Page 31 of Disguised as Love

MOM: Love you. Be safe. Be happy. Be loved.

ME: Right back at you.

I turned the phone off, shed my clothes, and lay down on the brightly embroidered comforter on the gold-gilded bed. Sleep wouldn’t come if I let my mind wander to all the threads that were unraveling around me, so I did what I always did. Some people counted sheep. I ran through complicated piano pieces, letting my fingers walk along a set of invisible keys. I would lose myself to the composition I could hear even when the room was silent.

Normally, Mendelssohn’s “Song Without Words in F sharp minor Op 67 No 2” would take me to dreamland. He’d once said that words were ambiguous and subject to misunderstanding compared to the truth that the music filled in one’s soul, and I couldn’t agree more. Words were often filled with lies in my job, and I loved losing myself in something that didn’t depend on them. But tonight, it wasn’t Mendelssohn that swam before my closed lids. It was Satie’s “Je te veux” that danced there, taunting me. “I Want You” was exactly as romantic as its title, and it spoke all the truths I was desperately trying to deny. I wanted Raisa Leskov.

? ? ?

I woke with a start, hand going to the weapon I’d taken from Gennady and left under my pillow. The room was cold and swathed in semi-darkness, but there was movement in its depths, a shuffling sound followed by a flick of a match. I sat up, aiming into the shadows before a maid bent to light the fire came into focus.

My movement surprised her as much as she’d surprised me. She turned and jumped, dropping the tin matchbox to the ground.

“I sorry. I not know you here,” she said in broken English.

I felt like an ass for scaring her but also was cynical enough to wonder how she’d gotten into the locked room.

“I light fire,” she said.

“The door was locked for a reason.”

“I come through Miss Leskov’s.” She pointed to a portion of the wall that now had a crack of light showing. A hidden fucking door.

“I go now.” She hustled back through the wall, and it clicked behind her.

I switched the light on the bedside table on, casting the room in a golden hue as my heart thumped loudly. Hidden doors and the world’s most sinister criminals coming to stay meant I wasn’t sure when I’d sleep again. Maybe not until I was back in the States where I could finally lose my undercover persona of Antonne Woods and become Cruz Malone again. The fact the maid had been able to sneak into the room shook me. I was lucky I wasn’t dead. Anyone could have slipped in through the wall.

I showered, needing the cold spray to jolt me back to reality, and then dressed once again in the slacks and white button-down I’d had on earlier. This time, I added a royal-blue tie Mom had given me for my birthday. It was a bit of luck I carried with me in my go-bag normally filled with the basics like the plain, black clothes I’d worn as Gennady’s bodyguard. This business wear was something I’d thrown in at the last minute, but if I was going to be in Russia for Petya Leskov’s funeral, I’d need a damn suit that I didn’t have with me. I’d have to find my way into St. Petersburg to get one once we figured out what day Volkov had set for the services.

I let myself out of the room, and Ilia was nowhere to be seen, which meant Raisa wasn’t in her room. I knocked on her door just to be sure, but it was silent. She was likely in her mother’s room. I strode down the hallway, but there was no sign of Ilia or Raisa there either. Manya’s room was empty except for a fire that flickered much as the one in my room had.

I journeyed down the stairs, poking my head into several rooms, trying to find everyone. I forced myself not to panic. Ilia was with her, and while I still wasn’t sure I could trust him, I knew Raisa did. Room after room was empty except for an occasional maid cleaning. When I came to the music room, my feet stalled. The piano glowed in the twilight that shimmered outside the wall of windows, filling the room with a strange luminescence.

In another lifetime, I would have enjoyed being in Russia in June. The White Nights in St. Petersburg meant there was never a fully dark sky, and it also meant that the revelry in the city was at a high reminiscent of Mardi Gras. St. Petersburg was a city that came alive and stayed alive for the entire eightyish days that existed before winter descended again. If I’d been here for personal reasons, I would have made my way through the crowded streets lining the canals and taken in the ballets, attended music events, and lost myself in being there simply for a love of music.

Instead, I had to keep my wits about me. I had to unravel the tangled web that was Volkov, Yano, and the Leskovs. I needed intel I could take back to my superiors to justify the time, money, and resources the Bureau had spent embedding me into Gennady’s gang in hopes it would lead me to this moment.

But none of that kept the beautiful piano from calling to me. I sat on the red bench with my fingers poised above the keys. The Satie piece that had lulled me to sleep would come easily to me, but my talk with Mom made me long for her and the days of my childhood spent playing her songs while she fiddled with lyrics.

So, it was Mom’s songs that lit the keys when I finally let my hands slide over them. Emotional R&B layered with hints of jazz. I wasn’t a singer. That was all Mom and Nan. Chantelle Malone had inherited her mother’s smoky voice and wide range. Selma Malone had been friends with Patti LaBelle. Their music had competed and complemented each other. When my mom had started her career, she’d blended the best of her mother’s music, Patti’s, and all the greats before her while also modernizing it, bringing people who had thought the blues would never be commercially viable again to their knees.

I lost myself to one of her heartbreaking songs. Deep with unrequited longing. When the song ended, soft clapping drew my gaze to the doorway as if the notes had materialized into a human being. Raisa was haloed in light from the hallway. A dress made of an intricate black-and-white pattern clung to every curve. Her blonde hair was swept partially up, trails of curls landing over her breast on one side with the rest pushed behind her shoulder. She had a pair of red heels on that should have been classified as an illegal weapon, not only because they could stab a man to death but because they did indecent things to my heart, causing it to race as I took in the way they accented her legs.

She made her way across the room to me, sliding onto the bench and making my blood pulse and fire spread through my chest. Her scent washed over me again, sweet as cotton candy but with cinnamon that would burn the tongue. A dichotomy that was completely her. For the first time in my life, I wanted something I’d never wanted before. A woman at my side. A family that was mine.

That ache from earlier returned to my chest.

Her fingers rested on the keys next to me, and she played a little trill of notes.

“You play beautifully,” she said softly. “From memory and with emotion.”

I cleared my throat. “You play?”

“For a moment, when I thought I wanted to be a rock star, well before I found and fell in love with science.”

That hadn’t been in any report I’d read on Raisa Leskov, but then, the reports had all focused on the basic facts of her youth. The people she interacted with. The who’s who of the criminal world she’d gone to school with and brought home for the holidays. According to the intel, she’d never had a long-term boyfriend. No man had stayed at her side for longer than a few weeks. I wondered if this was because the men were afraid of her father or if she’d been like me, with no desire for a serious relationship.

She removed her hands from the piano, putting them in her lap and turning slightly toward me on the small bench. Our hips and thighs were touching. The short dress she wore had slid up, and the shadowy expanse between her legs called to me.

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