Page 29 of 10 Days to Surrender

Then the flashlight flicks off.

“Andate avanti tutti.”

Ariel’s exhale shudders through the car as we roll forward into the inkblot hills of Italy.

We stop to stretch our legs at a roadside chapel halfway to hell. Like the farmhouse, it’s a shell of what it once was. Moonlight bleeds through shattered stained glass, painting the Virgin Mary’s face in fractured blues. I lean against a pew splintered by termites and press my palm to the fresh blood seeping through my shirt once again.

Damn thing won’t stay shut. There’s probably a lesson in that, but I’m too stubborn to learn it.

Ariel and Jasmine settle into a pew in the back row, their heads bowed together as they whisper back and forth. I can’t stop looking over at her again and again, even though her face hardens every time she catches me watching.

It’s just that seeing her like this, pregnant with my children… Fucking hell.

My children.The phrase still feels foreign on my tongue, like trying to speak a language I’ve only heard in dreams.

Kosti spreads the map he took from the car’s glove compartment out on the altar. I join him at his shoulder as we scrutinize the twisting, squiggling highways of Europe.

His finger points at where we started, just north of the Spanish Pyrenees on the western coast of France. He drags it east, zigzagging through all the back roads we took, through the pass in the Alps that spat us out into northern Italy.

“Our options are scarce,” he says with a grimace. “You know where they’ll be.”

“At every fucking airport between here and Asia. Yes, I’m aware.”

“And even if we could find a plane?—”

Our eyes shift in unison to Ariel. “She can’t.”

Jasmine told us enough about Ariel’s blood pressure and what the doctor said about not flying to alter our plans. Ariel might still want to risk it—but I sure as fuck don’t. Those aremy childrenin there. I intend to keep both them and their mother safe.

She’s glowing blue in the gloom, caught in a ray of moonlight arcing through the stained glass. Her belly looks like a globe resting on its axis. A whole world I never knew existed.

The women see us looking at them and frown. Jasmine helps Ariel rise and they shuffle over. “We can’t keep driving forever,” says Jasmine. “It’s not good for her.”

“We won’t.” I glance at Kosti, who knuckles at his tired eyes. When he looks back at me, he nods slightly.

“There’s a villa,” I begin to explain. “Deep in the Tuscan countryside.”

“It’s stocked,” Kosti adds. “Solar generator. Well water. Enough meat in the deep freezer to last us until Judgment Day.”

Jasmine frowns. “And we stay there until…?”

“Until it’s safe to do otherwise.”

“What a plan that is!” Ariel’s laugh couldn’t be more bitter. “We’re just all supposed to play house in the middle of nowhere like some happy family until what—until Dragan just gives up?”

“Until the babies come and you can make your own decisions safely,” I growl.

“My due date is ten weeks away!” Ariel’s hands curl protectively around her belly. “You expect me to stay trapped in some villa with you forten weeks? Have you lost your mind?” She turns and gawks at Kosti and Jasmine. “He has, right? He’s insane. That cannot be the plan.”

“Would you prefer Dragan find you?” I snarl. “This isn’t about what any of us want. It’s about keeping you—all of you—alive.”

“You keep acting like you’re in charge, when you’re literally the one who?—”

Jasmine steps between us, hands raised like she’s directing traffic at the gates of purgatory. “It’s alright, Ari. We can?—”

The chapel doors burst open as the midnight breeze picks up. Out of nowhere, wind howls through the nave, snuffing the candle Kosti lit. In the sudden dark, I see it—the way Ariel’s hands instinctively cradle her stomach, the tremor she thinks she’s hidden.

She’s terrified.

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