AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The future might be something worth looking forward to instead of the dark, lonely path I always feared it would be. My bratva husband may be rough around the edges, but Dulcie was right—there’s vulnerability below the bravado and swagger.
As usual, I wake up before my husband. When I leave the bathroom, Sasha is awake, lounging on the duvet. He arches an eyebrow at me.
“You’re dressed,” he says. “Damn shame.”
“Well, good morning to you, too.” I sit at the end of the bed. “Sleep well?”
“Beside you? Always.” He sits up and clutches my wrist, dragging me into his arms. He’s naked, and he looks like a sculpture, with his carved-out muscles and huge, strong hands. “Being with you is the only peace I’ve ever known, Josie. You know that, right?”
“Looks that way.” I plant a swift but deep kiss on his lips, and he growls under his breath. “But you have me here under duress, so you’d better make it worth my while.”
“I would love to stay in this bed all day and make you scream my name until your throat is sore,” he says, rolling away from me, “but we are getting properly married tomorrow, and there’s stuff we gotta do.”
I’m not listening. As Sasha gets to his feet, the light catches the taut skin over his bicep, and I see something I recognize but never noticed before.
“Your arm.” I stand and go to him, touching the silvery trails that are visible between the tattoos on his inner elbow. “Is that…?”
Sasha looks at me for a long moment, then drops his head. “Yes. I would have told you, I promise. But after everything you said about your mom, there never seemed to be a good time.”
“So you were a junkie.”
“I was. But it’s been a long time since I last used.” He wraps his fingers around mine and kisses the back of my hand. “I fell in with some bad people after my mother died. Papa didn’t care what I was doing anyway—to him, I was invisible. I lied to Vlad and hid it from everyone for quite a while, but things started to fall apart. When drug addicts have money, they can afford to make a real fucking mess of their lives.”
I stare at him. Sasha could have done anything he wanted, and he chose heroin? All the privilege and wealth in the world, and he squandered it on that shit.
“Organized crime and drugs go hand in hand, don’t they?” I take my hand back and step away from him. “Are the Kislevs into that? Does your bratva deal?”
“No.” Sasha sweeps his hair off his face, and I see his expression. This is hard for him. “Our family doesn’t deal in flesh or drugs. We leave that to other people, but it doesn’t happen on our territory, and we don’t profit from it.”
He won’t look at my face, and I see the shame.
My mom always felt like her addiction was a fundamental and irreversible weakness. Although she could stay clean, she would never be able to wash away the stain of her failure to face up to her problems. The junk had always been her golden highway to freedom, a path to a different place, if only for a short while.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
Sasha shrugs. “Because I was lonely, stupid, and impulsive.” He smiles. “I guess not much has changed except for the first part.”
I smile. “We can work on the rest. But I kinda like you the way you are.”
He reaches for my waist and pulls me to him, kissing me tenderly on the forehead. “Youlikeme?” he laughs. “Where’s the fun in that?”
* * *
We’re at a cozy brunch bar in the East Village, slinging back Mimosas and tucking into brioche waffles. It’s all fun and flirting until Sasha drops a bombshell on me.
“I already chose your wedding dress, by the way,” he says nonchalantly.
I freeze, my fork halfway to my mouth. “Oooh, no,” I say, scowling at his idiotic smile. “No way.”
“Yesway.” Sasha tops up his glass from a pitcher. “After what you pulled with Morgana when she and Vlad were getting married? You’re choosingnothing. I already decided on the venue, seeing as you were dragging your heels, and then I thought, ‘Hey, why not save your wife the work and do it all yourself?’”
“You’ve got some nerve.”
“That’s very true,” he sips his drink, “but not the point. This second wedding will appease thekomissiyaand get them off my backandyours. Once I’ve settled up with Tosca, we’re in the clear, and if you wanna divorce me, you can. Just give it a few months, so I don’t look like the biggest loser on the face of the Earth.”
This is the first time he’s mentioned divorce, and I don’t like it. I assumed I had to stay married to him forever.
“I still don’t understand why this has to happen in the first place,” I say.
