Page 125 of Cruel Submission

“Then get it airborne nine minutes ago.”

“Da.” A pause. The sound of a magazine being loaded, the crisp metallic snap of rounds seating into place. “Arkady. Is she hurt?”

The question opens a door I’ve been keeping shut with both hands. Behind it lives every image my mind has been generating since the GPS coordinates resolved: Mirabel on the floor of my father’s sitting room, hand to her cheek where he struck her; Mirabel backed against a wall, arms wrapped around her belly, protecting Sara from a man who views unborn children as leverage; Mirabel hearing the same words Debra heard for six years, beg, Princess, beg, except she doesn’t know those words, doesn’t know the script, doesn’t understand that compliance is the only currency that buys time in Gavriil Laurov’s house. My woman’s a fighter. And I’m terrified that that’s the thing that will get her killed.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But if she is, there won’t be enough of him left to bury.”

I drop the phone onto the passenger seat and drive.

The city thins as I head north. Shops give way to suburbs give way to the kind of countryside that looks pastoral until you notice the homes are set back behind walls and gates, and the kind of landscaping designed to maximize security. Gavriil’s territory.

Twelve minutes.

I use them to breathe. Not the meditative bullshit wellness influencers peddle on Instagram—actual tactical breathing, the four-count inhale-hold-exhale-hold cycle that Spetsnaz instructors teach before urban assaults. It works. The fear doesn’t leave but it sharpens into something useful. Something directional.

I am going to enter my father’s house.

I am going to find Mirabel.

And then I am going to do what I should have done through the Dragunov scope on the day he attacked our gate.

I should have pulled the trigger then. Should have ignored the boy who still cared for his father.

That boy is dead now.

He died somewhere on the road between a boutique where his pregnant fiancée was abducted and a country estate where his father is holding her hostage, mistaking her for the woman he tormented for years.

What’s left is the man.

The one who doesn’t miss.

Gavriil’s property appears through the trees ahead, stone walls rising behind a screen of mature oaks, the iron gates visible at the end of a curved gravel drive.

I park off-road, killing the engine behind a hedgerow thick enough to swallow the car’s silhouette. Check my weapons—the Makarov PM at my hip, round chambered, safety off. The knife at my ankle. The compact in my jacket’s inner pocket, cold against my ribs.

No flak jacket. No assault rifle. No backup in position.

Just me. And the fury I’ve been carrying for too damn long.

I move silently toward the eastern wall, staying below the sightline of the perimeter cameras. The wall is the same—twelve feet of stone. I find my grip. Pull myself up. The stone is cold and slick with recent rain, and my fingers bite into the crevices with the trained desperation of a man who cannot afford to fall.

At the top, I pause. Scan the grounds. Two guards visible at the front, a third near the service entrance, smoking, his weapon slung low on a strap that would cost him two full seconds to bring to ready position.

Amateurs. Gavriil’s B-team. The real operators must be inside, close to the prize.

Close to her.

I drop over the wall, absorb the impact through bent knees, and begin to move.

Hold on, zaychik.

The words form and dissolve without sound.

I’m coming.

Chapter Forty

Arkady