Page 9 of 10 Days to Ruin

Love is for children and fools. I am neither.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Feliks. “The package is secured,” he says in Russian when I answer. “But it’s getting anxious about the delivery time.”

Code for: the Serbian spy he caught snooping around an Ozerov warehouse earlier tonight is starting to panic.

“Keep it fresh,” I reply. “I’m on my way.”

I find a side exit and slip out into the December night. The cold bites through my suit jacket, but I barely feel it. St. Petersburg winters were far worse than anything New York can throw at me.

Still. Something about tonight’s chill makes me long for what I left in my wake just now. Soft skin under my hands. Green eyes watching me like I might be worth saving.

She smelled like peaches. It’s just now hit me that that’s what that sweetness was. Ripe summer peaches, sweet ones, the kind that leave juice dribbling down your chin when you sink your teeth in. Peaches. Fucking pea?—

So you’re a fucking poet now? Forget her,Yakov bellows.She’s nothing. A distraction. Remember what happened the last time you let yourself get distracted?

As a matter of fact, Father, I do remember.

The scars on my back remember, too.

My car waits at the curb, Klaus at attention behind the wheel. He doesn’t speak as I slide into the back seat, just pulls smoothly into traffic.

Good man. He knows when I need silence.

As we drive, the city flows past my window in rivers of neon and shadow. Ten minutes to the abandoned restaurant where Feliks is holding our guest. Ten minutes to get my head in order. Ten minutes to forget the way that littleptichkawhispered, “Or else what?” like she wasn’t afraid of me at all.

I wonder if she’s aware of how easily little birds like her get their wings broken.

It could’ve gone that way, after all. I could’ve clipped her feathers the moment I realized she’d overheard my conversation on the phone with Feliks. A quick twist of the neck and it would’ve beenbye-bye, birdy.Another unfortunate mess easily swept under yet another bloodstained rug.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Won’t be the last.

But one look at those wide green eyes told me what she truly was. Not a threat, not a spy, but a dove snared in the wrong trap.

So I did what I shouldn’t have done: played with my food. I gave myself this little indulgence.

And why not? I deserve it. I fuckingdeserveone goddamn moment for myself before I hurl the last of my humanity into the gaping maw of this Bratva that always wants more, more, more from me.

It took my mother. It took my childhood. And now, it’s taking my freedom.

Because once I return to the gala from this little errand, I’m going to meet the woman I have to marry.

That’s the only reason I’ve bothered attending this bullshit dog-and-pony show in the first place. Fuck knows I don’t usually make an appearance. Invites for these kinds of social torture sessions stuff my inbox on the regular. Everybody—civilian and criminal alike—wants Sasha Ozerov to darken the door of their little soirees. I’m a curioso, an oddity, a man who lives so far outside of the ridiculous lines into which they’ve boxed themselves that all they can do is gawk and whisper behind their hands.

There he goes,they tell themselves.Don’t get too close or he might bite.

They’re right—I might. And normally, that threat is enough to keep the gawkers at bay.

It wasn’t enough for the reporter, though. That little bird flew close enough for me to snatch her out of the air and make a meal of her.

And fuck, what a meal it was. Her moans are still echoing in my head. She couldn’t even spit out the wordPlease—that’s how badly she wanted, needed me.

Fuck me if I didn’t feel the exact same.

It was a lifetime’s worth of impulse all distilled into one moment. Because I don’t bend, I don’t break, I don’t waver,ever.

Except for once.

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