Page 22 of Disguised as Love

I longed to return to my lab and my numbers and the tiny hexagon-shaped microcells I was close to making a reality. I wanted to leave behind the world of people who’d never made sense to me. Instead, I’d been thrust back into it as if I hadn’t been gone for almost a decade. The false pretenses, fake smiles, and people who would easily trade you for cash in their pocket seemed to be closing in around me.

I turned on a heel and opened my bedroom door to find a freshly showered Cruz Malone with his hand raised as if he was just going to knock. He smelled like soap and salt water as if he’d gone swimming in the icy water of the Gulf. He stood so close to me that his heat washed over me, lingering as if it could soak into my skin and remain there. A flicker of energy coursed through me. The same one that had each time he was near, threatening to ignite and burn me from the inside out.

He’d traded the black cotton he’d worn from head to toe under a black leather jacket for gray dress pants and a white button-down with the cuffs rolled to his elbows, displaying thick forearms. It was a step away from the low-level mobster he’d been portraying and a step closer to his FBI status, and I wondered why he’d shed his costume when he should have been wearing it like a shield.

I raised an eyebrow, and he returned it with one of his own.

“You don’t approve?” he said, a slight lift to his lip.

“Just wondering about your…”?I mouthed the word?“cover.”

“You’ll be with men today who’ll expect you to have chosen more than a street thug to be at your side.”

My stomach knotted.

He was right. Worse, I was going to have to go into the bear’s den if I was to see Rurik and determine what arrangements he’d made for Papa’s funeral.

“I’m going to get Mama and bring her down for breakfast, but after, I have to go into St. Petersburg to see Rurik Volkov.”

Malone’s nostrils flared. “What?”

A flicker of satisfaction went through me that I’d been able to surprise him. He thought he knew everything about me, but he only knew what he’d read in some damn report.

“He’s the one planning Papa’s funeral,” I said, trying to seem as if I didn’t care, when really, the thought of seeing Rurik made me want to throw up.

“Volkov is planning Petya’s funeral,” he repeated as if he was still trying to catch up.

“Yes. And Malik had the nerve to call me stupid. But it’s done. One of us should show up and act like we actually care about the plans.”

“Your mother cares.”

“Oh yes. She cares?too much?which has rendered her useless. Rurik knows it, but I want him to understand that I care, too. That I won’t let him be the only one to decide how my father is remembered.”

I started down the hall, and he easily caught up.

“You can’t go to him. We don’t have enough…” He trailed off, looking around, unsure what he could say in a house that was full of his enemies.

“We will never have enough of anything to go in there, but it’s what has to be done. Rurik won’t hurt me. I’m his best friend’s daughter.”

“Men like Volkov do not have best friends. They have people they use until they are no longer worth their keep,” Malone growled quietly in my ear.

“I’m surprised at you. I would have thought you’d be gleefully rubbing your palms together. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Careful,” he growled again. His breath coasted over my ear. “I never want to go anywhere unprepared.”

“Then don’t come. I’ll have Ilia take me.”

I knocked on Mama’s door and opened it. She was dressed and downing a pill with a glass of water as I walked in. She knew I’d disapprove of whatever it was, because she guiltily shoved the pill bottle in a drawer.

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “If you expect me to face the world, I have to have something to take the edge off.”

I crossed the room, pulled her arm into mine, and turned her to the open doorway where Malone was hovering. I led her across to him.

“Mama, meet Antonne. Antonne, my mother, Manya Leskov.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Leskov,” Malone said.

Mama took him in from head to toe and put a shaky hand to her forehead before turning to me with a frown and a hiss, “What have you done, Raechka?”

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