Page 54 of 10 Days to Surrender

Proof I haven’t destroyed everything. Not yet, at least.

Ariel looks impossibly small in the hospital bed, swallowed by starched white sheets and medical equipment. Her skin is nearly as pale as the linens, except for the dark circles carved beneath her eyes. Tubes snake from her arms, and electrode pads peekout from the neckline of her hospital gown. The mud and rain are gone, but somehow, that only makes her seem more fragile.

A different doctor stands at the foot of her bed. He looks at me and begins to speak in Italian. I have an easier time understanding him.The fall caused some minor placental disruption. Not a complete abruption, but enough to warrant concern.

I grip the metal railing of her bed until my knuckles go white. Ariel’s hand twitches toward mine but stops short.

“The twins are stable,” the doctor continues. “Heart rates normal, good movement. But…” He pauses, looking between us. “Complete bed rest. Minimum one week. No stress, no physical activity. The risk of preterm labor is very high if?—”

“She won’t lift a finger.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Raw, like I’ve been screaming. Maybe I have been, inside my head.

“I’ll have the nurse bring in the paperwork,” the doctor says, backing toward the door. “Call if anything changes.”

When we’re alone, the beeping fills the silence between us. I watch the monitors, memorizing the patterns of those three precious heartbeats like they’re coordinates leading home.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I never meant to?—”

“It’s my fault. Not yours.” She reaches out to touch my knuckles. “Just an accident. Nothing more.”

I kneel at her bedside and press my forehead to her hand. Yakov started with “accidents,” too. A push here, a shove there. Always with an excuse, always with regret afterwards. Until the day came when he stopped bothering with those things.

The excuses and regret disappeared.

The bruises stayed.

I can’t stop seeing Ariel’s face as she fell. The terror in her eyes. But even as she tumbled down, her hands went not to break her fall but to cradle our children.

I’m glad I’m kneeling already, because otherwise, I’d collapse. Her fingers are warmer now, but too delicate. Everything about her seems so utterly fucking breakable.

“I pushed you. I grabbed you. I tried to?—”

Fuck me.These words are impossible to say. How do I tell her that my greatest fear isn’t Dragan or losing my empire, but becoming the monster who gave me this scar? That every time I close my eyes, I see myself morphing into my father’s reflection?

“I’m the one who ran down a muddy hill.” Her nails bite my scalp, forcing my gaze up. “Like a fucking idiot in flip-flops.”

“But I said?—”

“We both said things we shouldn’t have. We keep doing that. You’d think, eventually, we’d learn.” Ariel cups my face tenderly. “We both have amends to make, Sasha. You’re not the only one who’s been running scared.”

The monitor beeps steadily, a metronome counting the seconds between who I was and who I need to become. I turn my face into her palm, letting her touch anchor me to this moment. Not to the ghosts of my past or the shadows of what might be, but to here and now. To her.

“I won’t let him win,” I whisper against her skin. “I won’t become him.”

Her fingers tighten in my hair. “I know.”

We stay like that for a while—me kneeling at her side, her stroking through my hair again and again. On second thought, who needs rosary beads? I have this woman to pray with. To pray for.

After a while, though, my body begins to ache. I haul myself upright and start for the door.

But Ariel catches my wrist. “Don’t go,” she says when I look back at her. “Not yet.” Then she wriggles to the side and pats the space on the bed next to her.

I look at it and laugh. “I’m a little bigger than that,ptichka.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re huge and strong and we are all pitiful in comparison. Now, shut up and come cuddle me. I’m cold.”

With a tortured laugh, I obey. The bed creaks under our combined weight. I brace one arm above her head, terrified of crushing her, but Ariel yanks my collar hard enough to pop a button. “Stop hovering. Lie down.”

“You’ll fall off the edge.”

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