Page 32 of Cruel Submission

My sick cunt of a father has a lot to fucking answer for.

Chapter Eleven

Mirabel

The hospital smells like industrial cleaner trying to mask something worse underneath.

I’ve memorized this route—third floor, east wing, room 312. My sneakers squeak against linoleum I’ve walked too many times in the past three weeks.

I begged Arkady all day yesterday. Texted. Called. Left voicemails that ranged from professional to desperate. He finally agreed this morning with a list of conditions that made my teeth ache: a guard stays with me at all times, a tracking app gets installed on my phone (another one), and I’m obliged to answer his calls at all times.

Worth it, I told myself. I’d agree to almost anything to see Dad.

The guard shadows me now, six-foot-something of muscle whose name I haven’t bothered learning. He keeps three paces behind, close enough that his presence presses against my back. When I pause at the nurses’ station to check in, he looms at my shoulder. The nurse’s smile tightens when she looks past me.

“Room 312,” she says, her voice dropping. “Your father’s awake.”

My throat constricts. Awake doesn’t mean better. Awake just means conscious.

I push open the door, and there he is—Peter McLeod, the man who taught me to ride a bike and balance chemical equations, now folded into a hospital bed that seems too big for his frame. The cancer’s been eating him from the inside out, stealing pounds and color until he’s more shadow than substance.

But his eyes light up when he sees me. That hasn’t changed.

“Mirabel.” His voice rasps. “My girl.”

“Hi, Dad.” I cross to him, bending to press my lips against his forehead. His skin feels paper-thin, radiating a fever that shouldn’t be there. “How are you feeling?”

“Better now.”

We’ve been trading these lies for months—him pretending the treatments are working, me pretending I believe him. I sink into the chair beside his bed and take his hand. His fingers feel like bird bones wrapped in tissue.

His gaze shifts past me, fixing on the doorway. The guard has positioned himself there, arms crossed, face blank as concrete.

“Who’s that?” Dad whispers.

My pulse kicks up. “Just security. My boss is… protective.”

Dad’s brow furrows… that look I remember from when I’d come home past curfew at sixteen, when he’d known I was lying before I opened my mouth. “Protective or controlling?”

I arrange my expression into something approximating casual, but my jaw stays too tight. “A bit of both, probably.”

“Mirabel.” His grip tightens on my hand with surprising strength. “This job you’re doing for me… are you sure it’s okay? You seem…”

He trails off. I hear the rest anyway. Tired. Scared. Trapped.

“I’m fine.” My tongue feels thick. “Really.”

His eyes search mine. I can see him wanting to push, to demand the truth. But he’s too weak for that conversation, and we both know it.

The guard shifts in the doorway—just a subtle redistribution of weight—but it draws Dad’s attention again. Suspicion hardens his features.

“You could go back to the registrar’s office,” he says, quieter now. As if volume might keep the guard from hearing. “Wouldn’t you be happier there? The pay wasn’t as good, but at least you were safe. You had your own place. Your independence.”

Independence. I barely remember what that word means anymore.

“Absolutely not. Everything’s fine, Dad. The money’s good. The work is steady.” I squeeze his hand, willing him to believe it. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

But I can’t meet his eyes when I say it.