Page 66 of 10 Days to Surrender

I look up as he does. The mirror behind the bar shows every fucking mistake I’ve ever made. Unshaven jaw. Bloodshot eyes.The scar at my throat puckered and raw—Yakov’s final gift. And it just keeps on giving, doesn’t it?

I throw back most of the refill, then turn my eyes down to the dregs of the blonde liquid swirling in my cup. Is this cup four? Five? I’ve lost count. Numbers go blurry at the edges while I sit here and pity myself.

But when I glance up in the mirror again, it’s not just my own miserable face I see.

It’s hers, too.

Ariel stands framed in dying light, her hair an auburn wildfire against dusty glass. My fist tightens around the cup.Blink. She’ll disappear. Another grappa-fueled hallucination.If you don’t blink, you know what’s going to make you happy. She’s going to slide onto the stool next to yours, all fire and fury and that infuriating vanilla-peach shampoo. She’ll make you say it out loud—that youwantthe happy lie. The domestic farce. The right to come home to someone who doesn’t flinch when you touch them.

I blink.

I blink hard.

She doesn’t disappear.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell her without turning around.

“And you shouldn’t drink alone.” The stool beside me groans as she sits. Her knee bumps mine. Every muscle in my body tightens.

“Go back to the villa, Ariel.”

“Or what? You’ll brood harder? Keep this up and you’re gonna pull a muscle. And honestly, you’re in rough enough shape as it is.”

She isn’t wrong. Not by a long shot. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when this marriage was just about power, about securing Leander’s alliance. Now, look at me—getting drunk in an Italian taverna because I can’t handle seeing tiny fucking baby shoes in a window display.

She shifts on the stool, trying to get comfortable. Her elbow bumps the bar as she overbalances. My hand twitches with the instinct to steady her, but I force it to stay flat against the wooden counter. She doesn’t want my help. She made that much perfectly clear when she suggested we pretend the cellar never happened.

The dress she’s wearing is new. Something flowing and cream-colored that makes her look softer than she truly is. More vulnerable. The neckline dips just low enough to show the mark I left on her collarbone last night, and beneath that, the fabric stretches taut over her belly. My fingers ache with the memory of her skin.

Feeling her pregnant between us… Fuck, that changed things. That changed so many things that I’m trying to find answers at the bottom of a glass now.

“Qualcosa da bere?” the owner asks her.

“Just water,” she answers. Then, catching my sideways glance: “Though I’d kill for one of what he’s having.”

I snort. “You’re not a killer.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Ariel bites back a smile. “I killed your liver’s hopes and dreams just by showing up here, didn’t I?”

“You want my liver?” I rasp, tracing the glass rim. “Take it. Take whatever the fuck you want.”

She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. The mirror behind the bar shows a gruesome little trio—her haloed in taverna lamplight and pitying me; me hunched like a gargoyle and pitying myself; and, inside of her, a pair of lives that’ll be glad to have me as their father.

Callthat two truths and a lie.

“Maybe not that,” she says. “I get the feeling you’re putting that poor organ through its paces tonight.” She pauses, then says, “I really am jealous, though. It’d be nice to have a sip of something. Just to take the edge off. Quiet things down.”

“If only it worked like that. I’m five deep and the shit in my head is louder than ever.”

“Well,” she sighs as the bartender slides a bottle of sparkling water to her, “maybe this will do the trick then.”

“You want a medal?” I mutter. “A plaque?‘Here Lies Ariel Ward’s Self-Restraint’?”

Her laugh is a brittle thing. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Yes.” I swirl the grappa. “Thus the drinking.”

The silence stretches, strained as barbed wire. I don’t look at her. Can’t. If I do, I’ll see the dress, the swell of our children beneath it, the way her throat moves when she swallows. I’ll break all over again.

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