by Sophia Henry
SINNERS
Saints and Sinners Duet Book 2
Sophia Henry
Krasivo Creative
Contents
Sinners
Prologue
1. Stasya
2. Stasya
3. Stasya
4. Stasya
5. Stasya
6. Stasya
7. Stasya
8. Stasya
9. Kirill
10. Stasya
11. Kirill
12. Stasya
13. Stasya
14. Kirill
15. Stasya
16. Stasya
17. Stasya
18. Stasya
19. Kirill
20. Stasya
21. Kirill
Reviews Rock!
OPEN YOUR HEART Excerpt
Keep In Touch
Playlist
Also by Sophia Henry
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Sinners
Saints and Sinners Duet
Book 2
Sophia Henry
Sinners
Copyright © 2019 by Sophia Henry
All rights reserved
Published by Krasivo Creative, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-949786-08-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover design: Antonette Santillo, Dragonfly Ink Publishing
Cover photograph: Wander Aguiar, Wander Aguiar Photography
Cover Model: Zack Salaun
Editing by: Jenn Wood, All About the Edits
Proofreading by: Jackie Ferrell
Created with Vellum
“Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda - Wait for It
#BeKindLoveHard
CONNECT with Sophia:
www.sophiahenry.com
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TWITTER
Prologue
Stasya
January 1991 - Moscow
Because of me, Kirill Konstantinovich Antonov is dead.
The love of my life.
The man who claimed his mission was to make me happy and safe.
Dead.
The man who comforted me after my father’s beatings.
The man who saved me from being tortured and raped by sadistic criminals.
Facedown in a pool of blood in front of the communal apartment we grew up in together.
“What are you doing!” I scream as Drago peels away from the scene. I’m clawing at the back window as if I can scratch my way out of the car. “We have to go back! They shot Kirya!”
Slava turns around. “What were his orders to you?”
“What?” I ask, jolted out of hysterics.
“What were his final words to you, Anastasiya Mikhailovna?” He snaps. His face is hard, unyielding.
“Don’t look back,” I whisper, as tears flow freely down my face. The last time I let Kirill’s men see me cry, I was in the same situation—being shoved in the back of a car and driven away to some unknown location.
Since then, I’ve learned to harden myself. Except for my love and passion for Kirill, there’s no place for emotion in this life.
And now, there’s no Kirya in this life.
The Escalade rams the driver’s side of the car. The massive blow slams me forward, replacing my momentary shock with terror again.
“Fuck you, Cocksucker!” Drago yells, cranking the wheel hard, returning the favor. Only he doesn’t stop with ramming the SUV. He slams the gas pedal and pushes the car off the road.
The powpowpowpowpowpow of an automatic weapon rings through the air.
I duck. Then curl into a ball on the floor. Slava hurdles himself through the front seats and covers my shaking body with his as Drago weaves through busy Moscow streets. Though I can’t see what’s happening, I can tell by the waves in my stomach that he’s twisting and turning.
What’s the point in trying to save ourselves if we aren’t going to make it off the road alive?
“Men will tend to Kirya,” Slava whispers in my ear. “Our orders were to keep you safe. That’s what we are doing.”
Though his words hold no comfort, I feel protected shaking in his arms.
When I close my eyes, all I can see is the image of Kirya on the ground surrounded by blood. When I open them it’s the same. There is no relief from the terror.
A few minutes later, Drago’s driving resumes to a somewhat normal pace. We must be in the clear.
Slava scoots back onto the seat and lifts me off the floor. The city passes by in a blur. I can’t think. Can’t feel. I’ve never been so completely and totally numb.
Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s busiest airport, looms in the distance, appearing larger as we approach.
“Where are we going?” I ask without emotion.
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters without Kirya.
Still, Slava responds in a strong, confident voice. “America.”
1
Stasya
The Present
January 1994 – New York City
“Stasya?” Kirill’s voice seems so close, but he’s always too far away to reach. “Stasya, baby, wake up.”
I open my eyes with a start. Kirya doesn’t call me baby. Dmitri Morozov does.
He cups my shoulder, gently rousing me from sleep. I dismiss the dream and smile. It’s not fake as much as it is hollow. There’s nothing behind it. No passion. No life.
I’ve been numb for the last three years; but for me, numb is normal. Numb means safety and stability.
“When did you get home?” I ask sleepily, trying to scooch into a sitting position.
“Just walked in the door,” he says, sliding his arms under me, easily lifting me off the couch.
“Did you win?” Sliding into my role of doting girlfriend comes easily now. I’m the lead actress in the movie of my own life.
It’s not a bad life, but there are still days I wish I were dead.
Though I watched the first two periods of the New York Americans’ hockey game on television, I fell asleep on the couch in the second intermission. Usually, I’m at the arena cheering the team on with the other player’s girlfriends and wives, but I just returned home from Paris yesterday and spent an exhausting, jet-lagged day at Prekrasny, my clothing store on West 57th Street.
Despite having every intention of heading to the game after work, I couldn’t muster the energy. In fact, I was so tired, my eyesight was blurry by the time I walked into the apartment Dmitri and I share. As soon as I walked in the door, I crashed on the couch. Even getting up to eat something was too much of a chore.
Over the last two years, I’ve traveled to Paris in the middle of January to pick out fabrics and celebrate the birthday of a friend who is a designer there. Dmitri never had a problem with it before, but this time he seemed a bit irritated that I was going.
Technically, I could have made it to his game, but when I’m tired and overwhelmed, the last thing I want to do is slap on a smile and mingle with the wives and girlfriends.
It’s not that I don’t care about them or their lives—I absolutely do. I’ve gotten to know many of them well over the last few years. Debbie, Americans defenseman Dan McDonald’s wife, works part time in my shop as a fun reason to get out of the house. Her children are in high school and don’t need constant care as they did before.
The Americans family has become a wonderful support system since we are all in the same position—single for days or weeks at a time. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the women with children who have no family here. Some people see nannies as a luxury, when, in reality, they’re a necessary part of a family when one parent is gone so often. These women have to pay for help when their husbands aren’t here. It’s one of the main differences I see here compared to my home country.
In the former Soviet Union, the secluded hockey players at a training base for eleven months of the year. The wives don’t move to the base with their husbands; they stay in their apartment—which is usually a communal apartment. There is no need to worry about childcare because that’s the babushkas’ role in communal living.
Usually, I look forward to the interactions. But when I’m this exhausted, my mind races—thinking about absolutely everything I’ve been through. And it takes every ounce of energy I have just to keep from pulling the covers over my head and sleeping for a week. Or a month. Or forever. And my occasional bouts of depression aren’t easy to explain to people who are vibrating with excitement over the game.
Sometimes I feel as though I should throw myself into supporting Dmitri full force, rather than focusing on my career. In a city with as much opportunity as New York has, it seems odd that many of the wives and girlfriends have no identity of their own here. Maybe it’s because players come to the team from all over the country—or world, in Dmitri’s case—and their families moved here with them.
I can only recall one exception. When I first arrived in New York, the captain of the Americans was dating a world-famous pop singer. But when she attended games, she sat in a suite with an entourage of people, not with the players’ families. They’ve since broken up and moved on. Maybe his ego couldn’t handle the fact that she’d sold out the arena more times than he had?
Though athletes have always had privileges and Russians see them as national heroes, they weren’t rich by any means.
Outside of his teammates, no one ever referred to me as Ivan Kravtsov’s sister. I had my own identity, working alongside men at the bank. We did the same jobs and made our own money. Anastasiya Kravtsova: Accountant was just the same as Papa being Mikhail Kravtsov: Engineer.
Here, I am not Anastasiya Kravtsov, owner of Prekrasny, the successful women’s fashion store. I am Dmitri Morozov’s girlfriend. Who needs a name or career when I’ll always be known as Dmitri’s girlfriend? I still remember my awkward introduction to the New York Americans family three years ago.
The game will start in a matter of minutes, so I hurry through the concourse to the section on the ticket Dmitri left for me at the box office. When I arrive, the seats are full except for a few random seats between people. Nerves swirl in my stomach and I wonder if coming was a good idea.
As if she knows what I’m thinking, a petite woman in a navy blue sweater and blue jeans comes up to me. “Hi, there! I’m Debbie, Dan McDonald’s wife. You’re Dmitri’s girlfriend, right?”
I nod. “Friend. I am friend,” I say for clarification. Then I extend my hand since I’ve recently learned that’s the customary greeting here. “Stasya.”
Her gaze drops to my hand for a split second, before she smiles and pulls me into her arms. “Welcome, Stay-sha.”
“Is St-ahhh-se-ya,” I repeat, emphasizing how to pronounce the syllables in my name.
“Stay-se-ya,” she says incorrectly as she taps her temple. “Got it.”
Instead of getting frustrated, I change my approach. “I am Stasya, um—Anastasiya.” I bite my lip as I try to find the words in English. “Maybe, um, say, Ana?” I ask.
Her eyes light up “Anna! Yes! Perfect.” She hooks her arm through mine and leads me down the aisle into the sea of women and children. As we scoot through the row, she announces, “This is Dmitri’s girlfriend, Anna.”
“Ana,” I mumble, but no one can hear it over the chorus of “hellos” and “Annas.”
The AHH sound must be difficult for English speakers, as they seem to have a bit of trouble with it. Anna is a beautiful name, but it’s not my name.
Shame washes over me. If someone pronouncing my name wrong is the worst thing I have to complain about here in America, I should consider myself lucky. My life could be so much worse. I’ve lived so much worse.
“Not tonight,” Dima says, carrying me to our bedroom. As he moves through the hallway, he plants a kiss on my forehead. “It was a tough one.”
“Good thing the team is having an amazing year, yes?” I snuggle into the safety of his embrace. He’s lean and strong, a fit hockey player’s body.
“How was work?” He drops me onto the bed with a sigh.
I’m used to him changing the subject when we’re talking about hockey—especially after a loss. He’s frustrated, and I understand, but there’s a bigger underlying issue for me. Dima isn’t as open about anything as Kirill was. It’s not healthy to compare them, but with Kirill, I felt like I was a part of every aspect of his life—even the sections he didn’t talk about in detail. Feeling a true connection to Dima is difficult when he won’t open up about his goals and dreams for his life and career.
Sometimes he says things that make it appear as if he wished he’d never left Russia.
Sometimes I wish he hadn’t.
“Work was—” I remove my socks and toss them to the floor before shoving my legs under the covers. “It was wonderfully frustrating.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” Dima replies as he removes his suit coat. He smiles at me as he hooks onto a plastic hanger and places it in the closet.
“Well, I was exhausted,” I say, burrowing under the blanket as I speak. “A few shipments got screwed up, which was a mess, but we got it taken care of. Tomorrow I’ll meet with a client to discuss her wedding dress. I’ve never designed one before, so that’s something to look forward to.”
‘Something to look forward to’ is a term I loosely. My business is the only thing that really keeps me going.
Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—my grief helped my business flourish. When I’m at work, nothing else is on my mind. I feel alive when I’m creating or helping women feel beautiful in my creations. I honestly don’t know if I could have made it through the last few years if I didn’t have my store. The small space on West 57th Street is my sanctuary.
“When is the wedding?” He unbuttons his dress shirt, baring his chiseled chest. He’s always in top physical condition. Obviously, there are other guys on the team who take their physical fitness seriously, but some guys may have a little flab around the middle, some of them smoke. But not Dmitri. He considers long, hard hours at the gym part of his job.
Any woman would be lucky to have this Adonis in the flesh undressing before their eyes, yet I barely feel arousal. I wish I could be as excited to see him remove his clothing as I was when Kirill did the same thing.
Two things weigh on my heart every day: Kirill’s death and the knowledge that I’m holding Dmitri back from his perfect match. I will never love him the way he loves me.
I’ve told him. But he doesn’t care. His heart is locked on me and he won’t consider anyone else.
And I stay with him because I can’t bear to hurt him. I know how it feels to have the person you love ripped from your life.
It’s been three years since Kirill was killed and I still dream about him.
I still wish it were his bed I woke up in every morning.
“It not until next year, but I will not send this dress to Moscow. I’m doing everything myself. From the original design to sewing every single crystal.”
“A true Anastasiya Kravtsova original.” He smiles and climbs into bed, curling up beside me. “It will be the most fabulous gown New York City has ever seen.”
“You’re too kind, Dima.” I rest my head on his chest, settle into his strong arms.
Though we got off to a rocky start when I first moved here, I’ve grown to appreciate and enjoy my life with Dmitri. He lives his life and lets me live mine. Sometimes it’s as if we are ships passing in the night. I think that’s why I enjoy being with him. He is comfort and safety. He has no expectations of me.
He’s the opposite of Kirill in almost every way. He’s not dangerous. He’s not demanding. He’s not exciting.
After being with someone as passionate, affectionate, and resilient as Kirya, I never saw myself in a boring relationship. But boring is safe, and that’s what Kirill always wanted for me.
I don’t let myself think too much about it too often anymore because if I do, I’ll cry myself to sleep.