10 Days to Ruin Summary, Characters and Themes
10 Days to Ruin by Nicole Fox is a dark, contemporary mafia romance that plunges the reader into a high-stakes world of arranged marriages, inherited violence, and reluctant passion. The story follows Ariel Ward, a sharp-tongued journalist with a hidden past as the daughter of a Greek mob boss, who finds herself unwillingly entangled in a marriage plot with Sasha Ozerov, a brutal Russian Bratva heir.
Through Ariel’s sharp humor and Sasha’s cold intensity, the novel explores control, legacy, vulnerability, and survival. It’s a story of two people trying to outmaneuver each other in a deadly game only to find themselves losing their hearts instead.
Summary
Ariel Ward’s life is a performance. A respected journalist in New York, she carefully conceals her true identity: daughter of Leander Makris, a feared Greek mobster.
Her childhood was shaped by violence, loss, and the suffocating control of her father’s criminal empire. She fled that world years ago, changing her name and building a new life.
But the past has a way of catching up. It begins on the night of a museum gala, where Ariel finds herself hiding in the men’s bathroom, overwhelmed and bleeding from a minor injury.
Her panic is interrupted by a mysterious, dangerous man who enters speaking Russian. She overhears him ordering a murder—and moments later, they’re tangled in a volatile mix of attraction and recklessness.
He is Sasha Ozerov, the heir to the Russian Bratva. And she is not supposed to exist in his world.
The encounter would have been a regrettable blip if not for what follows. Ariel’s father Leander finds her and informs her of an agreement: she will marry Sasha.
The violent, dominating man from the bathroom is now her fiancé. This is not a proposal but a command, a business deal to strengthen criminal alliances between the Greeks and the Russians.
Her defiance is immediate, but so is her helplessness. Leander threatens the people she loves.
Ariel, furious and betrayed, has no choice but to play along. Across the gala floor, Sasha is waiting—and he is just as stunned by the news of their engagement as she is, though he conceals it well.
Sasha is ordered by Leander to make Ariel fall in love with him within ten days. He accepts the challenge with stoic determination, treating it as another mission.
But Ariel decides to flip the script. Rather than play along, she begins actively sabotaging the engagement.
She becomes intentionally annoying, unstable, dramatic—everything a Bratva heir wouldn’t want in a wife. Sasha, however, is not so easily deterred.
Each of her antics only deepens his fascination. He finds her defiance alluring, even when she infuriates him.
Their relationship becomes a battlefield, each trying to push the other to surrender. What begins as a forced engagement becomes something else entirely: a psychological war laced with flirtation and sparks neither of them can ignore.
Despite her bravado, Ariel is deeply traumatized. The ghost of her sister Jasmine, presumed dead, and the abusive power of her father haunt her every move.
Sasha, too, is damaged by his upbringing. Beneath his brutality lies a boy who once loved literature and wept over fictional characters.
A trip to the library unearths unexpected tenderness. He shows her a version of himself she hadn’t imagined, one shaped by loss and survival.
But Ariel cannot forget the reality of their situation. When Sasha casually mentions that their marriage contract includes producing an heir, she is livid.
Her body is not part of any deal. Still, she can’t help imagining what life might look like if he were different—if they were.
Amid this emotional chaos, Ariel reconnects with her estranged mother, Belle. Their scenes are soft, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking.
Belle is free-spirited but emotionally aware, and she sees through Sasha almost immediately. Her cautious approval comes after he repairs a broken clock from Belle’s honeymoon, a quiet symbol of attempted redemption.
Sasha continues to walk a tightrope between violence and vulnerability. He orchestrates murders and interrogations by day, but finds himself unraveled by Ariel’s presence.
Ariel escalates her sabotage campaign, even staging a fake Lamaze class to unsettle Sasha. What was meant as a joke begins revealing emotional truths.
Pretending to be expectant parents, they are forced to confront the idea of a shared future. Sasha, usually in control, is visibly shaken.
It’s one of many moments that strip away their facades and expose real feelings neither is prepared for. Later, in the boxing ring, Sasha confronts his own turmoil.
His right-hand man, Feliks, points out what he won’t admit: Ariel doesn’t weaken him—she makes him want things he’s spent years believing he can’t have.
Then the illusion of control collapses. Ariel is fired from her job because of the notoriety she’s gained through Sasha.
In response, he gives her a failing tabloid publication, The Patriot Press, and encourages her to use it for meaningful journalism. She rebrands it The Phoenix and finds new purpose, supported by her friends Gina and Lora.
But their engagement party brings everything crashing down. In a public spectacle, Leander is assassinated, and Ariel discovers a devastating truth: her sister Jasmine is alive and Sasha helped fake her death.
The betrayal destroys whatever fragile trust had been building.
Ariel storms away from Sasha, demanding he choose her without power or alliances. He can’t.
She removes her ring and leaves. Sasha is later ambushed and nearly killed by Dragan, a rival boss.
Meanwhile, Ariel learns she is pregnant. The revelation changes everything.
The child represents both a tether to Sasha and a decision she must make alone.
By the novel’s end, Ariel and Sasha are separated by pain, betrayal, and a legacy of violence neither chose. Ariel has regained her autonomy, her voice, and her fire—but she is also carrying a future she never imagined.
Sasha, broken and nearly lost, must confront what he’s willing to become—not just for Ariel, but for the child they created.
10 Days to Ruin is not a romance born of kindness or destiny, but one forged in the dark crucible of generational crime, loss, and survival. It is about who we become when love is a risk, power is currency, and identity must be earned—not inherited.
Characters
Ariel Ward
Ariel Ward is the emotional and psychological epicenter of 10 Days to Ruin, a character defined by fierce intelligence, deep-rooted trauma, and relentless resilience. From her early obsession with Tom Welling to her career as a journalist, Ariel’s life is marked by a constant pursuit of identity—an effort to shape herself beyond her father’s criminal shadow.
Her childhood under the roof of Leander Makris, a notorious Greek mob boss, haunts her choices, making her vulnerability all the more striking when she stumbles into Sasha Ozerov’s world. Despite being thrust into an arranged engagement against her will, Ariel refuses to be reduced to a pawn.
She fights back with cunning and theatricality, weaponizing chaos in her attempt to sabotage the engagement—feigning erratic behavior and staging absurd stunts like a fake Lamaze class to destabilize Sasha’s control. Yet beneath the defiance is a woman grappling with conflicting desires: her yearning for safety, her need for agency, and her unwilling attraction to a man molded by the same world she escaped.
Ariel’s arc is one of self-reclamation. She transitions from panic attacks and coerced compliance to calculated rebellion and, eventually, emotional confrontation.
Her journey is steeped in anger, wit, heartbreak, and ultimately transformation, symbolized by her renaming of the tabloid The Phoenix. Even when faced with betrayal, revelations of her sister’s survival, and the murder of her father, Ariel remains unwilling to surrender.
She is a woman carving out freedom with sharp edges, determined to build a life that is hers alone—even as she finds herself pregnant with the child of the man she tried to escape.
Sasha Ozerov
Sasha Ozerov is the brooding, lethal, and emotionally barricaded heir to the Russian Bratva whose cold exterior masks a surprising vulnerability. Introduced during a violent and sexually charged encounter in a museum bathroom, Sasha initially appears as the embodiment of patriarchal power—ruthless, strategic, and indifferent to the havoc he causes.
Yet as 10 Days to Ruin progresses, the layers of Sasha’s character slowly peel back to reveal a man tortured by his own humanity. Raised by a cruel father and shaped by a brutal criminal regime, Sasha suppresses tenderness behind rituals of violence.
He is a killer, a tactician, a man who interrogates and executes without hesitation. But Ariel disrupts his equilibrium.
Her unpredictability and fire ignite not just desire but disorientation in him. Their library date becomes emblematic of his internal fracture—a man who quotes Anna Karenina and mourns fictional horses yet murders traitors with a straight face.
Sasha’s arc is defined by his push and pull with vulnerability. He is captivated by Ariel’s defiance, yet terrified of what her chaos awakens in him.
When he gifts her a failing newspaper to reclaim her voice, it’s as much about empowering her as it is a desperate attempt to connect without losing control. The revelation that he helped fake Jasmine’s death to protect her but hid the truth from Ariel seals his tragic contradiction: a man who means well but chooses manipulation over transparency.
His near-death at Dragan’s hands and his growing emotional deterioration reveal that love, for Sasha, is a battlefield he may never survive.
Leander Makris
Leander Makris is the embodiment of patriarchal power warped by guilt, ambition, and a deluded sense of love. As Ariel’s estranged father and a once-feared Greek mob king, Leander operates through coercion disguised as protection.
His manipulation is calculated—forcing Ariel into a mafia marriage under the guise of safeguarding her. Yet Leander is more than a villain; he is a fading relic of old-world crime, burdened by the estrangement from his daughter and the death of his other child, Jasmine.
There are cracks in his façade: an aging man who regrets but cannot relinquish control, who offers Ariel ten days of choice not out of generosity but to soothe his conscience. His dynamic with Belle, his ex-wife, and Ariel is marked by failed attempts at redemption that are too little, too late.
Ultimately, his death during Dragan’s coup is symbolic—an empire built on violence crumbling under its own weight. His legacy is one of corruption and familial devastation, and his death marks a turning point in Ariel’s journey toward autonomy.
Gina
Gina is Ariel’s fierce, loyal, and unfiltered best friend who functions as both comic relief and emotional anchor throughout 10 Days to Ruin. She is the embodiment of ride-or-die support, unafraid to challenge authority or play along with Ariel’s chaotic plans.
Whether faking a Russian accent during a Lamaze class or backing Ariel’s decision to take over a failing tabloid, Gina’s role is to empower through absurdity and truth. She does not mince words and often acts as Ariel’s moral compass, reminding her of who she is beyond the trauma and entrapment.
Gina’s presence underscores the importance of chosen family in a world dominated by toxic bloodlines. Her loyalty is never in question, and her humor and bravery offer essential contrast to the story’s darker themes.
She is not just a sidekick but a testament to female solidarity in a landscape rife with male control.
Belle
Belle, Ariel’s mother, is a figure of radiance, resilience, and raw emotional wisdom. Separated from Ariel for years and deeply scarred by her marriage to Leander, Belle reenters her daughter’s life as a grounding force.
She is the antithesis of the world Ariel is being dragged back into—offering ice cream, laughter, and nostalgic duck-watching instead of manipulation and bloodshed. Belle’s reunion with Ariel is emotionally layered, blending joy with unresolved pain.
Her insight into Sasha’s character and her cautious but meaningful approval of him reflect a woman who has lived through betrayal but still believes in redemption. When Sasha fixes her broken honeymoon clock, it is Belle who recognizes the symbolic act of healing and potential transformation.
She is proof that survival and grace can coexist, and her presence allows Ariel to reconnect with a softer, more hopeful version of herself.
Feliks
Feliks, Sasha’s second-in-command, serves as both a pragmatic consigliere and a quiet moral compass within the Bratva. Though he operates within a brutal world, Feliks is the voice of truth Sasha needs but often resists.
His role is not to question Sasha’s orders but to challenge his emotional blindness. He sees the effect Ariel has on Sasha before Sasha fully understands it himself, urging him to recognize that vulnerability does not equate to weakness.
Feliks’s warnings are laced with concern, his loyalty not just to the Bratva but to the man he believes Sasha could be. In a story crowded with manipulation and deception, Feliks is remarkably consistent—brutal when necessary, but never emotionally dishonest.
He is the bridge between Sasha’s past and a possible future, one that includes not just power, but love.
Jasmine
Jasmine is the phantom sibling whose reemergence from presumed death catalyzes the novel’s most devastating emotional rupture. For most of 10 Days to Ruin, Jasmine is an absence—an echo of loss that shapes Ariel’s relationship with her parents, especially the bitterness she harbors toward Leander.
Her return is both a miracle and a betrayal, especially when Ariel learns that Sasha helped orchestrate the deception. Jasmine’s choice to fake her death speaks to the suffocating violence of the world they grew up in, and her survival is a haunting indictment of the systems that force women to disappear in order to escape.
Her return fractures the fragile trust Ariel was beginning to build, and her presence underscores the central question of the novel: what sacrifices must be made to reclaim a life in a world built on coercion? Jasmine is a symbol of both resilience and the unbearable cost of silence.
Themes
Power, Consent, and Female Autonomy
Ariel’s journey is profoundly shaped by the collision between her personal agency and the external forces attempting to control her. As the daughter of Leander Makris, her life has always existed in proximity to criminal power, but her efforts to distance herself—by adopting a new identity, choosing a career in journalism, and severing ties—are violently disrupted when her father unilaterally arranges her marriage to Sasha Ozerov.
This lack of consent becomes the central point of friction in her story. She is not simply resisting a man or a marriage; she is fighting an entire legacy that treats her body, choices, and future as currency.
Her decision to transform herself into a caricature of a nightmare partner is not only comic relief but an act of radical resistance. It represents her refusal to cooperate, her desire to inject chaos into a system designed to silence her.
Even within her complex and sometimes emotionally fraught interactions with Sasha, Ariel continually asserts herself—not just physically or verbally, but emotionally and intellectually. Her ability to manipulate the narrative on her terms, particularly when she rebrands The Patriot Press as The Phoenix, is emblematic of reclaiming her voice in a world that constantly tries to stifle it.
This theme is not just about gendered power but about the deeper existential struggle to remain oneself under the crushing pressure of expectation, history, and violence. Ariel’s battle is not won in a single act but fought inch by inch, from the bathroom confrontation to the final symbolic removal of her engagement ring.
Legacy, Inheritance, and the Burden of Family
The weight of familial legacy dominates the emotional architecture of 10 Days to Ruin. Ariel’s entire conflict arises from her father’s decision to entangle her in mafia politics, not just as a daughter, but as a strategic asset.
Her childhood, shaped by violence and trauma under the shadow of Leander Makris, leaves deep psychological scars that she is still trying to outrun. The specter of her sister Jasmine, presumed dead, haunts Ariel with unresolved grief and guilt.
The eventual revelation that Jasmine is alive, and that both Leander and Sasha concealed this truth from her, exacerbates the betrayal she already feels. This pattern—of secrets kept in the name of protection—illustrates how legacies are often perpetuated by emotional manipulation.
For Sasha, too, the burden of legacy is omnipresent. Raised by a cruel father to inherit a bloody empire, his violent precision and emotional repression are learned traits, armor crafted in a childhood devoid of softness.
His moments of vulnerability—particularly his literary side and emotional response to Belle—reveal how much he has buried under the weight of what he’s expected to be. Legacy in this story is not merely a backdrop; it is an antagonist.
It’s the force that compels characters to act against their better instincts, to hurt those they care about, and to accept fates they despise. Whether it’s the arranged engagement, the resurrection of Jasmine, or Sasha’s struggle to feel worthy of love, every thread circles back to the question of whether one must carry the sins of their predecessors—or find a way to set them down.
Love, Trust, and Emotional Risk
The evolving relationship between Ariel and Sasha is fueled by intense physical attraction but tormented by an absence of trust. Their first interaction, already laced with danger and desire, sets the tone for a romance that is constantly teetering between emotional vulnerability and psychological warfare.
Ariel’s resistance to Sasha is not just about their forced engagement; it is rooted in her profound fear of being consumed, controlled, or emotionally dismantled by someone she doesn’t fully trust. Sasha, on the other hand, is drawn to Ariel’s unpredictability because it disrupts the rigid control he maintains over his world.
He is used to power through fear, not affection. As Ariel pokes holes in his defenses, he finds himself emotionally destabilized.
Their connection in places like the Lamaze class or during their literary discussions suggests a deeper intimacy—one that Sasha struggles to accept. Yet when Ariel learns that Sasha lied about Jasmine, her fragile willingness to trust is annihilated.
The betrayal is not just about the lie itself, but what it represents: that even when Sasha professes love, he defaults to manipulation. This rupture underscores the narrative’s exploration of whether love can truly exist without trust, and whether emotional honesty is even possible in a world steeped in secrets and blood.
Ariel’s rejection of Sasha after the engagement party is not simply a romantic climax—it’s a reclamation of emotional boundaries. Trust, in this world, is a currency more volatile than any alliance, and love without it is nothing more than another trap.
Identity, Transformation, and Reclamation of the Self
Throughout 10 Days to Ruin, Ariel undergoes a transformation that is less about becoming someone new and more about reclaiming who she’s always been. Her entire adult life is built on escaping the Makris name and reinventing herself as a journalist, a truth-seeker, and an autonomous woman.
But when she’s forced into proximity with the world she fled, Ariel is compelled to confront the parts of herself she had buried—her trauma, her rage, her tactical cunning. Her arc is not linear; it loops through moments of regression and defiance, confusion and empowerment.
Renaming The Patriot Press as The Phoenix is one of the clearest symbolic acts of self-reclamation, representing her rebirth not just as a professional but as a woman who refuses to let others define her future. Her chaos, often perceived as irrational or comedic, is in fact strategic.
It is the language of someone who refuses to play the game by rules she never agreed to. The discovery of her pregnancy adds another layer to this theme.
Suddenly, her choices are no longer about freedom alone but about legacy and protection. Her identity expands—not just as a daughter, a lover, or a fighter, but potentially as a mother.
This internal evolution complicates her desire for independence. The theme of transformation in the book is therefore not about changing into someone stronger—it is about owning the complexity of who she already is, in all her defiance, tenderness, anger, and hope.
Violence, Protection, and the Moral Gray Zone
Violence is omnipresent in 10 Days to Ruin, but it is rarely glorified. Instead, it functions as a brutal mechanism of control, protection, and survival.
Sasha embodies this dichotomy most fully. As head of the Bratva, he executes orders with clinical precision, tortures enemies without flinching, and sustains dominance through fear.
Yet his violence is never random; it is calculated, often portrayed as necessary within the ruthless world he inhabits. What complicates this, however, is his growing affection for Ariel, which makes his brutality feel incompatible with the life he begins to imagine with her.
Ariel, for her part, is no stranger to violence either. Having grown up surrounded by mafia cruelty, she understands its language even as she detests it.
Her resistance is not pacifist—it is just expressed differently, through sarcasm, manipulation, and strategic defiance. The moral gray zone becomes most evident when Sasha helps Jasmine escape her engagement by faking her death, a violent deception meant to serve a good cause.
This act blurs the lines between heroism and villainy, protection and betrayal. The shootout at the engagement party, the death of Leander, and Sasha’s near-assassination push this theme further.
In this world, protection always comes at a cost, and those who wield violence must constantly negotiate its ethical weight. There is no clear good or evil—only survival, sacrifice, and consequence.
The characters are shaped by the violence they commit or endure, and the story refuses to let anyone escape its impact unscathed.