Page 131 of 10 Days to Surrender

Next to me, Jasmine is slowly sinking into a chair of her own. She’s eggshell white, that hand still covering her mouth like it’ll stop the screams from coming just as long as she keeps it there.

“You married me,” he rasps. “Some part of you at least has to believe I’m telling you the truth. I am not what I was then, Ariel. You looked into my eyes an hour ago and I know you saw that I’m changed.”

The rain turns his shirt translucent. I want to claw it off him. I want to clawhimoff the earth.

“You think a vow fixes it?” My voice fragments into a thousand shards. “You think marrying me erases what you did to my sister?”

Lightning again, overhead and within at the same time. I grit my teeth against the agony as the rain pours, pours, pours.

“It wasn’t like that.” His hands flex like he wants to reach for me. Like he still has the right.

“Bullshit.” I press a palm to the molten, churning ache in my belly. “You fed her to him. You sat there while he?—”

“I kept heralive!” The roar bursts out of him, raw and ragged. “One way or another, Leander was going to do what he wanted. He would’ve killed her for refusing the match. Dragan would’ve skinned her alive if she’d fled without my help. So yes—I let him think cruelty was our common language. I let Dragan carve his initials into the world so I could carve mine into his throat when it mattered.”

Another contraction. White-hot supernova, pressure like the earth crushing me in its jaws.

Sasha takes a step forward. “Ariel?—”

“Don’t.” I spit blood and rainwater at his feet. “Don’t you dare make this sound noble. You didn’t save her. You used her. Usedme. You needed Leander’s empire. Jas and me… we’re nothing more than the shiny keys.”

Thunder drowns out his curse. When it passes, he’s closer—close enough that I smell the storm on his skin. “You really believe that? After everything?”

“I believethis.” I fumble the letter from Jasmine’s slack grip and shove it against his chest. “You let him hurt her. You laughed.”

He doesn’t look at the paper. His eyes stay locked on mine, blue going black at the edges. “You want the truth? Fine. The first time Dragan cracked her rib, I drank with him until dawn. When he bragged about making her beg, I refilled his glass. And every second—” His voice breaks. “Every fucking second, I told myself it was the price of keeping her breathing.”

I’m distantly aware that the rain has become torrential. Damn near biblical. We’ll have to go in soon, or we’ll be swept away.

But no one moves. My mother, Zoya, Marco, Gina, Lora, Pavel, Feliks—all of them watch in mute, dumbfounded shock as Sasha, Jasmine, and I stand still in this fucked-up triangle that none of us can escape.

“But the real truth,” Sasha snarls, “the only one I know you’ll believe, is this: I would do it all again.”

Mama gasps.

Feliks’s jaw drops.

My eyes stay fixated on Sasha. Only on Sasha.

“I would do it all again,” he repeats as he advances toward me where I stand, clinging to the iron chair like a crutch. “I would mold Dragan to be violent. I would arrange his marriageto Jasmine. I would help her fake her death. I would send her across the ocean. I would tell you and your father and your mother that she’d died. I would plan with Leander to make you my bride. I’d let you keep mourning your sister, thinking she was dead. I would redo every lie, every betrayal, every cruel, calculating deception… because it brought me to you.”

It hurts. What he’s saying hurts and what’s happening inside me hurts. All around us, the storm moans as if the world itself is hurting, too.

I close my eyes as tears become rain, and both of them soak through my wedding dress. “I thought I knew you,” I whisper. “I thought I saw the real man beneath the monster. But there is no beneath, is there? The monster is all there is.”

Lightning flashes. In the strobe, I see it: the exact moment his heart fractures.

I don’t have long to linger on him, though. Because the next contraction that comes is the most undeniable yet. Then pain blots out everything: his face, the storm, the lies. Just fire and pressure and the terrible, tearing sense ofsplit.

Mama rushes to my side, her hands cool on my face. “The babies,” she gasps. “Something’s wrong.”

“We need to get her to a hospital,” Gina says, already pulling out her phone. But after a moment, she curses. “No signal.”

Zoya starts barking orders; Lora quivers; Feliks and Pavel stand with fists clench, caught between love and loyalty. Marco, poor bastard, doesn’t know what the hell he’s wandered into.

But I barely have eyes for any of them. My world is shrinking down to a one-inch wide pinpoint, focused on Sasha’s face. It’s all I can see.

Feliks appears at Sasha’s shoulder. “The storm’s knocked out the power lines. The roads will be flooding soon.”

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