Page 127 of 10 Days to Surrender

Both our frowns tilt further downward.

A slight tilt of my chin is all it takes. He passes Gina to Lora and immediately makes his way toward the villa, whistling happily, casual enough not to draw attention.

“What are you thinking about?” Ariel asks, pulling back to study my face.

I school my features into perfect contentment. “How beautiful you look in candlelight.”

She laughs and swats my chest. “Smooth talker. Do you think you’re getting lucky tonight or something?”

“I did have plans for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” She grins seductively. “What kind of plans?”

We turn another slow circle. Through the windows, I track Feliks’s progress through the villa’s ground floor. No sign of alarm yet, but the knot in my gut won’t ease.

Not tonight,I think fiercely.Whatever this is, it can’t happen tonight.

But then Feliks appears at an upstairs window. Kosti’s room. Even from here, I can see his face is stricken and pale.

He crooks his finger at me.

Come here.

49

SASHA

I bend down and press a kiss to Ariel’s temple. “Gonna go find the bathroom,moya zhena,”I murmur in her ear. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”

She laughs and pulls me down for one more kiss on the lips. “No promises.”

But the smile dies on my face when I start the trek into the villa.

Feliks meets me by the foot of the stairs. From the dance floor, his face was bad; up close, it’s far, far worse.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I tell him.

He just shakes his head. “Wait until you see.”

I don’t know what I’m bracing myself for as we mount the staircase and go down the hall to Kosti’s bedroom. A heart attack? Did the old man slip and fall? Did the cigarettes finally catch up and exact their vengeance?

It occurs to me, perhaps for the first time, what a debt I owe Kosti. I feel like a selfish bastard for waiting this long to see it.He dragged me from that alley and saved my life. Why? Was it loyalty for Leander? Hatred for Dragan? Love for Jasmine, or simply balancing the scales?

He did so much more than simply pull me out of harm’s way, though. For six months, he stood over me. Stood by me. Kept me breathing. Kept me sane. And if he did it by irritating the fuck out of me sometimes—well, we each have our own methods.

Never once did he ask for thanks or repayment. No matter how many times I offered it, he’d simply shrug it off and light another cigarette. “You owe me nothing,neania,” he’d say. “Not one red cent.”

So my teeth are clenched as I round the corner to his room, ready for blood or an old man on death’s doorstep.

What I find instead is…

Nothing.

The closets are stripped bare. His go-bag, always packed and ready by the door, is missing. His bed has been neatly made, sheets drawn taut. It’s like he was never fucking here.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The desk is the only item of furniture that still shows some signs of life. I see a black, rubberized phone. A notepad. And a laptop with a stark red screen.

“Feliks,” I growl, pointing at the computer screen, “what the fuck is that?”

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