Chapter Sixteen
Mirabel
I don’t go far.
Just down the hallway, around the corner, where I can press my back against the wall and listen to the muffled sound of Arkady’s voice through his office door.
The Russian comes fast, clipped, each word sharp enough to cut.
I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I understand the tone.
Dangerous. Controlled. The voice of a man who’s about to do something violent.
My fingers curl into fists at my sides.
He dragged me into his office. Told me there was something he needed to say. Then, before he could finish a single sentence, his phone rang, and I became invisible. Step outside for a moment. Like I’m furniture. Like I’m nothing.
The humiliation sits in my chest, along with building resentment.
I push off the wall and walk. Not toward my room—I’m too restless for that.
Instead, I head down to the ground floor, where my cleaning supplies are, where I can lose myself in work and pretend the last twenty minutes didn’t happen.
Pretend I didn’t spend the walk to his office imagining what he might need to speak to me about.
Maybe something real. Maybe something that would explain the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m asleep.
Stupid.
I’m so incredibly stupid for hoping.
This man doesn’t toy with me because he’s conflicted and complicated, the way my stupid, romantic heart wants to believe. He does it because he’s a dick. And I’m fucking sick of it.
The marble floors gleam under my feet as I make my way through the main corridor. Everything in this house is pristine, expensive, carefully curated—including me, apparently. A live-in housekeeper who can be summoned and dismissed at will.
Who also happens to warm his bed at night.
The thought makes my throat tight.
I grab a rag from the supply closet and start wiping down the console table near the entrance. My movements are mechanical, efficient. I’ve done this a hundred times. Polish the wood. Straighten the decorative bowl. Adjust the flowers.
Why does he keep doing this to me? Why? Close one minute, a stranger the next. And not just a stranger… he’s fucking rude to me. Why would he do that if he cares?
Because he doesn’t care, you idiot.
He probably has someone else.
A mistress. Hidden away because he can’t be seen with her publicly.
A wife. Someone he married before me, someone he never divorced.
The mother of his child.
The nausea rises fast and sharp. I barely make it to the bathroom down the hall before I’m bent over the toilet, retching up the tea I had at breakfast. My stomach clenches, empty now, but my body keeps heaving anyway.
When it finally stops, I sink back on my heels and press my forehead against the cool tile wall.
Get it together, Mirabel.
But I can’t.
Because the pieces are all there, scattered across the last few weeks like breadcrumbs I refused to see. The constant phone calls he takes in Russian. The way he disappears for hours without explanation. The east wing I’m forbidden to enter. Dr. Harrison’s message. The nurses.
And now the woman I saw in the window.
He’s keeping someone in his house. Someone who needs medical care. Someone with a baby.
The realization hits me so hard I have to grip the sink to stay upright.
He has another family.
Hidden. Secret. Probably the reason he’s so careful about what he tells me, why he keeps me at arm’s length even when he’s inside me.
“What am I doing here?” I whisper.
The question echoes in the empty bathroom.
I came to this house because I needed the money for Dad’s treatment. That was the deal. Housekeeper. Good pay. Mind my own business.
But then Arkady happened. His hands. His mouth. The way he looks at me like I’m the only person in the world who matters—right up until the moment his phone rings or someone knocks on the door or he remembers I’m just the help.
I rinse my mouth, splash cold water on my face, and head back to work.
The rest of the morning passes in a blur of tasks I complete on autopilot.
Polish the banister. Vacuum the library.
Change the linens in the guest rooms on the west wing.
I move through the house like a ghost, avoiding the east wing entirely because I don’t trust myself not to do something reckless.
Like try to open that door.
Like demand answers Arkady clearly doesn’t want to give.
The words Arkady used this morning come back to me: I need privacy for this call.
Privacy. From me. Because I don’t matter enough to be included in whatever crisis was unfolding on the other end of that phone.
The anger starts low in my belly and spreads like wildfire.
I spend the afternoon reorganizing the linen closet on the third floor, a task that requires zero thought and keeps me physically as far from the east wing as possible.
My hands fold sheets while my mind churns through scenarios I don’t want to imagine.
Him with another woman. Him holding a baby that isn’t mine.
Him building a whole separate life I’m not part of.
By the time I hear his footsteps in the corridor outside—that distinctive, measured pace I’d recognize anywhere—the sun is already setting, and I’m ready to explode.
I abandon the half-folded sheets and head for his office. The door is open. He’s standing at the window, hands in his pockets, staring out at the garden. The dying light cuts harsh angles across his face, throwing shadows that make him look like the predator he is.
I don’t knock.
The door swings open hard enough to hit the wall. Arkady turns, one eyebrow lifting in that infuriatingly controlled way of his.
“Mirabel.” His voice is flat. “I’m in the middle of—”
“Are you living a double life?”
The words come out sharp, accusatory. Exactly how I feel.
He stills completely. Every muscle locks down. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I step into the office and kick the door shut behind me. “There’s something going on round here that you’re not telling me about. The phone calls you take in Russian and then act like nothing happened.” My voice rises with each word. “Who is she, Arkady?”
His expression empties out. Becomes that blank mask he wears when he’s deciding how much violence a situation requires. “That’s none of your concern.”
“None of my—?” I laugh, but it sounds jagged. “I work here. I live here. You think I don’t notice what’s happening in this house?”
“You signed a confidentiality agreement.”
The words land like a blade between my ribs.
I stare at him. At this man who last night had his hands in my hair, his body pressed against mine, whispering things in Russian I didn’t understand but felt all the way to my bones.
“Is that what this is?” My voice breaks in half. “I’m just the housekeeper who happens to fuck you?”
His jaw tightens. A vein pulses at his temple. “Watch your mouth.”
“No.” I move toward him, needing him to see me—really see me.
Not as staff. Not as the woman warming his bed.
As someone who deserves the truth. “You don’t get to do this.
You don’t get to drag me into your office, tell me there’s something you need to say, and then dismiss me like I’m nothing.
You don’t get to fuck me and then act like I’m just staff the next morning. ”
“You are staff.”
The words hang between us, ugly and final.
I feel them in my stomach. In my throat. In the part of me that thought—stupidly, naively—that I might mean something to him beyond convenience.
“Right.” My voice sounds distant, like it’s coming from underwater. “Staff.”
“Mirabel—”
“You know what?” I cut him off before he can finish whatever justification he’s about to offer. “You’re absolutely right. I signed a confidentiality agreement. I agreed to mind my own business. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
I turn on my heel and head for the door.
His hand catches my wrist—hot and tight enough to bruise.
I yank free so violently that I stumble sideways into the desk. “Don’t.”
“Listen to me—”
“No.” The word tears out of me. “I’m done listening. Done waiting for you to decide I’m worth an explanation. Done pretending this,” I gesture between us, “is anything more than convenient.”
“You think this is convenient?” His voice drops to something lethal. He takes a step toward me, and I can see it now—the violence simmering just under his skin. The part of him that runs this city’s underbelly and makes grown men nervous. “You think you’re convenient?”
“I don’t know what I think anymore!” The shout rips out of me.
“Because you won’t tell me anything! You summon me to your office and then kick me out.
You disappear for hours without a word. You have an entire wing of this house locked off and people coming and going, and when I ask a single question, you hide behind a piece of paper I signed. ”
“There are things you don’t understand—”
“Then help me understand!” My hands shake. I ball them into fists to stop it. “Tell me why you’re keeping secrets. Tell me something, Arkady, because I can’t—”
My voice splinters.
I can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep lying awake at night wondering if he’s with someone else. Can’t keep pretending my growing stomach won’t give me away soon. Can’t keep choosing him over my own self-respect.
“I can’t give you what you’re asking for.” His voice is quieter now. Careful. Like he’s trying not to detonate something fragile.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
The non-answer feels like being locked out of a room I’m standing right in front of.
“Fine.” I step back, putting distance between us because if I stay within reach, I’ll do something stupid like hit him or kiss him or both. “Then we’re done here.”
“Mirabel—”
“I said we’re done.”
This time, when I walk out, he doesn’t try to stop me.
The hallway stretches endlessly ahead of me. I’m not sure I want to do this, but I keep walking anyway because the alternative is turning around, and I’ve already given him too many chances to choose me.
By the time I reach my room, the adrenaline is turning to something colder. Something that’s hard and unyielding. Unreasonable. I push through the door, and it swings shut behind me with a dull thud that matches the flatline rhythm of my thoughts.
He has a secret family.
He’s living a double life.
And I’m the idiot who fell for him anyway.
The tears come hot and fast, blurring everything. I let them. There’s no one here to see, no one to judge. Just me and the wreckage of my own poor choices.
God, you’re a fool, Mirabel.
I should’ve known better. Should’ve kept my distance. Should’ve remembered that men like Arkady Laurov don’t fall for the help—they use them and move on.
I press my palm flat against my stomach.
Another week, maybe two, and he’ll notice. He’s too observant not to. And when he does, when he realizes I’ve been keeping my own secret, what then? Will he feel betrayed? Angry?
Will he care at all?
The thought makes me cry harder.
I can’t do this. Can’t stay in this house, in this life, wondering if every closed door is hiding another piece of the truth he refuses to share. Can’t raise my baby in a world as fucked up as this.
I pull out my phone with shaking hands and scroll to Dad’s number. My thumb hovers over the call button.
But I can’t.
Not yet. Not until his next round of treatment is finished and paid for. Not until I know he’s stable.
So I’m trapped. Caught between leaving and staying. Between loving Arkady and hating him. Between protecting my secret and demanding the truth about his.
The sobs wrack through me until there’s nothing left. Until I’m hollow and empty and so tired I can barely hold my head up.
I crawl into bed fully clothed, curling into myself, arms wrapped around my middle.
This is it. This is the moment I stop being such an idiot.
Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to leave. How to get enough money to finish Dad’s treatment without Arkady’s help. How to build a life that doesn’t revolve around a man who treats me like I’m disposable.
But tonight, I let myself break.
Tonight, I cry for the future I allowed my stupid brain to imagine—the one where Arkady looked at me and saw something worth keeping. Where his secrets were just scars from a difficult past, not evidence of a present I’m not part of.
Tonight, I mourn what I never really had.
And when sleep finally drags me under, it’s not peaceful. It’s fitful. Full of locked doors and distant voices and a man who holds me like I matter, then pushes me away like I don’t.
In the dream, I’m standing outside the east wing door. It’s open.
I step through.
And on the other side, Arkady is holding a baby I’ve never seen, standing beside a woman whose face I can’t make out.
He looks at me with those brutal blue eyes and says, “You were never supposed to be here.”
I wake with a gasp, tears wet on my face, the words echoing in my head.
The room is dark. Empty.
Just like my heart.