Page 68 of Cruel Submission

The bag drops completely. My vision sharpens and blurs at once, everything too bright and too dark, her face carved from memory and nightmare standing three feet away.

Six years. Six fucking years I’ve searched. Six years of nightmares and false leads and the constant ache of not knowing if she was alive or dead or suffering somewhere beyond my reach.

And she’s here.

In this house.

With a baby.

My legs turn liquid. I lock them, refuse to let them fold. My hand finds my stomach—the baby there, the one I’m running away to protect—while I stare at my sister holding someone else’s child.

“Debra?” I try again. The word comes out broken. “Is that—? Is it really—?”

She stares back. Her face mirrors mine except for the hollows under her eyes, the gauntness in her cheeks, the haunted quality that ages her beyond twenty-four. Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

“Mira.”

One word. Hardly a sound. But I hear it, and it changes everything.

She’s real. This is real.

My sister, the one whose absence carved a hole in my chest that never healed—

She’s here in this house.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mirabel

“Mirabel?”

My name. In her voice. The voice that used to finish my sentences, that knew every secret.

We stand face to face. Identical. Trembling. Both alive. Both here in Arkady’s garden for reasons that don’t make sense yet.

“How—?” Her voice cracks. “How are you here?”

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. I just close the distance and pull her against me.

She collapses into my arms—or I collapse into hers—and we’re sobbing, clutching each other like we’re drowning. Her bones feel sharp under my hands. Too sharp. Too thin. But she’s warm and breathing and real.

“You’re alive.” The words tear out of me. “God, Debra, you’re alive—”

“I know. I know.” Her hands fist in my shirt. “I’m here, Mira. I’m okay.”

She’s lying. I feel it in the way she shakes, in the hitch of her breathing, in how she holds me like I might disappear too. But I don’t push. Not yet.

The baby starts crying.

She pulls back, swiping at her face. “Sorry, I have to—” She turns to the stroller, lifts the bundle of blue blankets.

When she faces me again, when I see the baby’s face—

My breath stops.

Dark hair. Strong features. And those eyes—pale, piercing, unmistakable even on an infant.

Arkady’s eyes. I’m certain of it.