Page 31 of 10 Days to Surrender

Kosti rubs his neck. “End of the hall. Rose wallpaper. Watch for hornets’ nests,koukla,okay? It’s been a while since this place had guests.”

She’s halfway up the crumbling staircase before he even finishes speaking. Each step makes the wood groan. We listen in silence until a door slams hard enough to shake more dust from the rafters.

Jasmine exhales through her nose. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Don’t waste your breath.” I drag a hand through sweat-damp hair. The motion pulls at my stitches with a painful twang. “Let her stew. It’s what she wants.”

“You’re both impossible.” She disappears upstairs, leaving Kosti and me standing awkwardly.

He lights a cigarette off the stove’s gas burner. “Ten weeks,neania. Think you’ll make it?”

That’s the question of the year. Every protective instinct in my body screams to follow her, to ease her burden, to prepare for the arrivals that will change everything.

You just watched the mother of your children go wheezing up the stairs with a hand braced against her lower back so gravity and exhaustion didn’t drag her down onto the fucking floorboards, you miserable bastard. So what if she tells you to leave her alone? So what if she despises you? Since when do you let that dictate your actions?

But the gulf between us is huge and growing, and try as I might, Ariel won’t let me do the right thing. I tell myself it’s better this way. She doesn’t want my help—and anyway, Dragan demandsmy full attention. I should be plotting, scheming, preparing for war.

Instead, I find myself wondering about cribs and blankets, imagining tiny fingers wrapped around mine.

I look around to see Kosti gazing at me thoughtfully as he puffs on his cigarette.

“Will I make it?” I repeat. “It doesn’t seem to me like I have a choice.” Then I turn and stride toward the door.

I immerse myself in all the things that need doing—checking the perimeter, inventorying supplies, flicking the generator to life to check that it’s operational.

It’s a meditation of sorts. If nothing else, it’s easier than dealing with Ariel. Circuitry doesn’t throw temper tantrums. Wells don’t look at you like you’re the worst thing that ever happened to them. So long as I can focus on those things, the world takes on a manageable shape.

It’s when I run out of tasks that shit takes a turn for the worse. As I sit in the kitchen late into the night and fiddle with an ancient clock that doesn’t actually need repair, I start remembering things I haven’t remembered in months.

Barbed wire biting into my throat as Yakov pulled tighter. “Fight, you coward! Fucking fight it! Show me you’re a man!”

Would you do the same?I press two fingers to the migraine thudding in my temples.If the twins are soft? If they cry? If they?—

A floorboard squeaks. Ariel stands in the doorway, backlit by moonglow. Her hands cradle the underside of her belly.

“Your children don’t like sleeping any more than you do, apparently,” she says.

I look up. Framed like this, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a pair of faded pajamas she must’ve scavenged from the dresser, she looks like a fragment of a dream I don’t deserve to have.

“Good,” I growl, turning away. “Sleep is when your enemies catch you with your guard down.”

“Oh, Jesus. Planning their induction into the Bratva already?”

I rotate a gear between my fingers. “They’ll need Bratva training if they inherit your sense of direction.”

“Fuck y—Ow.”

I’m on my feet before I even begin the intention of moving. Ariel braces herself against my arms, face screwed up with pain.

“Are you?—?”

“I’m fine,” she interrupts. “They just get rowdy when you’re around. Rowdier than usual, I should say.”

Her breath hitches, then eases as the pang goes away. My fingers twitch with the need to feel it. To catch that movement against my palm, just once.

The ache spreads into parts of me I’ve never felt before. “Do they… have names?”

Her arms cross over the swell. Defensive. Always defensive with me. “Jasmine keeps suggesting things. I haven’t picked anything yet.”

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