Page 108 of 10 Days to Surrender

He doesn’t look up, but his shoulders tense. He knows I’m here.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” I croak. “You’re going back.”

He keeps packing. “We knew we’d get here eventually, Ariel. This isn’t a surprise.”

“What happened to ‘not until the babies come’?”

He’s half-turned away, but the muscle cording in his jaw is all the answer I need. “Things changed.”

“What kinds of things?”

“The kinds of things that don’t concern you.”

“Be more fucking vague, I dare you,” I snap.

He pauses, a shirt folded in his hands, before sighing and setting it down. “I thought you trusted me to make the right choices for us. For this family.”

I want to laugh in his face. Or maybe kiss it. Or maybe claw it to ribbons, I’m not sure. This is the ice I was talking about in my journal entries. I feel myself shivering from it, like little pieces of me are numbing with every passing second. “And I thought you trusted me enough to tell me when you were planning on going to do something stupid.”

“Is it ‘stupid’ to keep you safe?” he asks as he picks up the gun and pops out the clip. This time, there’s no mistaking what I see—there are two fewer bullets in there than there ought to be.

“It’s stupid if it costsyouto make that happen!” I cry out. “Sasha, what don’t you understand: A safe world that doesn’t have you in it is not the world I want to live in!”

He rams the clip back into the gun with aclackthat makes my heart ache. Then he looks up at me. “Two men broke in last night, Ariel. They’re buried in the garden now.” He advances on me, and I step back instinctively, almost screaming when my heel strikes the wall at my back. “They were idiots. But what happens when two more come after that? And two after that? And two after that? And what happens if those next menaren’tidiots, hm? What happens if there are trained killers slipping through our windows and rappelling down our roof? What the fuckdo you think happens if I don’t put myself between you and them? I’ll tell you what happens.” He points two fingers in the shape of a gun at my forehead and whispers, “Bang.”Then he lowers them to the crest of my belly. “Bang. Bang.”

My face is hot and streaked with tears as I slap his hand aside. He says something, but I don’t hear, nor do I want to. Right now, I just want to be far the fuck away from Sasha Ozerov.

I storm outside, needing air, needing space, needing anything that isn’t the sight of a duffel bag in the doorway with a half-empty gun resting on top.

But I only get about two steps into the garden before I freeze in place.

It’s an absolute disaster. Jagged basil stems, leaves ripped clean. Torn oregano roots dangle like exposed nerves. The dirt is churned everywhere, all of our neat rows completely wrecked. I’m ready to blame Sasha—didn’t he just say what he did to my garden? But it’s not so easy to blame him. It never really is, is it?

Because standing in the middle of it all is the true culprit.

A goat.

A fuckinggoat.

The creature lifts its head, jaw working side to side, green flecks caught in its beard. It blinks at me with rectangular pupils, thoroughly unrepentant.

“Hey,” I say. Weak. Like I’m the intruder here.

It stomps a hoof into the rosemary. Crushed needles release their pine-sharp stink.

My hands flutter uselessly. Eight weeks of Jasmine and me coaxing life from this stubborn Tuscan soil. Eight weeks of pressing seeds into dirt, whispering, “Grow, grow, please just grow” as my own body swelled.

Now, it’s all mud and teeth-marks. Ruined.

The goat bleats.

“Get—” I swipe at my cheeks. “Getout.”

It doesn’t. Just lowers its head and takes a deliberate bite of my last surviving lavender. Purple petals vanish between yellowed molars.

Something in me snaps.

I lurch forward, waving arms made clumsy by thirty-four weeks of twins. “I saidgo! Shoo!Vaffanculo, you—youbastard!”

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