Page 9 of Cruel Submission

“Please, Gavriil,” she sobs. Her knees buckle. She catches herself on the sofa’s edge, barely, and I can see the tremor in her hands, the way her spine curves inward like she’s trying to disappear into herself.

“Pizda!” Gavriil shoves her backward. “Fine, take the day off. But you better get your shit together by tomorrow.”

He storms out the door across the room without a glance. His footsteps echo down the marble hallway, growing fainter.

I step through the doorway, not sure how to approach her.

She’s curled on the sofa, her robe hanging open over bruised skin I wish to God I couldn’t see. Purple-black fingerprints circle her wrists. Older marks yellow across her thighs. Her hair—chopped rough and uneven, like someone took scissors to it without caring—falls forward as her shoulders shake.

“Are you Debra?”

She jerks like I’ve hit her, head snapping up. For one gut-wrenching second, I’m looking at Mirabel. Same bone structure. Same mouth. Same deep brown eyes. But where Mirabel burns bright, this woman has been hollowed out and left to rot.

“Who are you?” The words crack halfway through. “Did Gavriil send you?”

“No.” I keep my hands visible, non-threatening. “My name is Arkady. I’m his son.”

Her eyes go wide. “He has a son?”

“Two of us. Yanis and I.”

And Mishka, but he’s been dead thirteen years, and that’s on me.

I take another step into the room. She scrambles backward on the sofa, clutching the robe closed.

“Please don’t hurt me.”

Christ. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m getting you out.”

She stares at me like I’m speaking a language she doesn’t understand. “Out?”

“Out of this house. Away from him.”

“No.” She shakes her head, frantic. “No, he’ll kill us both. You don’t understand, he—”

“Did he hurt you?” I’m not even sure why I ask the question when I already know the answer. I can see it written across every inch of bruised, exposed skin.

The question breaks something in her. “I think he’s going to kill me soon,” she whispers. “When he can’t… When I’m used up.”

The rage that rises in me is old and familiar, the same fury that’s been building since I was fifteen years old and realized exactly what kind of man my father is. I push it down, lock it away. She doesn’t need to see me lose control.

Keep it together, Arkady.

You’re nothing like your old man.

“That’s not going to happen. You’re coming with me. Now.”

“I can’t—”

“You can.” I pull out my phone, dial Stefan. He picks up on the first ring. “Didn’t find Mirabel, but I found her twin. We need extraction.”

“On my way, boss.”

I hang up and look back at Debra. She hasn’t moved. “Do you have anything you need to take with you?”

She blinks at me. Then something shifts in her face. Not hope, not yet, but maybe the faintest shadow of it. She pushes herself off the sofa and disappears through a side door.

I wait, counting the seconds, my hand resting on the gun at my hip. She reappears less than a minute later, clutching a small backpack. The kind a teenager carries to school. Christ. Six years, and this is all she has.