Page 139 of 10 Days to Surrender

Beside him, Kosti looks like he’s aged a decade in a minute. His shoulders are a broken slump. When lightning flashes through, I catch the shine of tears on his whiskered cheeks.

“Jasmine,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry. I never meant?—”

“Shut up!” Her voice cracks like thunder. “Both of you, just… shut up.”

The gun trembles harder. I recognize the telltale signs of someone unused to holding that much death in their hands. I’m maybe fifty feet shy of where I need to be before I can make a move. At the rate I’m going, it’ll take another three minutes, maybe four, to get in position. God only knows how far back Feliks is.

“For fifteen years,” she croaks, “I’ve lived in shadows. Jumped at every noise. Changed my name so many times I sometimes forget who I really am.” Her laugh is bitter as grave dirt. “I’m remembering now.”

Dragan’s laugh echoes off the crumbling saints. “You think pointing a gun makes you strong? I remember the first time you tried to fight me. That little kitchen knife.” He tsks. “You couldn’t even hold it straight.”

Jasmine swallows. “You broke my wrist.”

“And yet you still made me breakfast the next morning.” His grin is a jagged sickle moon. “Slatko.So obedient once you learned your place.”

For a moment, I see her as she was fifteen years ago—bruised face, cowering in a silk nightgown, clutching a shattered rib.Please, Sasha. Please.

“You’re nothing,” she snarls. “A rabid dog who only knows how to bite.”

Dragan steps closer to her. Glass crunches under his boot. “Yet here you are,draga, still flinching when I move too fast.”

She fires. The bullet punches a chunk from the altar.

He doesn’t blink. “Missed.”

“The next one won’t.”

“Ah, but your hands shake. Like they did when you’d beg me to stop.” His gaze flicks to Kosti, crumpled and bleeding. “You should thank me. Without my lessons, you’d still be that simpering girl your father sold.”

“I’m not her anymore.”

“No?” He takes a step forward, and even from here, I can see how she flinches. “Then what are you,kurvo? What are you now but the ghost of what I made you?”

“I’m what survived you,” she declares. “Every mark you left, every bone you broke—I lived through it all. And now…” Her finger tightens on the trigger. “Now, I get to decide how this story ends.”

But I see what she doesn’t—shadows detaching themselves from the darkness behind the nave. Dragan’s men take shape around her.

Jasmine notices too late. She spins, the gun swinging wildly between targets. “Stay back!”

The nearest thug snorts. “Or what,krasivaya? You’ll miss us, too?”

She fires in a panic. Like the others, the shot goes wide, pocking the wall harmlessly. They all laugh—deep, rumbling chuckles that shake dust from the rafters. Dragan’s laugh is loudest of all.

He nods to his men. “Disarm the bitch.”

The largest one lunges. Jasmine screams, finger whitening on the trigger until—click. Empty. Themudakwrenches her arm behind her back. The gun clatters to the floor.

“No!” She kicks, thrashing, but another man pins her free arm. Her breaths come in ragged, wet heaves. The sound guts me.

Dragan circles her. “All these years, and you still fight like a cornered kitten.” He trails a knuckle down her cheek. She flinches so hard her skull cracks against the thug’s collarbone. “Remember our wedding rehearsal? You dropped the rings. I made you crawl through broken crystal to find them.”

Jasmine’s pupils blow wide. A tremor wracks her from scalp to soles—the same violent shaking I saw when I pulled her from his penthouse all those years ago.

“You… you held my face in the shards,” she whispers.

“And you bled so prettily.” He grabs her jaw, forcing eye contact. “Just like you’re bleeding now.”

A thin trickle of red snakes from her hairline. Her chest hitches—the prelude to hyperventilation.

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