Page 5 of 10 Days to Surrender

“In at least one way. Hesavedme, Ariel. He?—”

“And lied about it!” I cry out. I leap to my feet, and the motion makes tea go sloshing over the edge of my cup. It puddles andstarts a sad, brown waterfall off the lip of the table, but I don’t care. “I’ve spent fifteen years thinking my sister was fuckingdead,Jasmine! We had a funeral! Did you know that? Baba even insisted on a goddamn casket. I sat in the front pew in a dress I stole out of yourcloset and looked up at an empty fucking wooden box covered in flowers. There’s a graveyard in Brighton Beach right now that has yourname on a headstone. And yeah, sure, Sasha didn’t know me until this whole marriage deal became a thing. But once he did, he could’ve told me at any time. When I was falling for him—when he was twisting and manipulating me and playing me, because apparently, that’s just so fucking easy for him—he could’ve told me and ended fifteen years of my heart hurting so bad that there were nights I thought about trying to rip it out of my chest. But he didn’t. He lied. So no, Jasmine, he’s not a good man. I don’t care if he saved you. I don’t care what he did, what he’s doing, or what he ever does again. Sasha Ozerov is not a good man.”

I’m sweaty and breathless by the time I’m done. Jasmine, in classic big sister fashion, is unfazed by my eruption. She sits there the whole time, calm and cool as could be, nodding until I run out of steam and sink back into my chair, still jittery at my fingertips.

Sighing, she reaches behind her to pluck a dish rag off the counter. She bends over and dabs up some of the spilled tea. “Is—was—Baba a good man?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“No.” She stoops to mop up the rest of the mess I made. “I’m asking if he was all good or all bad.”

“He married you to a monster and then tried to do the same thing to me. He chased Mama out the door and broke her hearttoo many times to count. Which part of that is supposed to be ‘good’?”

She keeps nodding for a while. Then she returns the rag to the counter and laces her hands in front of her. “When you were four, you fell off your bicycle. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on you, but I got distracted doing I-don’t-even-know-what. He saw, though. He came charging out of the house—I remember because he’d been in the middle of shaving, so half his face still had foam on it—and he scooped you up right off the asphalt. You were throwing one hell of a tantrum, so he sat down with you on the stoop and sang you a lullaby until you calmed down. You don’t remember that, do you?”

I hesitate before shaking my head.

“I know what Baba did to me, Ari. It horrified me that he thought he could get away with doing the same thing to you. That’s why I called Kosti. I knew it was a risk—but at least I tried to say something.”

“What’s the point of all this, Jas?” I wipe my nose and try to sip at what’s left of my lukewarm tea.

“The point,neraïdoula mou,is that no one is all good or all bad. We’ve all got a little bit of everything in us. Even Baba. Even Sasha. If I’d tried to hate either of them, I’d have been dead a long time ago. Fifteen years of clinging onto something that poisonous just eats a person from the inside-out.” She reaches over the table to squeeze my hands again. “Hating them lets the bad stuff inside you win. Don’t do that. It’s such a terrible way to lose the war.”

I want to believe her, but it’s not that easy. Every time I picture Sasha, I get filled with such a burning sense of overwhelm that I have to change the mental channel or else I’ll go insane.

He ruined my life in ten short days. I hated him, then I wanted him, then I loved him, then he broke me.

Now, my big sister is here, telling me to simply…let that go?

Maybe the last decade and a half has wizened her a hell of a lot faster than it did me. If I was that enlightened, there’d be religions with my face on their altar.

Her face, though, is full of such patient hope.

“I’ll try,” I croak. “No promises.”

“You always were stubborn,” she laughs. “Just like Mama.” She rolls my knuckles between her palms, then sets my hand back down gently on the tabletop. “Go take a shower. Let me make you something to eat. We can talk about everything once you’re fed and clean and rested. We’ve got a lot of time for that now.”

“But—”

“No buts,” she says with a wink. “Honestly, you smell like B.O. and airplane pretzels. It’s hard to have a serious conversation.”

I snort a teary, snotty laugh and flash her a middle finger. “Still a bitch,” I murmur.

“Still a brat,” she replies, winking.

But she’s right about one thing: we do have a lot of time.

We have the rest of forever.

3

SASHA

SIX MONTHS LATER

The cinderblock slips from my grasp, crashing into frozen mud with the sound of a skull hitting pavement. It tears my hands open as it goes.

“Goddammit.”

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