Page 114 of 10 Days to Surrender

His gaze drops to my belly, and I shift, suddenly aware of how the shirt rides up, exposing the swell.

“Sasha—”

“No, listen.” He leans closer, the screen trembling in his grip. “I’m a bastard, I know that. I’ve fucked up more times than I can count. But every move I make, every bullet I fire—it’s to keep you safe. To give our kids a world where they don’t have to run.” His voice breaks onrun, and I see it: the boy beneath the scar, the one Yakov tried to choke out of him. “I’m not good at this. Staying soft, staying open—it terrifies me. But losing you… that’s worse.”

Something hot and painful expands in my chest. “You think I care about that? About territory and power? All I want is?—”

“Me,” he finishes. “I know. But don’t you see? That’s what I’m fighting for. The chance to be that man. The one who stays. The one who tends gardens instead of burying bodies beneath them.” His eyes bore into mine through the screen. “I’m not running away from that future. I’m trying to secure it.”

I press my fingers against my lips, fighting back tears. “And what if securing it kills you?”

“It won’t.” The familiar steel enters his voice. “Because I have something worth coming back for now. Something worth living for.”

A tiny foot kicks against my ribs, as if in agreement. Despite everything, I find myself smiling. “Three somethings, actually.”

His answering smile is soft and fierce and everything I’ve been aching for since he left.

The cicadas outside reach a fever pitch. Sasha’s pixelated face waits, suspended in the blue-lit dark. My thumb brushes the screen before I can stop it, smearing his jawline into a watercolor wound.

“I’m not—” My voice splinters. I try again. “I’m not angry you left, you know. Well, it’s notjustthat.”

He doesn’t interrupt. Just gives me the space I need to unfold everything that’s been swelling up inside of me.

“It’s that I’mterrified.” I swallow and keep going. “That I’ll spend the rest of my life explaining to our children why the city mattered more than they did. That you chose New York over?—”

He stands abruptly, camera jostling as he strides to the penthouse balcony. Night wind snarls his hair. For one heart-stopping second, I think he’ll hang up.

Instead, he flips the camera.

New York sprawls below—a beast made of light and skyscraper fangs. His voice comes rough through the speakers. “I want you to look at this, Ariel. Look at all of it very, very carefully.” His finger comes into the screen. “You see the green glow? That’s the Met. Over there, at the foot of that building, is the restaurant where we had our first dinner. The spa is to the east. If you squint, you can see Central Park, where we sat on a bench and had hot dogs. This city is filled with the places that made usus,Ariel.”

Sasha flips the camera back on his face. The expression there makes my breath seize up in my throat. Eyes black with intensity, jaw clenched tight. “And you know what? If it was going to cost me you or our children, I’d strike the match to burn it all down myself.”

I touch my quivering lips. “Sasha…”

“I used to think that the past was what mattered. There are alleys I’ve bled in out there, courtesy of my father’s hand. Stretches of asphalt that held my mother until she died. Do those get to hold the same sway over me that the places we first kissed do? No. Fuck no. The city isn’t a kingdom,ptichka.It’s a grave.”

Wind whips the microphone. Far below him, a lonely siren wails.

“But you—” He brings the phone close until his scar fills the screen, until I can count each stitch mark Yakov left. “You’re the resurrection.”

The twins kick hard enough to ripple the shirt of his I’m wearing. His gaze drops, transfixed.

“I’m coming home,” he rasps. “Not for power. Not for pride.” Callused fingers brush the camera in a ghost caress. “But for the first sunrise you wake in my arms with our children between us.”

Manhattan’s heartbeat thrums through the speakers—subway growls, taxi horns, the million chaotic rhythms that built him. But underneath, steady as a pulse:

“Because I love you, Ariel Ward.”

I shift position, trying to find a comfortable angle despite my heavily pregnant belly. His shirt, swaddled around me, rides up again as I move. Through the phone, I hear Sasha’s sharp intake of breath.

“I miss you,” I whisper into the darkness.

“I miss you, too,” he growls back. “Every part of you.”

“Which part of me, specifically? The hormonal crying? The peeing every ten minutes? Or the?—”

“All of it.” His knuckle whitens where it grips the phone. “Every impossible, infuriating inch.”

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