Page 16 of Disguised as Love

“No.”

Malik glared, shoving the gun in Malone’s direction a little farther.

“I’m not Gennady, dirtbag. I won’t let you say no to me,” Malik growled in English for Malone’s benefit.

“I’m counting to three, and then I’m getting in next to Raisa. If that gun is still pointed in my direction, you’ll no longer have fingers when I’m done taking it,” Malone retorted with an eerie calm.

Malik clicked the hammer back.

My pulse increased, the blood pounding through my veins and making it difficult to think. I moved on instinct until the gun was directed at my face instead of Malone’s chest.

“He’s with me, Malik. With me,” I said with force. “You don’t get to tell him what to do. You don’t get to point a gun at him. I’m tired, hungry, and sad. I want to hug Mama and plan our father’s funeral. Don’t make this something it isn’t.”

Malik’s eyes darkened.

“You want to be with him, fine. Get out and ride with him in the other car, but he won’t ride with me.”

I scoffed before I realized he was serious. Realized that he still hadn’t lowered his weapon. I was shaking again, and this time, it was only with fury as I slid back out of the car to stand in front of Malone.

“Why did you bother coming to get me if you were just going to be an asshole?” I demanded in Russian.

“Maybe I needed to see for myself what side you were on.”

I threw my hands out in disbelief. “Side? There are sides between you and me? I’m your sister, Malik. I’m here to bury our father. There are no sides.”

“There are always sides,” he said.

I slammed the car door as hard as I could and stormed toward the SUV parked behind it with Malone jogging to catch up. Ilia was on our heels, his expression grim. While Special Agent Malone might not have understood every part of Malik’s and my exchange, Ilia had. Malone opened the back door, reaching out a hand to help me inside the raised vehicle before sliding in next to me. Ilia ran around the other side, getting in so that I was squished in the middle between two walls of muscle.

The driver hit the gas, and we were off, following Malik’s car that had already sped away.

I wanted to scream and vent and rant and rave, but I couldn’t. Not with two of Malik’s men in the front seats. Men who should have been my father’s. But were they? What side had they fallen on if Malik was right? If there were always sides.

It took me half the trip from the private airport to our family’s estate to stop shaking. Malone tugged my fingers into his, but it didn’t help. Instead, it littered my being with other sensations that were just as antagonizing, heat and longing filling me like they had every time his skin had even brushed lightly against mine. The foot massage he’d given me on the plane had been like an inferno building.

I wasn’t sure I could do any of this.

Tears threatened to overwhelm me again.

Instead of being welcomed home with a hug, instead of commiserating over the loss of our father, Malik had basically thrown me to the curb.

“You cannot come home, Raechka.” My father’s words returned to me. “Never. Do you understand? Promise you will not come back for any reason.”

I’d promised him.

And now I was home.

I just hadn’t expected the enemy to be inside the walls.

Cruz

FLIGHT

“There’s too many miles on my bones.

I can’t carry the weight of the world,

No, not on my own.”

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