Chapter Nineteen
Mirabel
The key burns in my pocket as I mop the hallway floor outside Arkady’s east wing.
All these days of rules, boundaries, and forbidden doors. And now the one door I’ve been explicitly told to avoid—the one that’s consumed my thoughts since I first saw it—is just within reach.
Anfisa’s been gone for two days. Her retirement party was small, just her and a few long-time staff members raising glasses in the kitchen. She’d hugged me briefly before leaving, her parting words both warning and prediction: “Be careful with him, Mirabel. And with yourself.”
Now I’m the head housekeeper. The one responsible for maintaining this massive estate to Arkady’s exacting standards. The one who shouldn’t even think about using the key that’s been plaguing my conscience.
I dip the mop into the bucket, watching water swirl around the fibers. Arkady’s been in Vegas for three days. The house feels different without him—quieter, less charged. The staff move with slightly less tension in their shoulders. Even the guards seem more relaxed at their posts.
But the east wing still hums with his presence. His scent lingers in the corridors, and I keep finding myself expecting to see him striding down the hall.
“Stop it,” I mutter to myself, wringing excess water from the mop. “Just do your job.”
I check my phone for the hundredth time today.
No messages from Dad, which means he’s doing okay after yesterday’s treatment.
No messages from Diane, which means she’s still annoyed that I haven’t visited since I started working here.
No messages from Arkady, which means he’s still handling whatever “business” took him to Vegas.
My fingers hover over his name in my contacts. We’ve never texted each other, but his number sits there anyway, programmed into my phone “in case of emergency.”
What would I even say?
Hey, boss, just checking if you’ll be home soon because I stole the key to your secret sanctuary, and I’m fighting the urge to use it?
“Seriously, girl?” I shake my head and pocket the phone.
The mop slides across the hardwood in smooth, even strokes. One section. Then another. Mindless work that fails to distract me from the key and what it represents.
What’s in that room that requires such secrecy? What does Arkady do in there that no one else can see?
I pause at the end of the hall, staring at the forbidden door.
This is ridiculous.
He’s probably got cameras everywhere.
But why would he have cameras monitoring a room that only he ever enters?
The bucket squeaks as I push it to the wall.
Five minutes.
Just a quick look.
He’ll never know.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I pull the key from my pocket and approach the door. My hand shakes slightly as I slide the key into the lock.
It turns smoothly, with barely a whisper of sound.
One last chance to walk away, Mirabel.
I push the door open and step inside… because clearly, I’m insane.
The atmosphere shifts immediately. The air feels different here—denser, somehow. The light is softer, the edges of the room cast in shadow. The space smells intensely of him, but differently than his bedroom or office. Here, the scent is more intimate, less controlled. More human.
I close the door behind me, trying to keep my breathing steady as I take a closer look at the room that I’d only seen briefly the day I saw Anfisa here. Simply furnished, functional but comfortable. Serene.
This space doesn’t match the rest of Ashwater Heights. It feels lived-in. Real. As if this small corner of the mansion is the only place where Arkady exists as a person rather than a force of nature.
I move through the room on silent feet, guilt and curiosity warring in my chest. There’s a kitchenette to one side, a small refrigerator beneath a counter.
I open it to find it stocked with ready-to-eat meals.
A double bed with crisp cotton sheets that I trail my fingertips over as I walk by.
A desk sits against one wall, papers stacked precisely. I don’t touch them. Even I have limits.
The bathroom door stands partially open.
I nudge it wider, revealing a space that’s beautiful but far simpler than the marble monstrosity attached to his bedroom.
A bath. A shower stall. A pedestal sink.
Masculine toiletries arranged with that same careful precision he applies to everything else in his world.
I step inside, drawn by an impulse I don’t examine too closely. The shower stall is spotless, tiles gleaming.
My fingers trace the edge of the sink, then drift to the shower door. I pull it open slightly; the scent of his soap intensifies—and the scent of him. The kind of scent that clings to skin long after the water stops running.
Heat unfurls low in my belly, unexpected and unwanted.
I imagine him here, standing beneath the spray.
Water cascading over those broad shoulders, sliding down the ink that covers his chest and throat.
Hands braced against the tile, head bowed under the pressure, muscles flexing beneath tattooed skin.
Vulnerable in a way he never allows himself to be anywhere else.
My breathing quickens. The bathroom suddenly feels too small, too warm. I back out, returning to the main room, but the images follow me—vivid and intrusive and impossible to shake.
I should leave. Now. Lock the door. Pretend I was never here.
Instead, I sink onto the sofa, telling myself I just need a moment to collect myself. To process this space and what it means. But my body knows the truth—the heat building between my thighs, the flush spreading across my skin, the way my nipples tighten against the fabric of my bra.
This room holds him in ways the rest of the mansion doesn’t. His essence saturates the air, the furniture, everything. And being surrounded by it—by him—ignites something I can’t control.
I lie back against the cushions, eyes closing. Just for a second.
The scent of him is everywhere. On the throw pillow beneath my head. In the air I breathe. It seeps into my lungs, my bloodstream, firing synapses I didn’t know existed.
My mind conjures him without permission—stepping out of that shower, water still beading on his skin. The way his eyes would darken if he found me here. The controlled violence in how he’d move, crossing the room in three strides, yanking me up by my wrist.
What are you doing in my space, Mirabel?
His hands wouldn’t be gentle. They never are. He’d grip my jaw, force my face up to meet his gaze, and I’d see that dangerous hunger burning behind the ice of his eyes.
Heat pools between my legs, slick and insistent. My thighs press together, seeking friction, seeking relief from the ache that’s building to unbearable levels.
“Stop,” I whisper to myself, but my hand has already begun its descent.
I should feel shame. Should be horrified at what I’m about to do. But the want obliterates everything else—every rule, every boundary, every shred of professionalism I’ve tried to maintain.
My fingers slip beneath the waistband of my skirt, finding heat and wetness that shocks me with its intensity. I’m soaked. Aching. My body responding to nothing more than thoughts of him, the memory of his naked form in his bedroom doorway, the fantasy of what he’d do if he caught me here.
He’d punish me. I know he would. The thought sends a fresh wave of arousal through me, my fingers circling my clit with increasing urgency.
I imagine him here, standing over me. Watching with that predatory stillness that makes my stomach lurch. His voice would be low, dangerous: You couldn’t help yourself, could you? Couldn’t stay away from what isn’t yours.
My back arches off the sofa. One hand works between my legs while the other slides beneath my shirt, finding my breast, pinching my nipple the way I imagine he would—rough enough to make me gasp.
In my mind, he’s unbuckling his belt. The leather sliding through the loops with that serpentine hiss. His eyes never leaving mine as he commands: Touch yourself. Show me what you do when you think of me.
Would he take me over this couch? Bend me forward with my ass in the air and fuck me from behind? He’d be merciless; brutal, even. Leaving his mark on my flesh.
My fingers move faster, two of them sliding inside while my thumb presses against my clit. The dual sensation makes my legs tremble, toes curling against the sofa cushions.
He’d command me, and I’d obey him. God help me, I’d do anything he asked. Spread myself open for his gaze. Let him watch me fall apart. Let him see exactly how much power he has over me.
The fantasy shifts. Now he’s kneeling between my thighs, replacing my fingers with his mouth. That talented tongue I’ve only imagined, circling and sucking and driving me to the edge of sanity. His hands would grip my hips, holding me in place when I try to writhe away from the intensity.
Come for me, Mirabel.
Let me taste it.
The orgasm crashes through me without warning. My body goes rigid, inner walls clenching around my fingers as waves of pleasure roll through me. I bite down on my lip to trap the sound trying to escape—his name forming on my lips.
The release seems endless, my body wringing every last drop of sensation from the moment. When it finally subsides, I’m left gasping, legs shaking, a fine sheen of sweat cooling on my skin.
For several heartbeats, I float in the haze of endorphins.
Then reality crashes back with crushing force.
What have you done?
What in the actual fuck is wrong with you, Mirabel McCleod?
I sit up too quickly, the room spinning slightly. Horror replaces the fading pleasure, cold and sharp and unforgiving. I just masturbated in Arkady’s private sanctuary. In his space. On his sofa.
My gaze sweeps the room and lands on the urn near the window.
The urn I’d barely noticed in my descent into depravity.
I stand unsteadily, quickly adjusting my clothing. The simple wooden stand holds the vessel, unadorned except for a small plaque on its base. Beside it rests a glass case containing a handgun—the same model I’ve glimpsed in Arkady’s bedroom.
I approach slowly, shame and self-reproach tangling in my chest. The plaque bears simple words, etched in careful script: Mishka, please forgive me.
My throat closes.
Who was Mishka?
A lost lover? A child?
Whoever it was, these ashes are all he has left of them.
This room isn’t a secret hiding place. It’s a shrine. A memorial to a loss so profound it requires its own sanctuary, separate from the rest of his life.
And I just defiled it with my lust.
Disgust rises, bitter and thick. Not at the desire itself, but at where I allowed it to consume me. In the space where Arkady comes to grieve.
“Mishka,” I whisper, the name foreign on my tongue. “I’m sorry.”
The apology feels pathetically inadequate. Sorry for what? For being so consumed by want that I forgot basic human decency? For judging Arkady without understanding the weight of what he carries?
All of it. None of it. There aren’t words for what I’ve done.
I smooth the sofa cushions, erasing the indent where my body lay. Check for any sign of my presence—a hair, a wrinkle, anything that might betray my trespass. The throw pillow goes back exactly where I found it, angled just so.
My gaze returns to the urn, to the loss he must feel.
Unbidden, thoughts of Debra surge through me. Her face so like mine, her laugh, the way she’d always know what I was thinking before I said it aloud. The empty space she left behind that never stops aching.
“I miss you,” I whisper to Debra’s ghost. “Every single day.”
For a moment—just a flicker, just a breath—I swear I hear her voice: I miss you too.
The sensation is so real, so present, that I spin around, half-expecting to see her standing there. But the room remains empty except for shadows and silence and the memory of my shame.
I check my watch and jolt. Over an hour. I’ve wasted over an hour snooping and fantasizing and—God—pleasuring myself while the rest of the wing remains uncleaned and my actual duties pile up.
I move to the door, checking one last time that everything is exactly as I found it. The desk, the sofa, the urn on the pedestal. All untouched, all pristine. No evidence that I was ever here.
Except I was. And something fundamental has shifted.
Just before I slip out, I pause, looking back at the peaceful space. At this room that has shown me more about Arkady Laurov than weeks of careful observation ever could.
I lock the door behind me and return to my abandoned mop and bucket, resuming my cleaning as if nothing has changed. As if I haven’t crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.
But everything has changed. I’ve seen beneath Arkady’s mask. Felt his grief lingering in a room he keeps separate from the rest of his life.
As I push the mop across the floor, shame burns through me with each stroke. But beneath it runs a current of something darker, more honest.
I want him. Despite knowing better. Despite every warning sign. Despite the danger he represents and the secrets he keeps.
I want Arkady Laurov in ways that terrify me.
And I have no idea what to do with that truth.