Page 77 of Cruel Submission

The tears come.

I don’t know what they are. Sad or happy or just frustrated. Maybe all three. Maybe none of them. My head is reeling with all the information that would be too much even for a crappy soap opera.

My sister is alive.

Arkady saved her.

He’s been hiding her here while I cleaned and cooked and fucked him, never knowing she was twenty feet above my head.

Baby Aleks is not a betrayal—he’s an orphan. A baby Arkady chose to raise, even though he swore he’d never have children. Even though the paternity is questionable.

And I’m pregnant. With his baby. The baby I was about to run away with.

The tears keep coming, hot and messy, soaking into my hair and the pillow beneath me. My throat tightens. I curl onto my side, hand pressed to my stomach where our child grows, and let myself break.

Because Debra is alive.

Because she suffered things I can’t even imagine.

Because Arkady saved her, and I wanted to hate him for keeping secrets.

Because I love him anyway.

God, I love him. Despite everything. Maybe because of everything.

The crying exhausts me. My eyes burn. My throat aches. The pillow is damp beneath my cheek, and I don’t have the energy to move.

Then I fall asleep. Maybe just half-asleep. That in-between place where nothing feels solid.

The pictures continue, jumbled up in time and space.

Debra.

I see her at eighteen, laughing on the school trip, her face identical to mine in the reflection of a shop window. Then I see her the way she looked today—thin, haunted, flinching at shadows. The two images overlap, refusing to reconcile. How does one person become the other?

Endless torment, that’s how. Fuck. I can’t even imagine what she’s lived through.

The pain of missing her crashes over me. All those years searching. All those sleepless nights. All those times I felt her presence, heard her voice, convinced myself I was going insane because dead people can’t talk to you.

Except she wasn’t dead.

Then I see her pain. Feel it like it’s mine. Because we’re twins. Because what hurts her hurts me. The violation. The fear. The endless days bleeding into endless nights with no escape, no hope, nothing but survival.

My stomach cramps. Nausea rolls through me—pregnancy or horror, I can’t tell.

Gratitude swells next. For Arkady. He saved her. Pulled her out of that hell. Gave her space to heal. Protected her, even when it meant lying to me. Even when it meant I’d hate him.

But the anger is there too. Sharp and hot. He kept her from me. Let me grieve. Let me search. Let me think I’d failed her.

The emotions cycle through me on repeat, too fast to process. Love and rage and grief and relief until I can’t tell which is which anymore.

Then there’s the pull toward Arkady. The need for him that I can’t explain. It’s not just physical, though God knows my body wants him. It’s deeper. Like he’s become necessary. Like I’ve folded him into myself and can’t extract him without bleeding out.

The protectiveness surges next. For my baby. For the tiny cluster of cells inside me that will become a person—our person. A life we made in secret, in darkness, in the space between control and surrender.

Babies, I should say.

Because I feel it for baby Aleks, too. Poor little thing. What a start to life. His mother dead by her own hand. His father possibly the man raising him or possibly not. Unwanted by the family that should have claimed him. Orphaned in every way that matters.