Page 142 of 10 Days to Surrender

“… moe.”

It stays on Jasmine.

Dragan shrugs again. “This will work.” He flicks off the safety.

But before he can pull the trigger, there is movement at his feet. We all look in unison as Kosti wraps his hand around Dragan’s ankle.

“Don’t—! Dragan, we had a deal?—”

Dragan kicks him away. “Your deals mean less than dog shit now, old man.”

“You said—you said if I brought you Sasha, you’d spare them!” Blood sprays from his busted lips with every gasped syllable. Kosti drags himself upright and claws at Dragan’s pants. “Jasmine—Jasmine is?—”

The disgust I feel for him overpowers anything else foul I can sense.Thisis the game he was playing? Feed me to Dragan to save his nieces? For fuck’s sake, we could have done this together! If he’d only asked…

Kosti glances to me and sees the repulsion written on my face. “Sasha…” His voice is wet with blood and shame. He struggles to his feet, swaying. “I had to. You have to understand?—

“Understand what?” I spit. “That you sold us out to thisublyudok? That you let him burn my city?”

He shakes his head. “I couldn’t watch it happen again.”

My jaw tightens. “Watch what happen?”

“Another sacrifice. Another girl fed to you wolves.” He wipes blood from his chin. “I went looking, you know. It all seemed so neat and convenient. One Makris daughter dead; one left. And who should get the survivor but you? So I went looking. I dug deep—and I found how you manipulated everything. You needed the Serbian-Greek alliance to fail so that you could take Dragan’s place. So you arranged it all—the marriage. The abuse. Youcountedon him breaking her. You used her pain to expand your empire.”

Jasmine makes a small, wounded sound. Her eyes find mine through the rain streaming through the broken roof.

“And now?” Kosti’s laugh is weak. “Now, you are doing it again. Another Makris daughter. Another arranged marriage. Another piece moved across your board.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t let Ariel become another Jasmine.”

“So you went to Dragan.”

“At least he’s honest about what he is.” Kosti’s shoulders slump. “You… you pretend to be better. He does not.” Finally, he drags his gaze back to Dragan. “But you struck a deal, Dragan. I gave you what you want. Give me what I am due.”

Again, Dragan shrugs.

Again, Dragan looks at me.

Again, Dragan says, “So be it.”

Then he puts a bullet between Kosti’s eyes.

Jasmine screams, knife completely forgotten. I can only watch, too stunned to so much as blink, as the man who saved me just to damn me again goes slumping to the ground, bleeding from the hole in his forehead.

Kosti’s hand flops lifelessly in between us. Reaching for Jasmine, I think. He’ll never quite get there.

Dragan blows smoke from his pistol’s barrel. “Annoying to the last, that old bastard.” He pivots to press the still-hot gun to my nose again.

I open my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself. I might die on my knees, unloved and unredeemed.

But I will die with a curse on my lips for a man who doesn’t even deserve the breath. As I inhale to speak it, though, something else speaks instead.

The roar of an engine that has seen better days.

We all turn as one just in time to see two blinding white headlights pour into the church. Stone screams as the Peugeot plows through the rotting wall, blasting the last remaining stones to smithereens. The car’s grille catches Dragan cleanly, inches away from smiting me along with him, slamming him into a pillar with a wet crunch of bone. Dust and debris explode outward, choking the air.

Then—chaos.

Feliks comes keening out of the corner. He hurls a knife that sinks deep in one Serbian’s throat, followed by a stone that crushes the skull of another.

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