Page 23 of Cruel Submission

I press a hand to my stomach where his touch still lingers, where our combined heat still warms my skin. Where our baby grows. The words I was going to say sit trapped, unspoken.

Maybe that’s for the best.

Maybe some secrets are safer left buried.

But even as I think it, I know it’s a lie. Because in Arkady’s world, buried secrets don’t stay buried. They claw their way to the surface eventually.

And when they do, someone always bleeds.

Chapter Eight

Arkady

The drive to St. Mary’s Hospital is a blur of streetlights and guilt.

I’m still buttoning my shirt when I hit the first red light. My fingers refuse to cooperate, slipping off the buttons twice before I get them right. The fabric smells like Mirabel—citrus and skin and sex—and it makes leaving her even worse.

The phone call replays in my head, Dr. Cullen’s careful, measured voice: Mr. Laurov, if you’d like to see the child, now would be the time.

Not your child. Just the child.

Because nobody knows if Aleks is mine. Not really.

I ran through the scenarios when Rosanna first told me she was pregnant. The timing was possible—we’d slept together exactly once, months before the wedding, both of us drunk and desperate and looking for something neither of us could name. But possible doesn’t mean probable. Rosanna had been with other men. I knew that. She knew I knew.

It didn’t matter then. It doesn’t matter now.

What matters is that Rosanna is dead. Suicide, the doctor had said after an initial investigation. Her car careening off the road along a stretch that shouldn’t have been dangerous, going too fast to have been unintentional. And her father, the boy’s next of kin, is dead too, thanks to me.

My hands tighten on the steering wheel as I stare ahead at the road. The light turns green, and I accelerate, weaving through late evening traffic with the kind of reckless focus that would make Stefan curse at me. But Stefan isn’t here. Nobody is. Just me and the voice in my head listing all the ways I’ve destroyed this child’s life before it even began.

St. Mary’s looms ahead, all glass and steel and fluorescent lighting that turns night into artificial day. I park in the first spot I find, not bothering to check if it’s legal. Let them tow it. Let them fine me. I’ll buy the whole damn lot if it means getting inside faster.

The automatic doors slide open, and antiseptic hits me like a wall. Hospitals smell the same everywhere—disinfectant trying to mask decay, trying to pretend death isn’t always waiting in the wings.

The lobby is busy despite the hour. Pregnant women waddle past with partners hovering nervously at their elbows. A man paces near the elevators, phone pressed to his ear, arguing in rapid Spanish. A nurse pushes a wheelchair toward the exit, the elderly woman inside clutching a teddy bear with both hands.

Life continuing while mine falls apart.

I cross to the reception desk, where a tired-looking woman in scrubs barely glances up from her computer.

“I need to see Dr. Cullen,” I say.

She types something, frowns at her screen. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No. He called me. About a patient.” I lean forward, lowering my voice. “Tell him Arkady Laurov is here.”

Recognition flickers across her face. She picks up the phone, murmurs something I can’t hear, then nods. “He’ll be right down.”

“Where’s the prenatal department?”

“Third floor, but you can’t—”

I’m already moving toward the elevators. She calls after me, but I don’t stop. Can’t stop. Every second standing still is another second Aleks is alone up there, another second I’m not where I should be.

The elevator is empty when I step inside. I hit the button for the third floor and watch the doors slide shut, sealing me in with my reflection in the polished steel. I look like shit—hair disheveled, shirt still slightly askew, stubble gone from neat to rough. I look exactly like what I am: a man who left his woman naked on a library floor to deal with consequences he can’t escape.

Third floor.