Page 94 of 10 Days to Surrender

My contribution burns in my pocket where I’ve kept it folded all day. The paper is soft from nervous handling, its edges worn. I’ve spent weeks working on it in secret, sketching out the branches of our tangled family tree. From Baba’s own grandparents in Athens, to him and Mama, Jas and me. The Ozerovs are on there, too. I couldn’t stop myself from looping them in; they’re as much a part of our story as anyone now. Yakov, Nataliya, Sasha… they grow and intertwine with us. At the highest branch lies the twins’ empty spaces, waiting to be filled.

I tuck the sheet beneath a rock and step back. The paper shifts in the wind. Our family names blur together, Makris flowing into Ozerov like watercolors bleeding across a page.

Kosti withdraws an old maritime compass, a brass antique. “You always did have a terrible sense of direction, brother,” he murmurs, placing it among the stones. “Maybe this will help.” The needle spins lazily, settling on a bearing that doesn’t quite point north.

Then we’re done, and I don’t want to think about Baba anymore. He did what he did and he had his reasons, even if they weren’t very good in the end. He didn’t break us. Not fully. We’re all chipped and scarred and battered, but here.

I look up at Sasha, who’s just a smear of shadow and the orange ember of a cigarette beneath the awning of the villa. He nods and holds out his hand.

I go toward him.

My future is that way.

36

SASHA

The temperature gauge in Marco’s vineyard reads forty-two degrees Celsius, which explains why my linen shirt is already plastered to my back. But the locals don’t seem to mind the heat. They’re all chuckling as they join the throngs meeting up in front of the cantina, awaiting today’s marching orders.

How we even ended up here remains a bit of a mystery. A neighbor came calling, though “neighbor” is stretching it to its maximum, seeing as how the villa is situated two miles from the next closest inhabitable structure.

But I was out repairing a fence on the southern border of the property and Marco came bearing gifts of Italian coffee beans and bottles of wine, and the women were easily swayed.

So before I knew it, they’d volunteered Kosti and me—mostly me—to help with the grape harvest at Marco’s vineyard.

I tried to fight. But Ariel is… highly persuasive. Particularly with her clothes off.

In the end, I conceded. Several times.

Now, I’m sweating my ass off and the day has barely begun. I keep one eye on Ariel as she waddles toward the wooden vats where all of Marco’s many victims are gathering for his instructions. She’s wearing a loose cotton dress that makes her look deceptively delicate, though I know better. Just this morning, she threw a shoe at my head for suggesting she might want to skip today’s festivities.

“Benvenuti, amici!” Marco’s voice booms across the yard. He stands in one of the massive oak vats, fingers already stained purple from picking grapes. The man has the enthusiasm of a circus ringmaster and hands that never stop moving when he talks.

He starts waxing poetic about the history of the vineyard and the value of neighborly love. Silver hair, sun-leathered skin, eyes crinkled from decades of squinting into Tuscan light. A widower, according to village gossip. Even I can admit that the man has charisma in abundance.

Belle, apparently, couldn’t agree more.

She gravitates to the front of our little crowd, transfixed. When Marco mimes face-planting into a vat during his first harvest, she doesn’t just laugh—shegiggles. I’ve never heard that sound from her before. It transforms her entire face, erasing fifteen years of careful composure.

“Looks like someone’s got a crush,” Ariel whispers, elbowing me in the ribs.

“Your mother? Never.” But I’m smirking as I say it, watching Belle tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Marco notices the gesture and winks at her, which sets off another round of giggles.

“Come, come!” Marco waves Belle forward to illustrate how, once all the grapes are gathered, we’ll stomp them into juice. “It is simple! Like dancing,sì?”

He extends his hand to help her up onto the platform. Innocent touch, lingering just a half-second too long. Belle’s cheeks flush pink.

“Five bucks says he asks her to dinner by sunset,” Ariel murmurs.

I snort. “Ten says she beats him to it.”

“So weird,” she mumbles, cheeks heated.

“Does it bother you? If it does, I’ll?—”

“Don’t you dare do anything, Mr. Intrusive,” she snaps, yanking me by the wrist before I can go waterboard Marco with grape juice. “I’m just wondering what the proper etiquette is when you witness your mom’s midlife sexual awakening.”

All around us, the crowd is laughing as they get ready for the day’s work. Marco is draped over Belle now, demonstrating how to swirl stems into a crown. I hear him teasingly call hervedova nera,a black widow, and she laughs and smacks him playfully in the chest.

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