Page 23 of 10 Days to Surrender

“You’d prefer Dragan does it?” He downshifts, veering onto a coastal road. Cliffs drop to our left, hungry waves below.

Another bullet shatters the rear windshield. Jasmine screams, ducking. Glass rains.

“Hold on!” Sasha wrenches the wheel. The car fishtails, tires spitting sand. For one heart-stopping second, we teeter on the cliff’s edge.

Then he mashes the gas.

I close my eyes and scream. Sasha’s hand flies to my knee, squeezes once—I’m here—before snatching back like I burned him.

But the maneuver works. We straighten out and take off like a cannonball, soaring down an adjacent road that the motorcycles can’t follow. For a few minutes, there’s no sound but the tires chewing up highway and our own softening breaths.

The road curves inland. Olive groves whip past. Finally, Jasmine speaks up. “Where are we going?”

“East,” Sasha grunts. “Geneva. There’s a plane?—”

“No.”

Sasha looks at me, brow furrowed. “Ari?—”

“Stop the car.”

“Ari—”

“Stop thefuckingcar, Sasha!”

Gritting his teeth, he finds a side road, pulls off, and cuts the headlights. We’re still out in the countryside, so darkness plunges around us. Clouds block out most of the moon. It’s vague suggestions of shapes around us, nothing more.

Sasha’s voice, though, is very clear. “What the fuck, Ariel?”

“We’re not going east—or north, south, or west, either. We’re not going anywhere with you.” I reach out to find Jasmine in the darkness and clutch her close to me. “Come on, Jas.”

She hesitates. “Ariel, be reasonable?—”

“He’s the reason we’re in this mess!” My voice breaks. “He’s the reason Baba’s dead!”

Sasha goes very still. “Leander knew the risks.”

“He knewyou!” I shove the door open. Cool air floods in. “You’re a plague, Sasha. Everything you touch dies.”

His face shutters. “Then run.”

“Gladly.”

“But,” he adds, “if you run, I’ll chase you. Is that what you want our kid’s first memory to be? Daddy tackling Mommy into a ditch?”

Daddy.What a fucking word.

I jump out of the car and stride away. Sasha follows, leaving Jasmine and Kosti marooned in the car behind us. “They’re twins,” I say quietly when he catches up to me. “And you don’t get to call them yours.”

“Twins.” Sasha’s voice is stunned. Then the bite comes back. “Fine. Twins. They’re mine, aren’t they?”

“Says who?”

He’s close enough that I can feel his breath pluming across my face. “Look me in the eye and tell me they aren’t.”

Tension ripples between us. I don’t have to see Sasha to know he’s brooding, glaring, that slanted V of his eyebrows sharpening to a knife tip.

“I hate you,” I whisper.

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