Thunder growls above us. It is just a power play. It has to be. I need this to get Leander’s loyalty. No bride means no alliance. No alliance means no victory. No victory means I spend the rest of my life exterminating Serbian rats in various filthy warehouses, fighting a war of attrition that leaves everyone worse off in the end.
“You ever think…” Feliks unwraps a new stick of gum and pops it into his mouth. “What if it was real?”
“‘Real’ is overrated. My father taught me that.”
“Cool story. But you’re not Yakov.” He lobs the gum pack at my chest. “What I’m saying is, what if you stopped sabotaging this thing? What if you let yourself want her instead of scheming ahead of time how to survive losing her?”
A foggy chill soaks through my shirt.
“Or does that scare you too much?”
I star
