Page 51 of Disguised as Love

I fingered the cut at the corner of my eye, and Malik lingered on it for a moment before clamping his jaw and saying through gritted teeth, “That svoloch will never lay a hand on my sister.”

It gave me hope that even when he’d acted like he didn’t give a shit about her, he really did. That their sibling bond would keep her safe from at least her brother’s part of this dark world.

Raisa finally came out of the bathroom just as the owner was putting appetizers on our table. Mini pancakes stuffed with meats and then fried again. It felt like it had been a year since I’d eaten, the pirozhki barely a snack, and I didn’t complain once when Malik and Raisa both pushed the last one in my direction.

Raisa grinned at my near moan. She turned to the owner and said, “Antonne has not experienced many of our traditional foods. You must do your best to surprise him.”

The owner winked and disappeared. The food coming from the kitchen after that was a variety that did, in fact, surprise me even when I’d been in Russia several times and had many of the traditional foods. The standard Olivier salad was twisted to include salmon and caviar, the man’s dinner of potato and mushrooms was served with unique mushrooms turning the dish orange, and the ever-prevalent Stroganov was layered with complex flavors, turning the comfort food into something of a much higher class. Everything that came out was anything but simple. Just like Raisa herself. Complex and layered. Beautiful.

The meal was wrapped up with a berry-filled donut-like dish called pishki. It was probably the best meal I’d had in as long as I could remember. For months, I’d been living off the fare at The Roman, and the chef there created barely tolerable bar food. Nothing you’d write home about. This meal, like the entire day with Raisa, had been more than I’d expected.

When the check came, my hand reached for it first. Both Malik and Raisa looked at me, startled. Maybe they were used to the people around them letting them pay because everyone assumed they had the money to do so, but that wouldn’t be me, not only because I was trying to earn my way into Malik’s good graces but because I’d be damned if I let Raisa pay for my meal. I couldn’t analyze too closely why the idea bothered me.

When we came out of the restaurant, the crowds along the embankment had increased instead of diminished. Music filled the air as street performers showed off for the tourists. It was loud and chaotic?definitely not somewhere you’d want to be while trying to protect someone. There were too many ways for bad things to happen unnoticed. Ilia and I exchanged a look just as Malik’s bodyguards emerged from the shadows of the restaurant where they’d been waiting for him.

Malik’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it, frowning. Raisa was closer to him, and she glanced at the screen before Malik switched it off.

“Who was that?” she asked, her voice breathy, as if she’d seen something that had upset her.

“Papa’s lawyer, Gustov,” Malik said, glancing at Raisa’s narrowed eyes.

“For a moment…” she said, tugging at the locket in a way she hadn’t most of the day. Then, she just shook her head. “What does he want?”

“Wants to know if we’re really funding this debacle of a funeral Rurik’s planning.” He drew a cigarette out and stuffed it into the elegant holder and lit it before asking, “Are you heading back to the palace?”

She may not have caught it, but he’d purposefully changed the subject on her.

“Eventually,” Raisa said.

I quirked a brow at her as I’d expected to be going back now that dinner was done.

She asked her brother, “Does the apartment building still have the bar on the roof?”

He exhaled a long stream of smoke up into the sky, where a glorious full moon was trying to peek through the deep-purple skies, and then nodded.

Raisa looked back at me with a soft smile. “You can’t be in St. Petersburg without watching the rising of the draw bridges. It’s the quintessential tourist thing to do.”

The beautiful twist of her lips had me reaching for her and pulling her into my body with my arm across her shoulder.

“Quintessential, huh?” I teased.

“Can’t keep up with the large words, big guy?” Malik smirked.

Raisa reached out and hit him on the shoulder. Such a normal sibling interaction that it was easy to forget for a moment the lives they were leading. The duplicity and danger. Like the rest of our day, I wanted to keep her in this bubble of forgetfulness for a little longer.

“I’ll see you back at the apartment, then,” Malik said before making his way to a dark SUV waiting for him at the curb, his bodyguards filing in behind him.

We walked down the street to the car Ilia had parked, and we followed Malik’s vehicle to the Leskov’s apartment. It was in another old but remodeled building that glimmered in the twilight. Ilia let us out at the entrance as Malik and two of his men emerged from their vehicle. The guards followed us toward the building while Ilia’s and Malik’s drivers went to park the SUVs. The doorman opened the stained-glass-and-wrought-iron doors for us, and we made our way across another marble floor to the lift.

Malik keyed in a special code that took us to the penthouse while his security waited in the lobby. When the doors opened directly into the apartment, we came face to face with two more beefy bodyguards filling a small entryway. They stepped out of our way, and the three of us moved into a room just beyond, filled with antiquities and expensive art. The siblings didn’t even notice the almost obscene wealth of the penthouse because they’d been raised drowning in it. While it truly was a magnificent room, it only made me ache more for my mother’s cozy apartment and the beat-up piano where we made music together. With a start, I realized I hadn’t texted her all day and that she would be worried.

I was about to pull my phone from my inside pocket when Yano burst into the room with a towel to his neck and his suit askew. He was flustered in a way I’d never seen the man.

“She was fucking here, Malik! She fucking cut me!” Yano pulled a towel away from his neck to show a one-inch knife wound. It wasn’t deep, but it was enough to drip blood and leave a scar, and I knew exactly who’d done it.

My eyes darted around the room, but Malik seemed frozen.

“Your security fucking sucks,” Yano all but screamed. He pulled out a phone, muttering. “I have to do everything myself. I should know better than to count on anyone to cover my ass.”

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