Page 105 of 10 Days to Surrender

SASHA

I can’t sleep.

My mind churns with maps and markers—New York, splayed out in my head like a buffet. I know every fucking block of my city. I know where the money comes from and where it goes. I know who gets to take a nibble of it as it passes through their hands and who doesn’t. I know which plate it all ends up on.

For fifteen years, the answer to that has been “mine.”Myplate is where the feast ends up. Ever since I snatched Jasmine from Dragan’s maw and set her free, it’s all been mine, mine,mine.

Shit has changed now.

Dragan flipped the buffet table when he slaughtered Leander in front of us and pumped his bullets into my body. It’s been a fucking mess ever since, and I’ve been too weak to storm back in and clean it up. That hasn’t stopped me from dreaming of it—almost every night for eight months now, between dreams of Ariel, I’ve dreamed of him. Of rubbing that bastard’s face in the disaster he created until he suffocates in it, drowns in it. But I’vebeen too powerless to make it happen. A dead man walking. A broken puppet.

Now, though, my body is almost ready. But Dragan isn’t going to just give me back my seat at the table. I’m going to have to take it. It’s going to cost me blood and a pound of flesh, maybe more.

I know all that.

So explain to me why I’m wondering, for the first time in my life…am I willing to pay that price?

I know what Yakov would answer. He’d call me a fucking coward, a pussy, a disgrace to the Ozerov name. Hell, he might be right.

But on the other hand, Yakov is food for the worms in half a dozen different unmarked graves right now. So who gives a damn what he’d say? I care more about a different opinion these days.

And she’s sleeping right next to me.

Dragan’s smirking face fades from memory as I open my eyes and look down at Ariel’s shadow in the darkness. She’s all curves these days. The curve of her hip, her belly, her cheek, her lip. If it was up to me, I’d keep her in bed for the rest of our lives so I could memorize every single one of them.

She might let me. She’s got my hand clutched in hers, even though she’s mid-slumber, and it doesn’t look like she has any intention of letting go. If I woke her up right now and told her I’d give up everything, every last square inch of my kingdom, what would she call me?

Like she can hear the question throbbing in my head, she moans, stirs, and tucks herself into me. That’s an answer. It’s enough forher that I’m here right now. When I wrote notes in that Lamaze class, it was enough for her. When I carry her up the stairs, that’s enough for her. If we’re fucking or cuddling, stargazing or smashing grapes in a sun-soaked vineyard, so long as I’m by her side, that’s enough.

But what if it’snotenough? What if I want more—not for me, never for me, but for her? For our children?

What if I want to give them the whole fucking world on a silver platter? What if I have to die to keep them safe?

What does “enough” mean then?

There are no answers in the darkness. There are only cracks in the ceiling, summer breeze kissing the roof, and owls outside flitting from tree to tree.

Then, out of nowhere, there’s something else.

A creak.

Something shifting in the darkness.

Most people wouldn’t notice it. Just another groan in an old house’s nightly symphony of settling wood and aging stone. But I’ve spent eight long weeks learning the language of this place. I know damn fucking well that this sound doesn’t belong.

So I extricate myself from her embrace and slide out from under the covers as slowly as I can. I’m wearing only boxer briefs, so the moonlight streaming through the window lights up my whole body, every last scar and tattoo.

I retrieve a gun from the dresser. Then I stand still and wait, ear cocked.

Silence.

Silence.

…Ctchk.

This one was closer.

I ghost toward the bedroom door, my bare feet silent as I pad over the floorboards. The villa’s layout unfolds in my mind. Seven entry points on the ground floor. Three sets of stairs. Two viable escape routes from the second story if things go sideways.

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