Page 60 of Cruel Obsession

For several heartbeats, I float in the haze of endorphins.

Then reality crashes back with crushing force.

What have you done?

What in the actual fuck is wrong with you, Mirabel McCleod?

I sit up too quickly, the room spinning slightly. Horror replaces the fading pleasure, cold and sharp and unforgiving. I just masturbated in Arkady’s private sanctuary. Inhisspace. Onhissofa.

My gaze sweeps the room and lands on the urn near the window.

The urn I’d barely noticed in my descent into depravity.

I stand unsteadily, quickly adjusting my clothing. The simple wooden stand holds the vessel, unadorned except for a small plaque on its base. Beside it rests a glass case containing a handgun—the same model I’ve glimpsed in Arkady’s bedroom.

I approach slowly, shame and self-reproach tangling in my chest. The plaque bears simple words, etched in careful script:Mishka, please forgive me.

My throat closes.

Who was Mishka?

A lost lover? A child?

Whoever it was, these ashes are all he has left of them.

This room isn’t a secret hiding place. It’s a shrine. A memorial to a loss so profound it requires its own sanctuary, separate from the rest of his life.

And I just defiled it with my lust.

Disgust rises, bitter and thick. Not at the desire itself, but at where I allowed it to consume me. In the space where Arkady comes to grieve.

“Mishka,” I whisper, the name foreign on my tongue. “I’m sorry.”

The apology feels pathetically inadequate. Sorry for what? For being so consumed by want that I forgot basic human decency? For judging Arkady without understanding the weight of what he carries?

All of it. None of it. There aren’t words for what I’ve done.

I smooth the sofa cushions, erasing the indent where my body lay. Check for any sign of my presence—a hair, a wrinkle, anything that might betray my trespass. The throw pillow goes back exactly where I found it, angled just so.

My gaze returns to the urn, to the loss he must feel.

Unbidden, thoughts of Debra surge through me. Her face so like mine, her laugh, the way she’d always know what I wasthinking before I said it aloud. The empty space she left behind that never stops aching.

“I miss you,” I whisper to Debra’s ghost. “Every single day.”

For a moment—just a flicker, just a breath—I swear I hear her voice:I miss you too.

The sensation is so real, so present, that I spin around, half-expecting to see her standing there. But the room remains empty except for shadows and silence and the memory of my shame.

I check my watch and jolt. Over an hour. I’ve wasted over an hour snooping and fantasizing and—God—pleasuring myself while the rest of the wing remains uncleaned and my actual duties pile up.

I move to the door, checking one last time that everything is exactly as I found it. The desk, the sofa, the urn on the pedestal. All untouched, all pristine. No evidence that I was ever here.

Except I was. And something fundamental has shifted.

Just before I slip out, I pause, looking back at the peaceful space. At this room that has shown me more about Arkady Laurov than weeks of careful observation ever could.

I lock the door behind me and return to my abandoned mop and bucket, resuming my cleaning as if nothing has changed. As if I haven’t crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.