Page 23 of Disguised as Love

“What do you mean?”

“A cop. You bring a cop into our home?”

“No…” I said shakily, sharing a look with Malone. “He works for Ivan Gennady.”

Mama laughed. “Then, Gennady is an idiot.”

Malone stepped closer to us, towering over my mother even when she had her model height and her spiky heels in her favor. “I am here to protect your daughter. To make sure she makes it back to the States as your husband wished.”

Mama looked from Malone to me and then back, her face turning ashen.

“What a fucking mess,” she said in Russian. She dragged her arm from mine, retreating farther into the room, the tiny bit of calm she’d found disappearing, her body shaking.

“Mama, come with me to get food.”

“Send it up. I can’t face any of this. I can’t watch you all kill yourselves by playing with a fire your father knew better than to flame.” She faced me and then raised her voice like she never had before. “We had a good life! A good life! Why do you all do this to me?” She tore at the button-down top she had on, ripping it from her body and flinging it to the ground before turning her eyes to the ceiling. “Do you see what you left me with, lyubov’ moya. How could you? How could you leave me to face this all alone?”

She collapsed in a heap on the floor before the fire. I ran to her, wrapping my arms around her and rocking her like Papa used to rock me when I had nightmares. Like he had the day I’d thought I’d killed Damien Volkov by the pool.

“I’m so sorry, Mama. I’m so sorry. Papa would understand.”

She shook her head.

“Leave me alone, Raechka. Leave me to grieve in peace. For him and you and Malik. There will be nothing left when this is all done.”

It felt like some weird premonition. As if she knew more truths in her drugged-up state than any of us. As if she could see clearly when we were all in the dark.

When I didn’t leave, she pushed me away with her hand and crawled over to the bed, pulling herself up by the post. She shed her shoes and her pants, standing there in her bra and underwear and not caring that Malone watched it all. Then, she slinked under the covers, a lump in the middle of the satin and velvet, just as she’d been when I arrived.

Tears hit my cheeks, my entire chest aching and burning.

“Mama,” I called, my voice choked with emotions.

“Get out, Raechka. Go burn the house to the ground as you intend.”

I started toward her, but Malone wrapped his large arm around my middle and dragged me back. I collided with the wall that was his chest. The safety I felt there was an oxymoron. Nothing about him was safe. Not my body’s reaction to him. Not him being here. Not the world that I’d been pulled back into.

Cruz

SHARP EDGES

“We all fall down.

We live somehow.

We learn what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Performed by Linkin Park

Written by Delson / Bennington / Farrell /

Juber / Hahn / Shinoda / Bourdon

Manya Leskov had made me. It was almost laughable. I’d been in rooms with more criminals than I could count, and one ex-model with a cocaine habit had pinned me as law enforcement. Then, she’d tossed Raisa from the room as if she no longer had a daughter. Raisa was in shock. I could see it in her stunned expression and feel it in her tense muscles as I hauled her into the hallway.

“I’ll have an exfil plan for us within the hour,” I said quietly in her ear, wondering if I could really get an extraction plan approved that quickly.

Raisa seemed to come back to life as my breath coasted over her skin, and she pulled away, wiping at the handful of tears that had escaped the severe hold she’d had on them up until now. “Don’t be daft. Mama isn’t going to tell anyone anything. She’s going to lose herself in alcohol and pills and pretend none of it is happening.”

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