Page 38 of Disguised as Love

She sagged, sitting on the comforter. “I don’t feel it. I feel sad and alone and more than a little lost. I’m afraid you’re right about Malik, and terrified of what he has planned, and heartbroken my mother is stuck in the middle of it.”

“If your brother is involved, Yano is pulling the strings and making him believe it’s what Malik wants. I can bring Yano down. There’s an arrest warrant out for him in the U.S.”

She scoffed. “There’s no extradition treaty with Russia. And believe me, my brother has been unhappy with Papa for years.”

“Unhappy enough to kill his own father?”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she crawled under the covers and turned off the lamp on the bedside table, casting the room into a semi-darkness that was broken only by the flames from the fireplace. I grabbed one of the pillows she’d tossed to the floor and lay down next to the bed on a rug that was probably as expensive and as old as the house itself.

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor,” she said after a few moments.

I opened my eyes to see her looking down at me. Her brown eyes, even without makeup, were surrounded in lush black lashes that reminded me of a doe I’d once seen up close and personal in a backwater town in New York. It had watched me for a long time before a sound on the other side of the dirt road had sent it scurrying. I wondered what it would take for Raisa Leskov to scurry away. Would it be me sliding into bed and drowning her body in my large hands the way I ached to? Would it be me biting and kissing and licking every single inch of that golden skin of hers?

“I do,” I finally told her. My voice was thick with a desire I couldn’t deny.

Her eyes widened a little, and we stared for too long. The air grew heavy between us. At least I could find some small comfort in knowing she wanted me as much as I wanted her. That we both knew we should count each other as enemies, and yet, it didn’t stop our bodies from demanding we were something different. Something more.

She was the one who looked away first, settling on her back, face to the ceiling.

My eyes traveled upward as well. The shadows played there, brought to life by the flickering flames as they danced across the crystals of the chandelier. It was a dichotomy of light and dark, as if part of a puppet show being performed just for us. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but instead, she tore me from my watch of the display on the ceiling with a question.

“Did you really kill your mother’s stalker?”

The blood in my veins seemed to freeze for a few seconds before slamming back to life.

“Yes.”

I never lied when asked about it, but I also never elaborated. I didn’t need to relive the memory more than I did.

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

She flipped onto her side, looking down into my face again. Her gaze was full of sorrow. “What happened?”

The words slipped out before I knew what was happening, as if she’d filled me with truth serum. “Her bodyguard lost focus. The stalker used it to his advantage, shot the guard, and tried to shoot her. I’d heard him going down the hall and entered in time to grab an extra gun the bodyguard kept and end it.”

“Did he…did the bodyguard make it?”

“No,” I responded. “He didn’t.”

My heart constricted, the memory of the blood pooling below my dad’s body as clear as it had been nearly twenty-two years ago. Mom’s screams echoed through my head along with the sirens that had eventually come. The sea of people who’d filtered through the house. Nan’s arms around us both while Mom cried and I stared. The shock took days to wear off. I avoided thinking about it as much as I could because it put me back there, in that emotional state of sadness and fear. The sickness I’d felt at taking a life, even if the man had just taken my father’s. It had been too easy to do it. A simple tug on a trigger.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, as if taking my words from earlier and carefully handing them back to me. Her eyes were sad, a frown causing her forehead to wrinkle.

I sat up, drawing us so close our noses almost touched. I rubbed a thumb over the crease.

“Don’t be. That day made me the man I am now. Showed me what I was built for. My true purpose,” I told her.

“You gave up music to be an agent.” She said it matter-of-factly, but there was still sorrow in her voice.

I wasn’t sorry I had given it up. It had never seemed like a sacrifice. Not until recently. Not until my body ached and my soul felt exhausted. Not until one fiery blonde pulled at the curtain I’d pulled over my emotions and caused me to lose focus in just the way my father had lost his?the way that had cost him his life.

Our eyes were locked. My thumb traced over her brow, sliding down the side of her face, resting so my palm cupped her cheek. She didn’t pull away. There was grief in her eyes. Grief I understood because it never went away. I carried the loss of my father with me every single day. My mother had directed her pain into her music and turned out some of her most beloved songs. I’d taken every inch of training in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat my father had given me and turned it into a position at the FBI. But we both fought the grief his absence brought daily. We were lucky we’d had things to turn to. Raisa had her work. She’d go back to Stanford and funnel her energy into the next breakthrough she needed on her nano cells. But what would Manya Leskov do? She’d likely lose herself to the sorrow and drugs.

“Don’t be sorry for me,” I said. “Don’t have any feelings for me. It’s easier that way.”

She inhaled sharply as if I’d slapped her. Her eyes flashed when she said darkly, “Is it? Because I’ve lived that way for most of my life, and all I can think is how empty it’s left me.”

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