Page 76 of Disguised as Love

NOLAN: Who the hell are you, and what have you done with the Cruz Malone I know and trust to do the right thing no matter what?

ME: I’m shutting the phone off. If you don’t have the intel I need in the morning, consider yourself off the team.

I didn’t wait for a response. I shut off the phone with a hand that shook. The only thing in my brain was the same mantra that had haunted me on repeat since I’d first learned that Petya Leskov was dead: I was fucked.

Raisa

EVERY KIND OF WAY

“If the world should end tomorrow and we only have today

I'm gonna love you in every kind of way.”

Performed by H.E.R.

Written by Camper / Wilson / Strother

I was shivering again, but it wasn’t because of the cold. The room we’d snuck our way into was warm. The wall-mounted heater clanged away loudly as if its owner had just stepped out momentarily. These shivers were because my mother and brother hadn’t shown at the boathouse, and I couldn’t even begin to think about what that meant.

My body trembled because of the chains I’d seen piled by the chair in a room that reeked of the metallic smell of blood, and for the man I suspected had been locked there only to have been found by the Politsiya who paced outside. I wished I had my phone or a television so I could see what was being said about the bombing and about my family. About me.

I barely registered Cruz pounding away on his phone, fury radiating off of him.

But then he moved to stand in front of me, and I couldn’t ignore him anymore. He knelt so he was at eye level with me, assessing me and my state of mind, wondering if this was when I’d break. I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t anymore.

It was too much. Losing Papa and now maybe Mama and Malik, too. Knowing I’d be hunted for the rest of my life by Rurik and the worldwide bratva he commanded. When you were on the bad side of the Russian mafiya, they didn’t just come after you. They came after everyone you loved and shared your DNA with. Georgie needed to be warned. She wasn’t Petya’s daughter by blood, but she was Mama’s and was still tied to the Leskov name. Mac would need to increase their security. My throat closed thinking about my beautiful nephews, Holt and Jules, who were only two and so different that it seemed impossible they were twins but who both had a love of life that burst from them.

“You with me?” Cruz asked, sensing my anxiety as it spiked and spiraled.

For a brief moment inside the boathouse, when he’d opened up to me about his life, I’d thought…maybe…maybe there could be something beyond Russia for us. My heart had wanted it. But now. Now, I needed to free everyone from the ties that bound them to my family.

“We’re dead,” I said quietly.

“Giving up on me, Leskov? Thought you’d be the one to go out spitting blood and fire.”

He was trying to anger me like he had earlier, but I couldn’t even find it in me to respond. Trembling took over my body, causing the fingers I’d locked around my shins to slip off and my feet to slide into his lap. His frown grew, and his hands went to my arms, rubbing them.

“Shit. You’re frozen.”

He stood, my feet slipping from his lap to land on the wooden floor with a thunk, and I still couldn’t move. I couldn’t even turn my head, but I could hear him rifling through the dresser drawer. He came back with a pair of men’s sweats and a long-sleeved thermal Henley. The gray sweats were enormous enough to fit someone the size of Cruz easily.

“Put these on, get under the covers, and I’ll see if I can find some coffee or tea.”

He set the clothes on the bed and turned to head across the studio to the minuscule kitchen with its tiny, decades-old refrigerator, a two-burner stovetop, sink, and a single long cupboard. He searched through the contents of the cabinet, putting a kettle on the stove and finding two plain ceramic mugs that he placed on the counter, dropping in tea bags.

He turned back to see I hadn’t moved and crossed the room in two long strides to return to me.

“Raisa,” he called, and I still couldn’t move. I was frozen in some trance of loss and grief. Shock and fear. In the harsh reality that my life was over. The frown between his intense eyes grew deeper. “Little one, you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

He pulled me up, and I went. Boneless. Weightless.

His fingers found the bow and then the zipper at the back of my dress and tugged at them. A day ago?even hours ago?my body would have burned with liquid lust at the movement, and all I could do now was watch as if it was someone else’s body that was being stripped.

The dress slid to my feet, and Cruz raised my feet to pull it out from under me. Then, he shoved my legs one at a time into the sweats, pulling them up, drawing the string as tight as it would go, and rolling the waist until they stayed up on their own. He continued to dress me by sliding my arms into the thermal before slipping the covers back and sitting me down. He left, returning to the dresser and coming back with a pair of socks. He stuffed my feet into them and then gently pushed me back onto the pillows.

It was a strange bed in a strange room that I wasn’t even sure was sanitary and would normally have had me running for the hills, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. It was soft, the blankets were warm, and I could shut my eyes and fade away. It would be a better death than the one that awaited me at the hands of Rurik and Damien. One that Mama might have been experiencing even as I lay there, warm and cared for.

My heart seized. My lungs forgot to breathe. Tears filled my eyes. They wouldn’t be gentle with her. God. This was so screwed up.

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