SASHA
The first thing I notice when I wake is the silence.
No warm body curled against my chest. No soft snores puffing against my throat. Just stale air and pale winter light bleeding through the penthouse windows.
I roll over, hoping to find Ariel’s indentation still pressed into the Egyptian cotton. My fist closes around cold emptiness instead. Just yesterday, I woke up in a different country, with her tangled around me. The pang of missing that is a knife to the gut.
I trace the barbed wire line around my throat. Her fingertips danced here yesterday. Not recoiling. Not calculating. Loving. As if my scars were constellations instead of proof that I’m irredeemably fucked-up.
Madness.
Further proof of my insanity comes when my fingers wander higher—and I realize I’m smiling. Fucking smiling, like a lovesick fool, as I stare at my bedroom ceiling and think about the broken little bird who fluttered into my life.
Molodets, Sasha. How domestic you’ve become.
Three months ago, I’d have bashed that paparazzo’s head in and left him to gurgle and die on the tarmac, and I’d never have thought about it again. I wouldn’t have even gotten angry.
But when I saw the fear on Ariel’s face, the whitest, hottest rage I’ve ever felt ripped through me. And it was only her interference that kept me from tearing him limb from limb, then beating the rest of his colleagues with the bloody pieces.
Touch her? Touch what’s mine?
I don’t fucking think so.
It’s a marvel how good it feels to fight for someone.
I sigh as I watch frost spiderweb across my windows. There’s a phrase dancing in the recesses of my mind. Has been for a while now. So long as I think it in Russian, it feels safe enough, though only for a second. Lyublyu tebya. That’s enormous in its own right, but bearable.
But translating those words… letting them be spoken aloud in a way where she could understand… I just don’t fucking know. It’s dangerous. Reckless. Everything Yakov beat out of me.
It feels less reckless if I let my eyes close and Ariel appear there, though. I’ve started collecting her quirks like precious little relics. The way her nose wrinkles when she’s fibbing. How she snorts mid-laugh. The exact shade of pink her cheeks turn when she’s trying not to come beneath me.
This is how hearts get cleaved open.
I sit up, knuckles white around the edge of the mattress. Say it here, ssyklo. Say it now. There’s no one here to hear you. You can say it like a fucking man—if you dare.
I open my mouth.
And…
And…
… Almost.
I rise and step into the shower to start my day. But as I bask in hot water, that stupid smile still simmering in place, three syllables dangle on the tip of my tongue.
Almost.
My phone is vibrating when I step back out with a towel wrapped around my waist. Feliks’s name flashes on the screen.
“Boss.” Feliks clears his throat when I answer. “You need to see today’s Patriot Press.”
I frown. It’s not like him to bother me with such petty bullshit. “The fuck would I want that rag for?”
“Rag though it may be, they struck a nerve this time. Viral shit. People are talking, and it’s only been on the newsstands for an hour. Front-page exposé on you.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not the first time someone’s tried to—”
“—They’re talking about Ariel, too, Sasha.”
There it is again. Rage. White-hot. Coursing from tips to toes. “Text me the link. Now.”
The notification dings. My knuckles bleach around the device as I read the headline.
THE BUTCHER’S BABE: REPORTER ARIEL WARD EXPOSED AS CORRUPT MOB MISTRESS
Below the text: a blown-up photo of Ariel stumbling down the jet stairs, wide-eyed and disoriented. Beside that is a grainy shot of me slamming that photographer against the pillar. The byline credits some hack named Marty DiLaurentis.
“Call every fucking lawyer I own,” I bark into the phone, already yanking on last night’s slacks. “Shut down every vendor selling this trash. Burn every copy.”
“I’m doing my best, man, but it’s out of hand already. It’s… everywhere, Sasha.”
Ice floods my veins. I can picture Ariel now—hunched over her in her gloomy bedroom, watching her life implode through Twitter notifications. That fierce, fragile pride she guards like a fucking Fabergé egg crumbling to dust.
“Pick me up downstairs,” I snap. “Ten minutes.”
The city blurs outside the Bentley’s tinted windows. Feliks hands me the hard copy of the tabloid without a word. I rip it open in disgust.
Page after page dissects Ariel’s life: her job at the Gazette, her estrangement from Leander, even her goddamn college thesis on Watergate. They’ve spun every scrap of her identity into a sordid mob fairy tale.
We screech up to Ariel’s building. I take the stairs two at a time, ignoring Yuri’s greeting as I jam my key into her apartment lock.
The sight freezes me in the doorway.
Ariel sits cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by shredded newspaper. Her hair hangs in greasy curtains, face puffy and bare of makeup. A half-empty carton of Ben & Jerry’s melts near her knee. When she looks up, the hollows under her eyes almost shatter me.
“Oh, goody.” Her laugh cracks like old porcelain. “The Butcher is here.”
I step over the debris, scanning for threats. But everything seems painfully domestic. Not so much as a throw pillow out of place. “Are you alright?”
“Oh, you know! I’ve been better.” She cackles like she’s losing her grip on reality. “Turns out reading five thousand words calling me ‘Pseudo-Stalin’s brainwashed concubine’ really takes it out of a girl.”
I crouch before her, grip her chin. “Didn’t I tell you I’d keep you safe?”
“You’ve said a lot of things, Sasha.” Up close, I see the red rims of her eyes. Dried tears meander down her cheeks and pool in her sarcastic, dimpled smile.
The bitterness in her voice sears worse than bullet wounds. I thought I could armor her. Instead, I’ve made her a target.
But I’m going to make this right.
“And I meant every fucking one of them.” I rise and extend my hand. “Get up. We have somewhere to go.”
Ariel frowns as she squints up at me. “What are you doing?”
“Erasing my mistakes.”
The Patriot Press headquarters lies in a squalid corner of Long Island. It looks like what it is: a brewing pot of bullshit. Unfortunately for myself and Ariel, it’s the exact flavor of bullshit that fools across the city and country love to swallow by the spoonful.
It’s a two-part building. Half contains the offices of the editorial staff, while the other houses the printing presses.
“The factory side, Klaus,” I order my driver. He pulls up outside the entrance and looks to me for further instruction.
“Stay close. And if you see a man named Marty DiLaurentis trying to run… smear him across the fucking grille.”
Then I step out. Ariel follows.
The squeal of the doors announces our arrival. Workers freeze mid-motion, like roaches caught in sudden light, all of them watching warily to see what’s happening.
A rat-faced man with squinty eyes comes up to me with a sneer. “Who’re you, man? You can’t just come in here and—”
He freezes when I brush him aside, reach behind him, and grab a crowbar lying propped against one of the pallets of today’s issue waiting to be shipped out.
Then his jaw falls open when I turn and spear the crowbar into the grinding guts of the nearest rolling press.
An ear-splitting metallic scream rings out. It chews the crowbar halfway. Red lights and sirens go off as the machine moans, belches smoke, and finally slows to halt. One by one, the rest of the presses around us do the same.
Gone is the chugging, thudding grind of machinery.
Gone is the thump of stacks of this vile bullshit hitting the ground, one issue after the next.
In its place is stunned, baffled silence.
I turn to regard the dozens of workers watching me with huge eyes. “All of you,” I announce, “need to get the fuck out of my building.”
The rat-faced man starts spluttering. “Who the— What on— You’re gonna have to pay for—”
I grab him by his shirt collar and hoist him against the wall. “I did pay for it,” I snarl in his face. “As of fifteen minutes ago, the ground you’re standing on is mine. The air you’re breathing is mine. And if you’re still here when I finish counting backwards from ten, I’m going to rip the beating heart out of your chest and call that ‘mine,’ too.” I set him back on his feet and step away, dusting my hands against my pants. “That goes for all of you. Ten. Nine. Eight…”
By the time I reach five, the plant is empty.
Ariel and I are the last ones left in here. When only silence remains, she looks at me. “Sasha, what on…?”
“I told you I’d protect you, Ariel. This is how that looks.” My knuckle tilts her chin toward the dead, still equipment. “This plant is mine now. Every lie they sold about you dies right here.”
Her breath hitches. “You—you bought the paper?”
“Down to the last barrel of ink.”
I pick up an issue still warm from the presses. Ariel flinches when I shred the front page with my bare hands. “The Bratva owns this place. Tomorrow’s headline—” I scatter the strips of paper at her feet. “—will discuss your charity work. Your Pulitzer-worthy bylines. It’s ours to do with as we please.”
Her throat bobs. She looks down at the ripped paper, then back up at me. Her voice is choked, half with tears, half with laughter. “Careful, Sasha. I’m almost starting to think you like me.”
I take her hand. It’s still cold and dead in mine, but it’s warming, little by little. Through the open doors, I can see the plant workers fleeing to their cars as Feliks stalks around and tells them to run for their lives, cackling like a hyena.
I lead Ariel to the main press, its metallic jaws frozen mid-print cycle. “This machine spread today’s filth. This is how we repay those favors.”
Ariel eyes a nearby stack of papers. “Sasha—”
I rip the crowbar free of the first press I ruined and bring it down on the control panel. Sparks erupt and circuitry sizzles. “Let’s see them call you a whore now.”
She flinches at the crash. “Stop it! You’re being insane!”
“Insane?” I kick a nearby paper spindle, sending rolls bouncing across the floor. “This is justice. You wanted to know the man you’re marrying? Here he is!” I grab a Patriot employee ID from a desk and snap it between my fingers. “A beast who protects what’s his!”
I lift her onto the dormant printing press, spreading her across the still-warm metal rollers. Her breath hitches as I yank down her jeans, fingers sliding through her dampness.
“Sasha…” Her nails dig into my shoulders. Everywhere we touch feels like a collision, like split atoms sparking nuclear winter.
There’s nothing tender about our coupling. It’s teeth and claws and ink-stained hands. The machinery groans beneath us, old gears protesting as we fuck like the world’s ending—and maybe it is. Maybe this scorched-earth passion is all we’ll ever have.
What if it is?
What if that’s enough?
She comes with a ragged cry, back arching off the cold steel. I do the same a moment later. My roar echoes through the hollow carcass of the factory. Afterward, I let my forehead come to rest against hers, the acrid smell of solvents clinging to our skin.
Ariel brushes fingers through my hair. “You realize this makes us the trashiest cliché ever, right? Having hate sex on the ashes of our enemies?”
I lift my head, studying her smudged eyeliner and kiss-bruised mouth. “This wasn’t hate, Ariel. Not even close.”
