Page 97 of Cruel Submission

“Don’t be long,” I say.

“Five minutes.”

I kiss the corner of his jaw—the place where the ink feathers up toward his ear, where his skin is warm and carries the remnants of his aftershave and the heat underneath it that no cologne can replicate.

“Five minutes,” I repeat, and leave him to his cameras and his checkpoints and the rituals of a man who protects with the same intensity he loves.

The garden at Ashwater Heights looks like a page from a magazine I can’t afford. Which is ironic, because I suppose I can afford it now. Or Arkady can, which amounts to the same thing, even though I still feel a small jolt of impostor syndrome every time I walk across the manicured lawn in shoes that the old me would have stared at through a shop window and walked away from.

White marquees are pitched along the south terrace. Strings of warm light are threaded through the hedgerows, even though it’s midafternoon, and they won’t be needed for hours. But the effect is there, a promise of the evening ahead. Round tables dressed in linen and greenery, the flowers wild rather than fussy—peonies and eucalyptus and something trailing with tiny white blooms that the florist called astilbe, which sounds like a medical condition but looks beautiful. A small stage has been set up near the fountain, a sound system tucked discreetly to one side, and there’s a bar along the west wall of the garden that appears to stock every spirit known to man.

Somebody has spent a lot of time on this. And by somebody, I mean Stefan, because Arkady told me he delegated the planning, and Stefan, apparently, approaches party logistics the same way he approaches mob operations: with terrifying precision and no tolerance for error.

I tug the wrap tighter at my hip and check my reflection in the glass of the terrace doors. My bump is visible. Undeniably, unmistakably there, rounding the line of the dress, shifting my center of gravity, making me walk with that slight backward lean pregnant women develop to compensate for the new weight they’re carrying at their front. I press a hand to it.

Hello, baby girl. Your mom’s about to become officially engaged to a man with a gun cabinet and a team of killers on call. Welcome to the family.

The first car rolls up the drive at two o’clock sharp.

Stefan steps out, dressed in a dark suit that somehow makes his full-body ink look even more dramatic—the neo-Japanese motifs crawling up his neck, the tattooed temple and cheek catching the afternoon light. Behind him comes a woman I haven’t met—tall, dark-haired, dressed in a navy shift dress, her smile warm and slightly nervous in the way of people arriving at a billionaire’s estate when they’re not used to it. Stefan’s wife. I know almost nothing about her, which tells me everything about how fiercely Stefan guards his private life.

And behind her—Julia.

Stefan’s daughter. Eighteen. Rescued from Gavriil’s trafficking ring the same day they found Debra. She’s thin still—too thin, her collarbones visible above the neckline of her floral dress—but there’s light in her face. She hangs close to her mother, one hand gripping the strap of her bag, watching the grounds with wide eyes. I recognize that look. I’ve seen it on Debra. The vigilance of someone whose body remembers things their mind is trying to file away.

I go to meet them. Stefan sees me coming and gives me a nod—brief, formal, exactly the amount of warmth he permits himself during working hours, which is apparently all hours.

“Stefan.” I extend my hands to his wife. “You must be—”

“Natalia.” She takes both my hands and squeezes. “He talks about you constantly. Well—” She side-eyes Stefan. “Constantly by his standards, which is about three sentences a month.”

I decide immediately that I like her.

“Julia.” I turn to the girl. Gentle. Careful. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

She gives me a small, careful smile. “Thank you for having me.”

There’s a conversation happening underneath this one, the acknowledgment of what we share, the invisible thread connecting women who’ve been touched by the same violence. I don’t pull on it. I just let her know, with a look and a touch on her arm, that she’s safe here. That this garden, today, is a good place.

Debra appears on the terrace. She’s wearing a lavender dress Yanis bought her—one with a loose collar and long sleeves that cover her wrists—and her hair is down, soft around her shoulders, longer than it was a month ago. Yanis walks a step behind her, close but not crowding. Always that calibrated distance.

I wave Debra over. She sees Julia, and something passes between them; recognition, maybe. The silent recognition of survivors meeting in a normal setting and agreeing, without words, not to discuss it today.

“This is my sister, Debra,” I say. “Debs, this is Natalia, Stefan’s wife. And Julia, his daughter.”

Debra shakes Natalia’s hand. Meets Julia’s eyes. Holds them a beat longer than politeness requires.

“Nice to meet you,” Julia says.

“You too,” Debra says, and means it differently than most people do.

Baby Aleks arrives next, carried from the house by Fanny, with the brisk, cheerful competence of someone who genuinely loves her job. Aleks is two months old now and has perfected the art of being devastatingly cute at maximum volume. He’s awake, dark eyes blinking at the world with the baffled indignation of someone who didn’t ask to be brought to a garden party and would like to speak to a manager.

“There he is.” I reach for him immediately. Fanny passes him over the way women who work with babies do—one arm, no hesitation—and I settle him against my hip… or what’s left of my hip, given the bump. He fits into the curve of my arm like he was designed for it. His weight against me, his tiny fingers gripping the fabric of my dress, the clean powdery smell of him making me smile. “Hello, little man. You’re looking very handsome.”

He responds by grabbing a fistful of my hair and trying to eat it.

“He does that,” Fanny says, apologetic.