Page 5 of Disguised as Love

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He hesitated at my defiance, eyes trailing over me. His gaze lingered longer than necessary on my chest. The rapid beat of my heart and unsteady breaths caused my breasts to push against the thin sweater I wore. He reached around me, pulled my coat off the rack, and shoved it at me.

“I don’t want to drag you out, but I will if I have to,” he barked.

He could. I was like the ladybug going up against a whale in the children’s book Georgie had read to me as a child when she came to visit us in Russia. I was the grumpy ladybug. He was the whale ready to slap me back to my homeland with his gigantic tail.

I huffed, slammed my arms into my coat, dropped my keys into my pocket, and went to grab my phone, but he shook his head. I glared but left it behind and headed down the brick path that wound its way to the tree-lined street.

It was almost pitch-black between the streetlamps, the fog leaving a heavy shroud over everything. The quiet of the avenue this late at night in the upper-class neighborhood was almost deafening. At least there was hope that if I screamed, someone would hear me.

I could feel his eyes on me as I walked several steps ahead of him until his long stride easily caught up to me.

“What do you want, Special Agent Malone?” I asked.

“You can’t ever say that name out loud again. You need to forget any and every name Violet and Dawson called me. From here on out, I’m Antonne Woods.”

“Special Agent Malone… Antonne Woods… I don’t care what name you go by. I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told every other agent and agency that’s tried to talk to me in the U.S., Russia, and Europe. I don’t know anything about my father’s business. He manufactures gun parts. That’s what I know.” I gave him my standard spiel. The one I was tired of giving after a lifetime of doing so.

Whether it was the Russian FSB, Interpol, the CIA, FBI, NSA, or any of the other alphabet agencies across the globe asking, I always gave them the same reply. The same reply I’d given almost a decade ago when I’d been arrested with Georgie because Malik had left a brick of cocaine in my bag while we were in D.C.—I know nothing.

It wasn’t just because I wouldn’t rat on my father. It was the truth. I knew absolutely zilch about my father’s company. Papa had made sure of it.

“You walk fast for a woman in stilettos,” Special Agent Malone said.

The ridiculousness of his comment in contrast to the seriousness of the moment halted me. I whipped around to scowl at him. A streetlight two houses away turned his face into a mosaic of shadows and light while his body dressed all in black faded into the night.

It struck me at that moment how beautiful he was.

The thought was as ridiculous as his comment. But it was the same truth I’d realized when I’d met him at Violet and Dawson’s wedding. He was like a cover model who’d stepped off a glossy magazine cover. His jet-black hair was cut into a fade, leaving just enough curls on top to tempt me to run my fingernails through it. Just like his dark-brown skin, rippling with muscles, called for me to slide my palms along its wide expanse. But it was his eyes, so deep a brown they were almost black, that held my attention the most, just as they had at the wedding. Those eyes had followed me around the yacht where our friends had said, ‘I do,’ as if he was marking me in some way.

I couldn’t afford to let the visions I’d had of my fingers and lips on him exist even in my deepest, darkest thoughts. He was my enemy. He wanted one thing?my father’s kingdom on a platter that he would then hand over to his boss. To the U.S. government.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“You.”

My eyes widened. The husky sound of that singular word drifted around us in the night air, mixing with the fog and the smell of the redwood trees lining the avenue.

He seemed to realize what he’d said, and his lips quirked as if it was funny my brain had gone to the one place he likely hadn’t intended. To him…wanting me…for very different reasons than my father and his legal and illegal businesses.

“You need to come to Russia,” he said calmly.

I laughed, tugging at the locket I wore and rarely removed these days. The etchings dragged against my palm, soothing me. “Even if I wasn’t heading into finals next week, Special Agent Malone, I wouldn’t go with you anywhere?least of all, Russia.”

“It’s Antonne. Antonne Woods. And you don’t have a choice.”

My hand on the locket froze. “Excuse me? Are you going to kidnap me? Is the FBI into that sort of thing now?”

He hesitated, as if he’d suddenly realized something.

“No one has told you.”

It was a strange statement. One I didn’t understand and couldn’t unravel as my body focused on how his hooded gaze bled into every orifice of my being.

“No one has told me what?” I demanded.

His gaze darted skyward, and then he spoke in a tone so gentle I almost didn’t believe it was the same man saying the words.

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