Page 131 of Cruel Submission

Yanis is still holding Debra. She’s quieter now, the shaking subsiding into something steadier, deeper. My brother meets my eyes over her head.

No words. None needed. Between us passes the understanding that what happened in this room tonight will live in both of us for the rest of our lives. The moment we discovered that the thing we couldn’t do, the trigger we couldn’t pull, had been waiting for someone else’s finger all along.

I nod once.

He nods back.

Then I run.

Through the hallway, past the sitting room, past the stairs to the cellar, where twenty-eight girls were held like livestock. Past all of it, all the signs of my father’s cruelty, moving toward the only thing in this building that isn’t contaminated by his legacy.

The south sitting room door is open. Aleksei stands outside, weapon at his side. He steps back without a word as I approach.

Inside, Mirabel sits on a settee, a blanket around her shoulders. Her left cheek is swollen, the bruise already darkening toward purple. Her lower lip is split. Her dress is wrinkled, her hair tangled, and she has both hands pressed flat against her belly in the posture of a woman shielding her child from a world that’s given her every reason to.

She looks up when I enter.

“Hi,” she says.

And something inside me—something that’s been holding its breath since that panic alert went off—lets go.

I cross the room. Drop to my knees in front of her. Take her face in both hands, avoiding the bruised cheek, thumbing the tears she hasn’t noticed she’s crying.

“Hi,” I say back.

She laughs. It’s wet and broken and the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.

“You came,” she whispers.

I press my mouth to the crown of her head, inhaling the essence of her. The thing I can’t describe and can’t live without.

“Always,” I say.

Against my palm, where my hand rests on her belly, Sara kicks.

Strong. Furious. Alive.

I close my eyes and let her daughter tell me that the worst is over.

Chapter Forty-One

Mirabel

The sand is warm between my toes.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to—not the flowers, not the dress, not the sixty-odd people gathered behind us on white chairs borrowed from the resort. The sand. Warm and soft and real, working its way into the gaps between my toes.

Arkady stands across from me, barefoot in linen trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and I’m struck—not for the first time, not even for the hundredth—by the contradiction of this man. The ink crawling up his throat. The black feathers disappearing beneath his collar. The scar tissue on his knuckles that no amount of tailoring will ever civilize. He looks like someone carved a weapon and then dressed it for a beach holiday.

And he’s smiling.

Not the version he uses at Empire Royale events, all teeth and charm. This is the other one—the private one, the one just for those of us he loves. It’s crooked and slightly bewildered, as if he can’t quite believe we’ve arrived at this moment without something exploding.

Fair. Neither can I.

Debra stands at my left shoulder, her arm warm against mine. My maid of honor. My mirror. The sister I almost lost hope for and then got back in the most impossible way—through the very man I’m about to marry. She’s in a soft green dress that skims her collarbones and hides the places she’s still learning not to be ashamed of. She’s holding my bouquet because my hands are shaking, and she noticed before I did. She always notices.

Yanis is at Arkady’s right. Best man by title, brother by blood, the steady axis. He stands with his hands clasped in front of him and his shoulders squared, and if you didn’t know him, you’d think he was relaxed. But I know him now. I know the way his eyes move in slow, habitual sweeps across the treeline, the beach access, the cluster of guests. Even here. Even today. Some training doesn’t switch off, and Yanis doesn’t pretend it does.