"Same thing. Different words." He crouched down, bringing himself to my eye level. "Do you know what that means? What it means to be a Mire?"
"Tell me."
"It means you're untouchable. No one can hurt you without answering to us. It means you have resources—money, protection, connections. It means you can do anything you want, go anywhere you want, be anyone you want." He paused. "It also means you're ours. Forever. There's no leaving the Mire family. Not alive."
"I can leave whenever I want. Aleksander said—"
"Aleksander lies." Nathan's voice was soft, almost gentle. "He lies to protect himself. To protect the people he loves. But he lies. You're a Mire now, Monika. You don't get to change your mind."
I stared at him. The nursery was cold—colder than it should have been, despite the heating vent. The mobile turned slowly above us, the wooden animals casting shadows that danced across Nathan's face.
"If that's true," I said, "then you're stuck with me."
"I know."
"Does that bother you?"
He reached out and touched my face. His fingers were cold—colder than Aleksander's, colder than Gabriel's—and they traced the line of my jaw with a slowness that made my skin prickle.
"I don't know yet," he said. "Ask me again in a year."
He stood. Walked to the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.
"The nursery is off-limits," he said. "Don't come here again."
"Or what?"
He looked back at me. The shadows carved his face into something ancient and terrible and beautiful.
"Or I'll have to think of a suitable punishment."
He left. The door closed behind him with a soft click. I sat in the rocking chair for a long time, listening to the silence, watching the mobile turn.
That night, I stood in front of the gilded mirror in my new bedroom and looked at my reflection.
The woman who looked back at me had my face. My eyes. My mouth. But she was wearing a dress I hadn't chosen, standing in a room I hadn't paid for, bearing a name I hadn't earned.
Monika Mire.
I said it out loud, testing the shape of it. "Monika Mire."
It sounded like someone else. Someone who belonged here. Someone who had always belonged here.
I thought about the farm. About my mother. About Mercy, the calf I'd delivered when I was ten, the way she'd looked at me with those dark, wet eyes.
I thought about the cages. The women. The things I'd seen and done and agreed to.
I thought about Gabriel's hands on my body. Nathan's finger on my collarbone. Aleksander's lips on my knuckles.
I thought about the person I used to be—the girl who wanted to be a veterinarian, who believed in saving things, who thought she could heal the world with steady hands.
That girl was still in there somewhere. Buried. But not gone.
I touched the mirror. My reflection touched back.
"Monika Mire," I said again.
The name felt like a stone in my mouth.
