designer heels and a sequined crop top, bitching about bugs and blisters until he snapped—that was supposed to do the trick.

Instead, it turned into… whatever that was. Lost. Cold. Huddled in his arms, drenched in rain, wondering why I wasn’t quite as miserable as I should’ve been.

---