Chapter Eleven
Mirabel
The stack of bills burns against my skin through my purse, a weight dragging me down with each step.
Ten thousand dollars. Blood money.
I can practically smell it—metallic and forbidden—as the cab weaves through traffic toward Dad’s house.
I watch the city blur past the window, counting intersections. Five more to Dad. Four. Three. Each number brings me closer to a conversation I’ve been rehearsing since I walked out of Arkady Laurov’s office with his money pressed against my palm, his eyes still imprinted on my skin.
The car stops. Dad’s garden sprawls in neglect—weeds strangling what once bloomed under Mom’s care. I pay the driver, the bills feeling dirty beneath my fingers. Stolen. Or worse—bought with something I don’t fully understand yet.
Dad opens the door on my third knock, his frame silhouetted against the hallway light. The cancer has hollowed him out. Left scaffolding where a man once stood.
“Mirabel?” Surprise pulls at his features. “I didn’t expect you tonight.”
“We need to talk.” I shift awkwardly on the doorstep. “Can I come in?”
His face contracts, the same expression from when I was eight and he told me Mom wasn’t coming home from the hospital. He steps back, creating space for me to enter a house that smells of medication and dust. Things are worse than he wants me to know.
More pill bottles line the counter than before. The kitchen light catches them, throwing shadows that look like tiny gravestones across the counter. Dad’s hands tremble as he reaches for the kettle.
“I’ll do that, Dad.” I guide him to a chair. “Sit.”
He lets me, which terrifies me more than the weight loss or the hollow eyes. Peter McLeod never surrenders control—not since Mom died, not even when he’s drowning.
“What’s this about?” he asks as I set a steaming mug before him. “You look… troubled.”
I pull air into lungs that feel too small. “I got a new job.”
“That’s… good?” His voice lifts with uncertainty.
“It’s a live-in position. I’ll be a housekeeper.” The words tumble out, gathering speed. “Five thousand a month, Dad.”
His fingers tighten around the mug. “Five—” He stares. “That’s more than double your current salary.”
“I know.”
“What’s the catch?”
Dad always sees the teeth in the gift horse’s mouth. Always knows when the bait conceals a hook.
“I start Monday. The estate’s two hours from the city.”
Understanding collapses his expression. “You’ll be living there. Away.”
“Away from you,” I finish, the words sticking like tar to my tongue. “Yes.”
“That’s… that’s good, darling. I’m glad for you,” he says.
He’s not glad. Neither am I. But there’s just no other option right now.
“That’s not why I’m here.” My fingers shake as I unzip my purse. “I have something. For your treatment.”
I place the stack on the table. Ten thousand dollars. It hits the wood with a weighty thwack.
Dad goes utterly still. “Mirabel. What have you done?”
“It’s a loan,” I say quickly. “My employer’s fronting it against my salary.”
“Your employer?” His voice sharpens.
“He’s really wealthy. You should see his estate.” It’s not actually an answer, but how do you tell your dad you think you just made a deal with the devil to pay for his chemo?
Dad’s eyes narrow to slits. “And this man just happened to offer exactly what you need?”
“I told him about your cancer. Our situation.” The words sound feeble even to me.
“Mirabel—”
“Don’t.” The word slices between us. “I made this choice. For you. Us.”
“By selling yourself to a stranger?” His voice cracks. “By disappearing where I can’t protect you?”
“You need this money to live!” Something hot and jagged tears through my chest. “And I don’t need protection.”
“Everyone needs protection from certain people.” He pushes the money away like it’s contaminated. “What kind of man hands out ten thousand dollars to a woman he just met on a job interview?”
The kind who looks at you like he’s memorizing the hollow of your throat. The kind who radiates danger even in his sleep. The kind who makes promises with his mouth and threats with his eyes.
“A man who can afford it,” I say instead. “It’s a loan, Dad. Not a gift.”
“What interest is he charging?” His voice scrapes lower. “What’s the real price, Mirabel?”
“There’s no price! He’s my employer. I’m his housekeeper.”
“Housekeeper.” He shapes the word like I’ve told him I’m becoming an assassin. “At some remote estate. For a man who throws money around like confetti.”
I stand, frustration and anxiety and determination knotting together in my stomach. “This is happening, Dad. I’m taking this job. And you’re taking this money.” I push the stack toward him. “Because I will not watch you die when I have a way to save you.”
Something in my voice reaches him. His shoulders collapse, defeat carving deeper lines around his mouth.
“What if it fails?” he whispers, voice threadbare. “What if the treatment doesn’t work, and you’ve… tied yourself to this man for nothing?”
The question steals my breath. I see it in vivid, terrible clarity—Dad gone, me alone in that massive house, trapped by a debt I can never repay with money.
“Then at least we fought,” I say finally. “Better than surrender.”
His face crumples. Two steps and I’m around the table, arms wrapped around shoulders that feel like a birdcage with too many broken slats.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against my collarbone. “I should be taking care of you.”
“That’s not how it works, Dad.” I press my face against his hair. “We’re all we have left.”
He clutches the back of my shirt like he’s drowning, and I let him. The money sits on the table—salvation and damnation in equal measure.
“I’ll call every day,” I promise as I’m leaving. “And I’ll drive you to treatment before I go.”
“I can get a cab,” he protests.
“I know. But I need to.”
Need to memorize him… just in case. The particular shade of gray at his temples. The way his hands make music against any surface when he’s thinking. The specific cadence of his laugh that I haven’t heard in months.
Just in case it’s the last chance I get.
* * *
“You’re going to work for the wedding guy?” Diane’s voice climbs so high it makes my teeth ache.
I collapse onto our sofa, kicking my shoes across the room where they thud against the wall. “That would be him.”
“Holy fucking shit!” She drops beside me, wine sloshing dangerously in her glass. “The hot asshole with the neck tattoos? The one who publicly humiliated his pregnant fiancée?”
“Five thousand a month, Di.”
“Jesus Christ, Mira.” She gulps wine like it’s water. “So he’s paying you obscene amounts to, what, scrub his toilets?”
“I’m his housekeeper,” I correct her. “And it’s a loan.”
Her expression softens. “For your dad?”
“Ten thousand up front.”
“Jesus.” She sets her wine down. “Mira, you see what this looks like, right?”
I can’t meet her eyes because I do. “It’s not like that.”
“Rich, dangerous man with obvious anger issues and a god complex offers struggling gorgeous girl a suspiciously good salary to live in his isolated mansion and scrub his toilets? Throws cash at her desperate situation?” Her eyebrows vanish into her hairline.
“What comes next—special duties that aren’t in the job description? ”
“Stop.” But my mind betrays me, replaying the slow drag of his gaze across my body, the subtle flare of his nostrils when I leaned forward, the way his fingers lingered against mine when he passed me the contract. “And I’m not gorgeous. Not by a long shot.”
She gives a snort. “I’m serious, Mira. This isn’t a cheesy romance novel. This is how women disappear.”
“It’s a job, Diane.” I insist, but my voice lacks conviction. “A really well-paying job and a way to help my dad.”
“A job two hours from civilization with a man who might as well have ‘danger’ tattooed across his forehead instead of… What were they again? Birds?”
“Wings,” I correct without thinking. “Black feathers wrapped around his throat.”
“Jesus, you’re already obsessed with him.” She leans forward, suddenly serious. “Really, though. What’s he like? Beyond the drama and the whole broody ‘I’ll destroy what I love’ aesthetic?”
I try to distill Arkady Laurov into something coherent. Something that doesn’t involve the electric current that seemed to pass between us whenever our eyes met, or the way his voice vibrated directly against my skin.
“Intense,” is the word I finally I settle on. “Like he’s stripped down to raw nerves and iron control. And there’s something… wounded about him. Under all that power.”
“Fuck me sideways,” Diane groans. “You’re halfway to Stockholm syndrome already.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I know this story, Mira. Damaged rich guy, innocent girl who thinks she can heal his broken soul with her magic vagina—”
“Diane!” Heat floods my face.
“Am I wrong?” She crosses her arms. “Tell me you don’t find him attractive.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but the lie sticks in my throat. Instead, I steal her wine and drain it.
“That’s what I thought.” She takes her empty glass back. “Which is why you’re going to promise me that you’ll be careful. And that you’ll answer when I call to make sure you haven’t been dismembered in his sex dungeon.”
“Jesus, Di.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.” I meet her eyes, seeing real fear beneath the bravado. “I’ll check in every day.”
“And you’ll tell me if he gets weird?”
“Define weird.”
“Secret room of ex-wives’ corpses. Making you call him Daddy. Asking you to dress like his mother.”
I snort despite myself. “I swear to report all serial killer behavior.”
“And sex stuff,” she adds. “I need details about the sex stuff.”
“There won’t be any sex stuff.”
But even as I say it, my traitorous mind conjures images of black wings on tanned skin, broad shoulders flexing, strong hands pinning mine above my head, that cool, controlled voice rasping filthy commands against my ear.
I am so completely, royally fucked.
But there’s no time to think about it, because the deal is done. Somewhere inside Arkady Laurov’s office, there’s a contract with my signature on it. I’m working for him now. And I’m going to save Dad.
The next few days blur into a frenzy of paperwork and packing and panic. I resign from the registrar’s office, grateful for their one-week notice policy. My coworkers throw an awkward goodbye lunch that only makes me feel worse about leaving in such a hurry.
Erica catches me alone afterward, her face drawn tight with worry.
“Laurov,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “That’s who you’re working for?”
My insides twist. “Do you think it’s a problem?” Why am I asking this? I’ve known the answer since I walked into that interview room.
“I know his family.” Her eyes skitter around us, checking for listeners. “They’re not people you want to cross, Mirabel.”
“I’m going to be fine, Erica, I promise.” I smile, hoping the lie lands smoothly.
She glances over her shoulder again. “Just watch yourself. Don’t ask questions. Don’t listen at doors.” Her eyes lock onto mine. “Don’t go looking for things that aren’t yours to find.”
My face burns hot. She’d always known about my habit of eavesdropping. A habit I’m trying to change.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, but her warning follows me out like a shadow, settling cold and heavy in my gut.
Sunday arrives with brutal swiftness. I stand in my bedroom, surveying the scraps of my life compressed into two suitcases. Clothes. Books. Photos. The bracelet I haven’t worn since Debra disappeared, wrapped in tissue paper like a precious, wounded thing.
My phone vibrates:
Car arrives 2 p.m. Pack essentials only. Anything else will be provided. - A.L.
The formality makes me smile despite everything. Of course he’d sign texts with his initials.
Diane finds me staring at my phone, lost in the void between decisions.
“Last chance to back out,” she says from the doorway.
I shake my head. “Dad has another treatment tomorrow.”
“I know.” She hugs herself, suddenly small. “I just worry about you alone with him.”
“I won’t be alone. There’s staff.”
“Right. Staff who won’t hear you scream when he decides to—”
“Diane!”
“Sorry.” She crosses to me and wraps her arms around my shoulders. “Just remember, you can always come home. Anytime. For any reason.”
I hug her back, my throat closing. “I know.”
“And if you do end up fucking your hot boss, I want every single dirty detail.”
I laugh wetly against her shoulder. “You’re impossible.”
“It’s my best quality.” She pulls back, studies my face like she’s memorizing it. “You’re really doing this.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “I really am.”
A sleek black car arrives precisely at two. The driver—built like he eats smaller men for breakfast—loads my suitcases without a word. His silence has weight, like he’s saving his voice for emergencies.
Diane hugs me one last time on the sidewalk, whispering fiercely: “Check in every day or I swear to God I’ll call every police station between here and Ashwater.”
Then I’m in the backseat, watching my old life shrink through tinted windows as we merge onto the highway heading north.
Two hours to Ashwater Heights. To Arkady Laurov. To whatever waits beyond those massive iron gates.
Two hours to second-guess every choice that led me here.
The car swallows mile after mile on the highway. I try not to think about Erica’s warning, about Diane’s jokes that didn’t sound like jokes. Try not to remember the intensity in Arkady’s eyes when he leaned close and murmured, “You have no idea what you’ve signed up for, Mirabel McLeod.”
Because the truth is, I don’t.
I only know that I’m walking willingly into the jaws of something that could devour me whole.
And some dark, reckless part of me is already anticipating the bite.