Page 96 of Cruel Submission
Yanis has been around the house constantly. He and Debra have this gravitational thing happening… quiet, careful, nothing rushed. He sits with her in the garden while she reads. He brings her tea without asking whether she wants it, and she accepts without questioning why he made it. I’ve watched them from the upstairs window sometimes, the two of them on the stone bench, close enough that their shoulders touch but not so close that she feels cornered. He never reaches for her first. Always waits until she bridges the gap.
My sister is getting better. Day by day, in increments so small you’d miss them if you weren’t paying attention. But I am. I always am. The way she walks into rooms now without looking for threats. The way she’s started laughing at things… not the guarded, careful laugh of someone testing whether it’s safe to be happy, but actual laughter that comes up from her belly. Being loved has a lot to do with it. Being safe has more.
And today is a special day.
Our engagement party.
I’m standing in the bedroom in my underwear, trying to decide between the sage green dress and the cream one, when Arkady walks in. He’s already dressed: charcoal suit, white shirt open at the collar, the blackwork ink climbing his throat visible above the fabric. He looks like the reason insurance premiums exist.
“The green one,” he says, without being asked.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it.” He crosses to where I’m standing by the wardrobe, picks up the sage dress, and holds it against me with one hand. His other hand goes to my belly—high, where the curve starts, his palm spread wide over the place where our daughter is building herself one day at a time. “This color. You wear it, and I can’t look anywhere else.”
“You can’t look anywhere else, regardless.”
“True.” He drops the dress over my arm and leans down to press his mouth against my temple. Brief. Warm. The gesture of a man who is learning to give tenderness without flinching away from it. “The caterers are downstairs arguing about something. Canapés, I think. Stefan has already told them twice that if they don’t stop shouting, he’ll escort them off the premises.”
I laugh. “Stefan threatening to remove catering staff from an engagement party. Very on brand.”
“He’s efficient.”
“He’s terrifying.”
“Also true.” Arkady pauses. Studies me with that particular attention he gives when he’s working out whether to say something or keep it sealed. “Are you happy?”
The question is so simple it almost breaks me. Are you happy? Asked by a man who spent most of his adult life believing he didn’t deserve the answer.
“Yes,” I say. “Are you?”
He considers this. Deeply, the way he considers everything: thoroughly, from every possible angle.
“I don’t have a word for what I am,” he says. “In Russian or in English. But whatever it is, you did it.”
“Smooth.”
“I’m not being smooth.”
“You’re always being smooth. It’s pathological.” I step into the dress, pulling it over my bump. It’s a wrap style—forgiving, elegant, the fabric draping over my belly in a way that doesn’t hide it but doesn’t scream it either. Six months. My daughter is the size of a mango, according to the app, and she makes her presence known with kicks that come at three in the morning and whenever Arkady puts his hand on my stomach, as if she already knows who he is and wants to fight him.
“Zip me?”
He comes behind me. Finds the zipper at my back. Pulls it up slowly—too slowly—his knuckles dragging along my skin.
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“That. We have sixty guests arriving in forty-five minutes.”
“Forty-three. Stefan just confirmed the final time.” He finishes the zip and turns me around by the shoulders. Looks at me. Takes his time doing it, not in a creepy way but in the way a man looks at something he built and can’t quite believe is real. “Krasivaya,” he says. “Go downstairs. I’ll follow.”
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the security feed. Making sure Leo’s team is in position.”
Right. Because even our engagement party has an armed security detail. Snipers with champagne.
