Page 15 of 10 Days to Surrender

“I warned you not to say her name.”

He doesn’t struggle. Just watches me with that infuriating Mona Lisa smirk. “You think I can’t see the wheels turning in your head, son? Save Jasmine; earn sainthood in Ariel’s eyes. Return triumphant. Disney fucking ending.”

“Fuck. You.” My spittle dots his glasses. “This is about stopping Dragan and nothing else.”

“Then why,” he wheezes, “are your first words always aboutAriel?”

The gun is in my left hand before I realize it’s moving. Barrel pressed to the sagging flesh beneath his jaw. Kosti’s pulse drums against cold steel.

“Say her name one more time,” I snarl. “I fucking dare you.”

His Adam’s apple bobs. “This rage isn’t Serbian blood on your boots, Sasha. It’sherblood in your veins. You miss her. You?—”

I roar and drop him. He crumples to the ground and I loom over him, breath sawing, finger white on the trigger as I aim it down.

“Make the calls. Get a jet ready.”

Kosti laughs. “Or what? You’ll shoot me? Go ahead. Faster than waiting for Dragan to end your farce.” He spits on the floor, then wipes his mouth on a sleeve. “She won’t take you back, you know. Even if you save her sister.”

I turn away in disgust. “Jasmine’s mine to protect. My debt.”

“Since when?”

“Since I made her a corpse in her sister’s eyes.”

Kosti staggers up and gestures to the duffel I just filled with weapons. “If you go like this, you’ll get them all killed. Dragan’s expecting?—”

I silence him with a stare. “Dragan isn’t expecting shit. As far as he knows, I’ve been dead for six months. Let me stay that way a little longer.”

The cabin door slams behind me. The moon bleeds white through pines. In the northern fields, deer freeze at the stink of murder on the wind.

I climb into Kosti’s truck and twist the keys, bringing the engine roaring to life. But a moment later, the passenger door opens and Kosti gets in, groaning softly with the effort.

I eye him. “Are you sure?”

“I’m old, not dead,” he snaps. “And besides, Jasmine is my niece, not yours. Drive the fucking car.”

6

ARIEL

I’m up in the middle of the night again, blue light from my laptop painting my face. Sleep was too full of dreams and the summer air is too sticky to be comfortable for a beach ball with bladder control issues like me.

The cursor on my screen blinks. It hasn’t moved in three days.

Dear Sasha,

They have your nose.

“Fuck this,” I mutter under my breath. I pause to make sure Jasmine didn’t hear me. But the steady murmur of her breathing continues unbothered.

I rise, careful not to scrape the chair over the floorboards, and waddle to the door. It’s surprisingly smooth to slip out of the apartment, given my current girth. I may be a whale, but I’m a ninja whale.

Once I’m outside and down the stairs, I can breathe again. I just needed a little distance from that folder filled with bits andpieces of love I’m going to give to children who will never know their father. It was suffocating me, full-on claustrophobia.

Out here, though, the world is wide open. The breeze is cool and salty and the sky is filled with stars.

I make for the beach. No one and nothing else is out, not even clouds, so the sea churns with shards of white glass that get consumed and born again with each new set of waves.

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