Chapter Thirty-Three
Mirabel
The champagne is going flat on the trays.
Nobody’s touched it. Nobody’s touched anything—not the canapés in their sad geometric rows, not the finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off, not the miniature tarts glazed in something that was probably beautiful two hours ago and now looks like wax.
The catering staff bolted the minute the coast was clear. I imagine they’ll be updating their liability insurance before they reach the motorway.
The living room is full of people and empty of air.
Diane is curled into the armchair by the window, shoes off, knees drawn up.
Her mascara has tracked two dark lines down her cheeks, and she hasn’t bothered wiping them.
Natalia sits on the loveseat across from her, Julia at her side.
She’s twisting a cocktail napkin between her fingers, tearing it into strips, building a small pile of paper shreds on the cushion beside her.
A few other guests huddle in clusters—Arkady’s cousins, a couple of business associates who didn’t flee fast enough, the jazz trio’s saxophone player who somehow got trapped inside when the doors locked and is now sitting on the floor with his back against the piano, staring at nothing.
Fanny has taken Aleks to the nursery. At least one of us is sleeping tonight.
Nobody’s eating. Nobody’s drinking. Nobody’s doing anything except sitting in a room that smells of cold food and fear.
Arkady is in the corner, phone pressed to his ear.
He hasn’t sat down since he came back inside.
I catch fragments of his conversation. Double the rotation.
South wall, west gate, rooftop access—seal it.
How many did we lose? Then something in Russian, clipped and rapid, a language I still don’t speak but have learned to read by tone.
This tone says: If anyone breaches this perimeter again, I will bury them under it.
He’s called four people in the last twenty minutes. Each conversation shorter than the last, sharper. He’s building a fortress, turning Ashwater Heights from a home into a compound.
My beautiful afternoon. My beautiful, impossible afternoon.
Gone. Replaced by bullet casings in the gravel and a dead man named Dmitri, whose pregnant wife doesn’t know yet.
But that’s not where my body is right now. My body is on the sofa with my sister, and my sister is falling apart.
Debra is beside me, folded into herself, knees pulled up, arms locked around her shins.
She’s shaking. Her face is blank. Not calm—blank.
That emptiness I’ve come to recognize as Debra’s emergency shutdown.
The place she goes when the world becomes Gavriil’s hellhole and the years in between dissolve.
“Deb.” I pull her tighter against me, my arm around her shoulders, my other hand covering hers where she’s gripping her forearms. Her skin is cold. Colder than it should be on a summer evening. “I’m here. You’re at Ashwater Heights. You’re safe. He left. He’s gone.”
She doesn’t respond. Her lips are moving. Not words… or not words meant for me. A grounding exercise, maybe. Or something older and less clinical. The way she kept herself alive in a room she couldn’t leave.
Yanis is on her other side, sitting close but not crowding.
He has her left hand between both of his, his thumbs moving in slow circles over her knuckles—the same motion over and over.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t try to fix it.
Just sits there, solid, giving her something warm to come back to when she’s ready.
His jaw is locked, and his eyes—when they lift from Debra’s hands—track to Arkady in the corner. Brothers exchanging something wordless across the room. I can’t decode it, but the signal is clear: We handle this. Whatever it costs.
Another tremor runs through Debra. Stronger. Her breathing catches—a wet, ragged sound—and then her eyes go wide and unfocused and I know she’s not here anymore.
“Debra.” I angle my body toward her, blocking the room from her line of sight. My belly presses against her arm—my daughter kicking, insisting on being part of something she doesn’t understand yet. “Look at me. Look at my face.”
Her eyes search the middle distance. Hunting for threats in a room that holds none. For doors that lock from the outside. For the sound of heavy footsteps on a staircase she left behind, but carries inside her like a second skeleton.
“He was here.” Her voice comes out thin as smoke. “Mira, he was here. He came to—”
“He’s gone.” I press my forehead to her temple.
She’s sweating and freezing simultaneously, her body running two programs at once—one that says flee and one that says freeze.
“Arkady’s men drove him off. He ran. He’s a coward and a monster, and he ran, Deb.
He doesn’t get to have you. He will never have you again. ”
Her hand turns in mine, gripping so hard the bones of my fingers compress against each other. Pain, but the useful kind. The kind that means she’s choosing to hold on.
Yanis shifts closer. An inch, maybe two. Enough that his shoulder touches hers. A comforting presence with no demands.
“He came for me,” Debra whispers, and the blankness starts to crack, the emotion coming through in jagged pieces. “That’s why he came. He wants me back. He’ll always—”
“Stop.” I say it firmly. Not harshly, but with enough edge that it catches. “He came because he’s desperate and losing. Desperation makes men like him stupid, and stupid gets you killed.”
I don’t know if I believe that entirely—Gavriil Laurov is many things, but consistently stupid isn’t one of them—but right now my sister needs a story she can survive, not one that’s accurate.
Something shifts in her eyes. The focus sharpens. She’s coming back, inch by inch, finding her way to this sofa, this room, my arm around her, and a man she’s learning to trust holding her hand like it’s the most important thing he’s ever done.
“I’m here,” she says. Testing the words.
“You’re here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Yanis presses his lips to the top of her head—brief, light. Unexpected from this man. The trembling doesn’t stop, but it slows, the intervals between each shudder growing longer, her breathing deepening by fractions.
I hold her. My arm aches and my lower back is protesting, and the baby is lodging a foot somewhere near my ribcage, but I don’t move. I sit, and I hold my sister, and I let the room exist around us in its awful, suspended quiet.
That’s when my phone rings.
The sound is offensive—bright, chirping, absurdly normal in a room that has lost its grip on the concept. I fumble it from the pocket of my dress, see the screen, and my stomach drops.
St. Mary’s Hospital.
“Hello?”
“Ms. McLeod? This is Nurse Okoro from the oncology unit at St. Mary’s. I’m calling regarding your father, Peter McLeod.”
My breath hitches. “Is he all right?”
“More than all right, actually.” A warmth in her voice I wasn’t prepared for. “Dr. Klein asked me to contact you. We’ve received the results from your father’s latest round of tests—the blood work and the imaging from Thursday.”
I grip the phone tightly. Beside me, Debra has turned her head, watching. Yanis has gone still.
“And?”
“His tumor markers have dropped significantly. The kidney function has improved—enough that Dr. Klein used the word ‘remarkable,’ and I’ve worked with him for eleven years, so I can tell you he doesn’t use that word lightly.
” A pause, and I can hear the smile in it.
“The targeted therapy appears to be working, Ms. McLeod. We’re not out of the woods, and Dr. Klein will want to discuss next steps in person, but this is genuinely encouraging news. ”
I close my eyes.
The room shrinks to the phone in my hand and the nurse’s voice and the hot, immediate pressure building behind my eyelids.
Because I’ve sat in that hospital so many times, absorbing words like metastasized and palliative and comfortable, and now—now, in the middle of this catastrophic day, the universe decides to throw me something good.
“Thank you.” My voice splinters on the second word. “Can I come see him tomorrow?”
“Of course. He’s resting well tonight. Sleeping when I checked on him an hour ago, and his vitals are the best we’ve seen in weeks.” She pauses. “Your father’s a fighter, Ms. McLeod.”
“He is. He really is.”
I hang up. The phone sits in my lap, screen dimming.
Debra’s watching me cautiously.
“Who was that?” Her voice is rough from crying, but she’s present. Here. Not wherever Gavriil’s shadow sent her.
“The hospital.” I take her hand again, and this time I’m the one gripping too hard. “It’s Dad. His latest tests… Deb, they’re good. They’re actually good. His tumor markers are down. His kidneys are improving. The treatment is working.”
I watch it land on her. The way her face works through disbelief, then resistance—because Debra has learned that good news is often the prelude to worse news—and then, slowly, the resistance giving way to something softer.
“Really?”
“Really. The nurse said Dr. Klein called it remarkable.”
Her shoulders drop, tension draining from her. “Oh, thank God,” she breathes.
I pull her into me. She comes willingly, her face tucked into the curve of my neck, her hand finding my belly and resting there as if she needs to touch all the proof of life she can reach. My daughter kicks against her aunt’s palm.
“He’s going to be okay?” She pulls back enough to look at me.
“He’s fighting. And he’s winning.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. “We’ll go see him as soon as we can. When things settle here.”
When things settle. As if things are a tablecloth that got ruffled and not the entire structure of our safety, blown open by a man with a convoy of killers.
But the news has done something—shifted the air, at least in our corner of it. Debra’s breathing has evened out. Her color is coming back. She’s still shaking faintly, but the worst has passed. She’s here. She’s okay.
I want to go to Dad. Right now, tonight…
drive to St. Mary’s and sit beside his bed and hold his hand and tell him about the engagement, about the ring, about the way Arkady stood in front of a garden full of people and called me the woman of his dreams. I want to tell him about the shooting too, because I’m sick of curating the truth, sick of shaving off the ugly parts before handing them over to the people I love.
But that’s impossible. The gates are sealed, the guards posted, and Arkady’s eyes carry the cold look of a man who won’t risk another breach until every entrance is covered and every vulnerability handled.
Ashwater Heights is a cage and a fortress simultaneously, and the only way to survive tonight is to accept both.
Yanis leans toward Debra. “Let me get you some water.”
She nods. “Thanks.”
He stands, touches her shoulder lightly, and crosses to the sideboard. Pours water from a jug that was meant for guests celebrating a proposal. Brings it back. Debra drinks half in one go, the action seeming to steady her.
Across the room, Arkady catches my eye. He doesn’t come over—still in operational mode—but his expression changes for half a second. A question: Are you all right?
I mouth the words across the ruined party: Dad’s getting better.
Something shifts behind his eyes. Recognition. The acknowledgment that, in the middle of the worst evening of our shared life, one thread held.
He nods. Turns back to Stefan, who’s reappeared with a tablet.
Debra settles against my side. Her hand finds mine.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she says.
“You won’t be,” I say.