Page 42 of 10 Days to Surrender

“You can’t even protect yourself!” His voice booms, filling the kitchen. “The doctors said eight to ten weeks for full recovery. Minimum. You really want to gamble lives on your pride?”

Before I can respond, the lights flicker overhead. Once, twice, then plunge us into shadow. My body moves on pure instinct—knife already in hand as I lunge toward the door.

But the sudden movement sends agony ripping through my chest. I double over, spots dancing in my vision.

“Case in fucking point,” Kosti mutters, steadying me with a grip on my good shoulder. “Sit down before you fall down, son.”

The lights sputter back to life. No gunfire follows. No breaking glass. Just the whine of dilapidated wiring and the growing rumble of thunder outside.

Humiliation curdles in my throat. I shove him off.

“The generator is old and finicky,” he explains. “But it’s just a blip, son. Nothing needs killing.”

I let the knife clatter onto the counter as I grimace. “Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” he responds, surprisingly gentle all of the sudden. “You’ve proved my point better than I ever could.”

Through the window, I watch afternoon storm clouds gather over the hills. The sky darkens to the color of old bruises. In her room upstairs, Ariel is probably watching the same view,trapped by her own condition just as surely as I’m trapped by mine.

The irony would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.

Kosti busies himself at the stove, stirring the risotto I abandoned. The strong line of his shoulders betrays tension I can’t quite decode. “Sometimes,” he says without turning, “the bravest thing a warrior can do is wait.”

“Bravery and desperation look the same in the dark.”

He chuckles. “I’ve found them to be two sides of the same coin.” He adds a splash of wine to the pan. The smell of garlic and butter intensifies. “You think I spent my morning picking daisies?”

“You still haven’t said what you’ve spent your morning doing.”

“Making sure we stay ghosts a little longer.” His smile is as vague as his answer. “The less you know about that, the better.”

Lightning flashes outside, painting his face in stark relief. For a moment, I see the man he must have been in his prime—the soldier, the killer, the shadow in the dark. Then he’s just Kosti again, an old man stirring dinner in a decrepit kitchen.

“You’re playing some kind of game,” I accuse.

He shrugs. “Aren’t we all?”

17

ARIEL

I don’t have to wait for the rooster to irritate me this morning. My back beats him to it.

I’m sprawled across the mattress like a beached whale, clutching a pillow to my chest. I swear I’ve doubled in size since yesterday, and I’m feeling it. Every position is a new betrayal—left side pinches a nerve, right side makes the twins sandwich my spleen. On my back? Might as well staple my ribs to the floor.

The pregnancy books I’ve read call this “normal discomfort,” which is downright laughable. There is nothing “normal” about any of the discomfort I’m feeling, whether we’re talking about the physical or the emotional varieties.

What’s “normal” about carrying the twins of a man who ruined your life?

What’s “normal” about fleeing your home to shack up in a crumbling Tuscan villa?

What’s “normal” about seeing Sasha pass by my window in the pouring rain, on his endless rounds yet again?

I check the clock on the wall. 4:47 A.M. The villa groans like an old man stretching as the last of the storm hurls itself against the creaky shutters. In the bathroom, a faucet drips in rhythm with the throbbing above my tailbone.

Breathe. Just breathe through it.

I’ve done this before. Those first months in France, when the morning sickness faded but the backaches bloomed, I used to curl around a heating pad in our apartment and whimper. Jas was working a lot, so I had no one to complain to. No one to see me crack.

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