Page 56 of Cruel Submission

I try not to gasp, even though I’ve been thinking it myself. Hearing it from Diane—blunt, practical Diane who doesn’t soften things because she respects me enough to say them straight—makes it real in a way my own spiraling thoughts haven’t managed.

“Maybe,” I say. My voice sounds thin. Distant. Like it’s coming from someone else. “Or worse. A partner. Someone he actually—” I can’t finish the sentence. The implications crowd my throat, each one uglier than the last.

“Someone he actually what?” Diane pushes, gently.

“Cares about.” My throat works. “Someone he chose. Not someone who just… happened to be convenient. Someone like me.”

“Mirabel McLeod, don’t you dare.” Diane’s voice sharpens with a ferocity that catches me off guard. “You are not convenient. You are a woman who—”

“Who cleans his house and warms his bed and doesn’t ask questions.” The bitterness surprises even me. It rises from somewhere deep, somewhere I’ve been pushing it down for months. “That’s what I am, Di. That’s what he’s made me. And now I find out there’s someone else—someone important enough to hide, to protect, to bring doctors in for—and I’m just the help who doesn’t need to know.”

“Are you in love with him?”

The question takes the fight out of me. Not because it’s unexpected—I’ve seen it coming since the conversation started. But because the answer terrifies me.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

“Bullshit, Mira. You know.”

I close my eyes. Press my hand harder against my stomach, as if the baby can anchor me to something solid while the rest of my world spins.

“Yes,” I say. “God help me, yes.”

Diane exhales—not with surprise, but with the resignation of someone who suspected the diagnosis and has just had it confirmed. “Right. Okay. So we’re dealing with that too.” A pause. I can almost hear her recalibrating. “That prick. Pack your bags and leave today. You can come stay with me again.”

“Thanks, Di.” I trace patterns on the table’s surface—circles and spirals, anything to keep my hands occupied and my mind from running further down corridors I can’t afford to explore. “But if I leave this place, I’ll stay with Dad. He needs me now.”

The words sound wrong even as I say them. Because Dad needs money more than he needs my company, and leaving Arkady means leaving the salary that’s keeping Dad alive. The impossible choice I’ve been trying not to think about for weeks, the one that wakes me at four in the morning and sits on my chest, pressing the air out of my lungs until I have to count my breathing to keep from drowning.

Stay, and I’m a prisoner in a gilded cage with a man who keeps secrets and other women behind locked doors. Leave, and Dad’s treatment stops. The chemo. The specialist consultations. The drugs that are the only thing standing between him and the grave.

Some choice.

“Speaking of your dad…” Diane’s tone shifts. Goes careful. “I visited him yesterday.”

Everything inside me goes still.

“How is he?” I already know the answer. Can hear it in the way she hesitates. I’ve had bad news delivered to me so many times over the past year that I’ve developed a physical response to it—my stomach drops, my shoulders tighten, my body bracing for impact before my mind has finished processing the warning signs. “How is he really, Di?”

“He’s okay.” Too bright. Too fast. “You know Peter. Tough as nails.”

“Don’t lie to me. Everyone in my life lies to me. Please don’t you start.”

The sharpness of my own voice startles me. It comes from the same place as the bitterness—that deep well of frustration and fear that’s been filling up fast since this all began.

A beat. Then her voice softens. “He’s hanging in there, Mira. But he’s lost more weight. And he’s tired—the kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix. You know what I mean.”

I know what she means. I’ve seen it. The way the cancer hollows him out from the inside, leaving the shell of the man I love—the warm eyes, the quick smile, the hands that fixed everything when I was small—but removing the substance behind it, month by month, treatment by treatment.

“You should visit soon,” Diane adds quietly.

Soon. The word makes me flinch. Soon means now. Soon means before it’s too late. Soon means getting past the guards and the tracking apps and the man who decided my movements are his to control, all so I can sit beside my dying father and pretend I’m not falling apart.

“I need to get out of here and see him.” I stand, moving back to the window. The guards are still there. Still watching. One of them has shifted position—closer to the east wing entrance now. “Without those guards breathing down my neck every second.”

“Be careful.” Diane’s worry bleeds through the phone. “Those kidnappers could still be after you. And if something happened—”

“I don’t care.” I sound brittle as I say it. “Arkady can’t keep me from seeing my own father. I won’t let him.”