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“Okay, okay,” I say. “I’ll even consider being nice to him.”
Adrik pulls me close against him. “When you turn on your charm, no one can resist you.”
I laugh. “And when I’m a dick, nobody can stand me.”
He squeezes me tighter. “I can.”
* * *
When Adrik falls asleep,I’m still awake in the dark.
It’s not because I’m agitated—actually I’m still suffused with warmth. More comfortable than I’ve been since I came to Moscow.
But my brain is firing madly, not at all interested in going to sleep.
As carefully as I can, I slip out from under the weight of his arm and roll out of the bed, landing on the floorboards naked and barefooted. I grab Adrik’s t-shirt off the floor and pull it over my head. It comes down almost to my knees.
Taking my phone off the nightstand, I creep out of the room, trying to avoid the places where the floor creaks.
I head downstairs to the kitchen, thinking I might eat the rest of that burger.
The house is silent, even Andrei and Hakim have gone to bed.
I heat up the food in the rickety old microwave and wolf it down.
When I’m finished, I scroll through my messages.
I’ve talked to my mom twice since I’ve been here, and my dad just once. The conversation wasn’t pleasant. It went something like this:
Dad: “You need to get your ass home IMMEDIATELY.”
Me: “That’s not happening.”
Dad: “I’m not playing with you, Sabrina. You cannot fuck with the Bratva. You get yourself in trouble over there and I can’t save you.”
Me: “I don’t need you to save me. I can take care of myself.”
Dad: “We tangled with the Bratva in Chicago, and not the High Table either—we fucked with someone’s cousin’s cousin’s cousin and my father was killed and our house burned to the ground. Something I didn’t witness ’cause I was in the hospital with seven bullets in my back. You are in the heart of Moscow begging for these people to skin you alive for the fun of it.”
That’s when I lost my temper.
“I’ve heard that story a hundred times. Stop trying to pin your mistakes on me! I’ve got my own life to live, my own choices to make. I’d rather die by my own decisions than live by yours.”
He was quiet on the other side of the line, so quiet I thought he’d hung up. Then he said, “You don’t know what that means. You’ve never felt real pain. You’ve never been tortured. You’ve never made a mistake that haunts you the rest of your life—if you even live long enough to experience that particular hell.”
My guts were churning. He was scaring me—not as much as he wanted to, but some. I hated what I was putting him through, him and my mom. She cried on the phone, begging me to come home.
All I could say to my father was, “I’m happy here. I’m not coming back, not anytime soon.”
The “happy” was a bit of an exaggeration. Sometimes I’m very happy in Moscow. Other times I’m exhausted and frustrated.
I’m pretty good buds with Hakim at this point. Chief is friendly, and Andrei is always down for mayhem. But I’ve made basically no progress with Vlad or Jasper—even after bribing them with high-end escorts.
As I scroll through my phone, I see a message from my aunt Aida.
Thinking about you today. It was raining and I remembered how much you loved jumping in puddles when you were little. You never seemed to feel the cold.
I text her back.
