Page 51 of Cruel Submission

Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to leave. How to get enough money to finish Dad’s treatment without Arkady’s help. How to build a life that doesn’t revolve around a man who treats me like I’m disposable.

But tonight, I let myself break.

Tonight, I cry for the future I allowed my stupid brain to imagine—the one where Arkady looked at me and saw something worth keeping. Where his secrets were just scars from a difficult past, not evidence of a present I’m not part of.

Tonight, I mourn what I never really had.

And when sleep finally drags me under, it’s not peaceful. It’s fitful. Full of locked doors and distant voices and a man who holds me like I matter, then pushes me away like I don’t.

In the dream, I’m standing outside the east wing door. It’s open.

I step through.

And on the other side, Arkady is holding a baby I’ve never seen, standing beside a woman whose face I can’t make out.

He looks at me with those brutal blue eyes and says, “You were never supposed to be here.”

I wake with a gasp, tears wet on my face, the words echoing in my head.

The room is dark. Empty.

Just like my heart.

Chapter Seventeen

Arkady

I was an asshole with Mirabel last night.

The coffee in my hand has gone cold. I don’t remember making it. Don’t remember when I came into my office or how long I’ve been standing here watching the security feeds cycle through their endless loops. Six monitors arranged in a grid—kitchen, hallways, gates, perimeter. Mirabel appears on screen three, scrubbing at the same pot for the fifth time. The motion is aggressive. Therapeutic. Like she’s trying to scour away the memory of whatever I said to her in the dark.

She knows I’m hiding something. Mirabel’s smart—too smart to buy the bullshit I’ve been selling. But I can’t tell her the truth. I almost did the other day, but in hindsight, I am glad Stefan interrupted. How the fuck am I supposed to explain to her that her twin sister is sleeping above us, or that a dead woman’s infant sleeps in a nursery I never wanted, or that my father just declared war and now threatens everything I’ve built here.

Blyad!

Too many secrets. They pile up like corpses in a freezer, and eventually someone’s going to open the door.

My phone vibrates against the desk. I pick it up. Study the digits. Every instinct screams not to answer, but Gavriil Laurov doesn’t call unless he’s already holding a knife to your throat.

I swipe to accept and press the phone to my ear. “Da.”

“I know you took my girls, Arkady.”

His voice pours through the speaker like poisoned honey—smooth, cultured, absolutely devoid of mercy. My father doesn’t raise his voice when he’s angry. He gets quieter. More precise. The kind of quiet that precedes executions.

“And Debra,” he continues. “I’m going to give you one last chance to undo this. You have one week, Arkady, to return Debra and the rest of them.”

My free hand goes to the edge of the desk, and I lock my fingers down, channeling the rage somewhere it can’t escape through my voice. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s information, Arkady.” A pause. I can picture him in his study, rolling cognac in a crystal tumbler, completely at ease while he destroys lives. “If Debra and the rest of my stock are not in my house within one week, I will rain hell on you. Your call. I warned you.”

The line goes dead.

Stock. That’s what they are to him.

Pizda!

I stand there with the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.