Page 17 of Cruel Submission

Arkady

With Yanis’s words still echoing around me, I glance back at the door I just walked through. Something compels me to check on her, so I open it a crack. Debra’s curled on her side, breathing deep and even. Finally unconscious. Finally safe.

I pull the door shut and turn the lock. The click feels final.

When I turn around, Mirabel is standing a few feet away.

Der’mo. Shit.

My hand goes to my hip—instinct, reaching for a weapon that isn’t there—before my brain catches up. Not Debra. Mirabel. But Jesus Christ, the resemblance. It’s uncanny.

How the fuck am I supposed to keep them separated when they’re identical?

“Where have you been?” I snap, voice sharpened by hours of not knowing if she was alive.

She shifts her weight, fingers plucking at her sleeve. “Sorry. The hospital visit ran long. Dad’s not doing well—I’m really worried about him.” Her eyes search mine, and there’s something there. Something she’s not saying. “I texted you. Did you see it?”

“No.”

I pull out my phone. The screen shows her message, sent shortly before I found her in the kitchen: I’m back.

That’s it. Two words. Like she wasn’t missing for hours. Like I wasn’t losing my mind imagining her in my father’s cellar or worse.

I look up at her. Really look. There are shadows under her eyes. Her clothes are wrinkled. She’s holding herself too carefully, like something hurts, but she doesn’t want me to see it.

She’s lying to me.

And I’m lying to her—about Debra behind this door, about Aleks in the hospital, about the war I just started with my father. We’re both standing here choking on secrets neither of us can say out loud.

“You’re here,” I say finally. “That’s what matters.”

Because it does matter. More than anything else that happened tonight. The hours I spent terrified I’d lost her… not just misplaced, but lost permanently, the way I lost Mishka. Finding her twin in my father’s house only made it worse, showed me exactly what could have happened if Gavriil Laurov had gotten his hands on her instead.

But she’s here. Whole. Standing in front of me alive and breathing, and the relief of it nearly brings me to my knees.

I close the space between us in two strides.

Her breath catches. She doesn’t step back—doesn’t move at all—just looks up at me with wide, unblinking eyes.

I should ask questions. Should demand to know where she really was, what put that shadow in her expression, why her hands are shaking slightly even though she’s trying to hide it. But I can’t form words around the need clawing up my throat.

Need to touch her. Confirm she’s real. Make sure every inch of her is undamaged.

I cup her face in both hands. Her skin is warm under my palms, and I can feel the fine tremor running through her.

Then I kiss her.

She makes a small sound—surprise or relief or something between—and melts into me. Her hands come up to fist in my shirt, gripping tight, and I feel her shaking. Or maybe I’m the one shaking. Hard to tell.

I deepen the kiss, one hand sliding into her hair to angle her head how I want it. She opens for me immediately, and the taste of her—something sweet, familiar, and necessary—short-circuits every rational thought I have left.

I back her against the wall. Need her solid against something while I check every part of her. My other hand finds the small of her back, pulls her flush against me, and she gasps into my mouth.

That sound. Christ. It tears through me, rips open something I’ve been keeping locked down since I walked into my father’s house and saw what he’d done to Debra. All the rage, all the fear, all the exhaustion and guilt—it pours into this kiss, into this woman who has somehow become the only thing holding me together. While tearing me apart.

Her fingers leave my shirt, move up to my neck, my jaw, tangle in my hair. She’s holding on like I might vanish, and the desperate edge to her touch mirrors the desperation in my chest.

I break away just enough to breathe. Stare down at her. Her eyes are closed, lips parted and swollen, and I can feel every quick breath she takes warming my mouth.