Page 122 of Cruel Submission

But I’m not her.

“My name is Mirabel.” My voice is distorted by the swelling already starting in my cheek. “I’m Debra’s identical twin.”

Gavriil Laurov stares at me.

His mouth opens. Closes. His eyes move over my face, searching for the lie, searching for the familiar damage he inflicted on my sister that would confirm what he wants to believe.

But I’m not Debra. I don’t have her scars. I don’t carry my shoulders folded inward, don’t constantly look for escape routes, don’t flinch when he moves. I’m pregnant, and I’m terrified, but I’m not broken the way he broke her.

And he can see it.

“Twin,” he repeats, disbelieving.

I straighten up. Taste blood. Hold his stare.

My name is Mirabel. And I’m carrying your grandchild. And somewhere outside these walls, your sons are going to come for me with everything they have.

I don’t say it. But I think it so hard it might as well be tattooed across my forehead.

Gavriil’s expression reconfigures—shock collapsing into calculation, calculation hardening into something far more dangerous. Because he’s not a man who recovers slowly. He’s a man who adapts. Who takes the new information and reshapes his plan around it.

And I can see it happening. Right now. Behind those flat, dead eyes.

He’s figuring out what I’m worth.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Arkady

The alert comes through as a single vibration against my thigh.

Not a call, not a text—a distinct pulse pattern I programmed days ago and prayed I’d never feel.

Mirabel’s panic button.

My body is moving before my brain catches up. Chair kicked back, laptop abandoned mid-sentence, the meeting notes I was reviewing for tomorrow’s Empire Royale board presentation scattering across the desk. The wedding planner’s color swatches flutter to the floor—ivory, champagne, pearl—pretty words for white that now seem ridiculous and small and utterly fucking irrelevant.

Pizdets.

Yobanyy ublyudok!

I’m sprinting down the corridor of my downtown office, thumbing my phone open, pulling up the tracking app as I take the stairs two at a time because waiting for the elevator would cost me forty seconds I can’t afford. The stairwell amplifies my footsteps, setting my teeth on edge and ramping my adrenaline levels even higher.

The app loads. GPS coordinates. Panic button activated at 15:47. Three minutes ago.

Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds during which anything could have happened to my pregnant fiancée while I sat in my office going through notes.

I hit Yanis’s number as I burst through the parking garage door, the concrete swallowing the daylight behind me. My car is sixty feet away. Fifty. Forty.

He picks up on the second ring. “Arkady, we’re at the—”

“Where is Mirabel?” I bark.

“We’re at a restaurant on Lexington. Waiting for her. She went into a shop to grab some dresses. Should be back any minute. What’s—”

“Nyet, mudak!” The words explode out of me. I wrench open the car door, throw myself behind the wheel. The engine fires before the door is fully closed. “I told you to keep an eye on her! Both eyes! Every fucking second!”

“Why, what’s up, Arkady?”