Page 17 of Disguised as Love

Performed by Lifehouse

Written by Jason Wade

Holding her hand, I could feel the tremor that ran through her as we left the airport. A tremor full of fear, anger, and sadness that matched the expressions passing over her delicate features. She was normally good at wearing a mask, but the confrontation with her brother had unsettled her.

And fuck if it hadn’t rattled me as well.

Not because of Malik or his cruel words.

Because of her.

She’d put herself in front of a gun for me. Shielded me. With a bravery that made me want to shake her and kiss her and force her the hell back on the plane we’d just left and head back to the States. Feelings that scared the hell out of me because they wrote doomed across this entire assignment. I couldn’t risk getting involved, and yet, not even a day into this charade, I was already drowning.

If it was any of my team here acting this way?feeling this way?I’d yank their ass out of Russia and put them on another assignment. But here I was, knee-deep with no out in sight.

One thing was clear from the two-minute conversation with Malik. He was on a power high. He thought he was the king of the kingdom he’d stolen, and his cockiness was going to be his downfall?either at my hands or the hands of the other mafiya leaders, especially if they found out he’d killed his father without their okay. Leskov had been their peacemaker. He’d been beloved amongst the bratva, and they wouldn’t take his death sitting down.

I’d pretended not to understand their conversation in the car. It was to my advantage at this point that they didn’t know I spoke Russian or German or Spanish. I wanted Malik to see me as the stupid bratok he’d called me. The low-level street thug without a brain who needed to be told what to do and couldn’t see the bigger picture. Raisa choosing me?the scum at the bottom of the barrel?over him was going to fuel that fiery ego of his into retaliation. I knew it, even if she didn’t.

We rode for thirty minutes in a heavy silence, unable to talk with men we didn’t trust in the front seats. I shouldn’t trust any of them. Not even Raisa. But now I did. She’d faced a gun for me.

We finally pulled up to an enormous wrought-iron gate with a guardhouse that swung open immediately as if they’d already known we were approaching. I’d seen the Leskov mansion, The Golden Palace, in photos, but being here in real life was completely different. It was larger and grander than any two-dimensional image could make it. The tall hedges on either side of the paved drive drew one’s gaze to the long reflecting pool shimmering with golden lights and then to the house rising beyond it. The building was a soft yellow that glowed with the same hue as the pool. The ornate white trim could barely be seen due to the number of windows layering the frontage, giving it a feel of a multi-tiered cake. Three ancient wooden doors stained a beautiful chestnut each resided in their own delicately shaped archway.

The mansion had once been an old Romanov traveling palace that had fallen into disrepair during the world wars and the barren days of communism. During the privatization period after the fall of communism, it had been handed to Petya Leskov for less money than it would take to buy a Mercedes. He’d restored it to its former glory, and now it reflected its eighteenth-century beginnings inside and out.

Malik had already stormed inside by the time we pulled up out front. Ilia slid out first, holding the door for Raisa while I jogged around the vehicle to enter the house at her side. As we stepped into the foyer, my eyes were drawn upward along the gold-and-white winding staircase to a glass ceiling. It was like being inside a lemon drop cookie. White and yellow and bits of gold littered the walls with paintings and mirrors flung across the space as if they were the powdered sugar on top. Ostentatious, demanding you realize the wealth that was required to fill the house with art in this manner.

There was no sign of Malik, but heels clacked along the marble floor to reveal a skinny, dark-haired woman in a fitted suit clinging to every curve. Her hair was drawn up into a severe bun that only threw her wrinkled face more into repose. The deep lines around her mouth and eyes made it appear as if she’d spent her entire life frowning.

“Miss Raisa, it is a pleasure to have you home again,” she said, although there was no pleasure in the tone at all. Her accent was wrong as she spoke in Russian to Raisa. I scoured my brain for the details on her and the other employees of the Leskov home. I believed the woman was actually Swedish.

“Liola,” Raisa greeted her.

“You’ll be needing a guest room prepared?” It was a question, and yet she stated it as a fact.

“The room next to mine, please,” Raisa said.

I couldn’t disagree without letting them know I understood, but there was no way I was letting her sleep anywhere without me. She’d have to get used to my being in her space at night. It was what I’d promised her before we’d left the Bay Area.

Liola inclined her head. “As you wish.”

She went to move away, and Raisa stopped her.

“Mama? Is she in the drawing room?”

“Madam Leskov has not left her bedroom in two days,” Liola said, the judgment there barely concealed.

Raisa stiffened, and without a word, she started up the staircase at an almost jog as Ilia and I followed. The hall we traveled down had a museum’s worth of art and history on the walls and laid out on side tables that lined the way like runway lights, but I barely saw it as I tried to keep up with Raisa’s swift pace. Outside a pair of enormous, gilded doors, she paused, turning to meet my eyes.

“You need to wait out here. You can’t come in.”

“Where you go, I go,” I told her.

“You can’t…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want you to see her this way. She wouldn’t want it.”

I had no interest in Manya Leskov’s grief, but I didn’t think I could leave Raisa either. Not yet.

“I’m safe here,” she insisted.

---