Page 64 of Disguised as Love

Manya crumbled, and her weight was suddenly fully on me. I turned and set her down on the bed covered in slashes and feathers. Raisa sat with her, putting her arm through her mother’s and tangling their fingers. “Come with me. We’ll go to my room. You can stay with me instead of staying here where all you can see is Papa.”

To my surprise, Manya went easily, like a child who’d woken from a dream and was being guided to her parents’ bed to be comforted.

Outside the door, Liola stood, wringing her hands, and Raisa spoke to her as she continued moving Manya down the hall. “Do the best you can with the room, Liola.”

Liola nodded.

Ilia and I followed them to Raisa’s room. Raisa guided her mother into the bed, pulled the covers up, and then brushed the hair from her mother’s face. “I’m here, Mama. I’m just going to step outside to talk to Ilia and Antonne, and then I’ll be back. Rest.”

She walked back out of the room with us on her heels once again.

Raisa’s eyes when they looked up at me were full of regret and sadness. “I went with you yesterday and allowed myself to forget about Papa for a few hours while, the entire time, she’s been lost in grief.”

“Raisa,” I started only to have her cut me off.

“I can’t help you right now. I need to do what I should have done from the moment I arrived, and that is to stay at her side. I need to mourn with her while helping her see she has something else to live for.” The pain in her voice scoured me.

I touched her when I’d sworn I wouldn’t again, my fingers lighting the way across her shoulders and up the graceful slope of her neck to cup her cheek. “This isn’t your fault.”

She pushed me off.

“I’m here for my father’s funeral! His funeral that’s happening tomorrow because he’s dead! Dead! And she’s drowning in sorrow. That’s all that can matter to me right now!” she stormed and then went back into the room, slamming the door in my face.

I ground my teeth together, holding myself still so I didn’t throw the door open and go after her to ease her guilt about our day that had brought us both a strange sort of peace until Damien had destroyed it. She’d deserved it. A respite from the world that was getting darker and darker around her. One that, unlike the skies of St. Petersburg this time of year, would in fact go completely black if we didn’t find a way out for all of us.

I whipped out my phone and headed for the stairs, determined to have Nolan get a team to the Leskov house in Hawaii as soon as possible. Ilia stopped me.

“Don’t forget what you promised,” he growled.

I looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

“We look at it together,” he insisted.

I couldn’t promise him that if it was in the house in Hawaii. Nolan would get to it first. He’d load it into the FBI servers, and the entire criminal justice system of the United States would see it before we did.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Then don’t send your team. We will go after the funeral. We will get it together.”

Every time I’d just started to trust him, doubts filled me. His insistence seemed bred from loyalty to Leskov, but I’d never be absolutely sure until we had our hands on the card, and Ilia was allowed to show his true nature. What I did know was that I wouldn’t be able to control the situation?I wouldn’t be able to protect Raisa or Manya or any of them?if I didn’t know what was on it before the rest of the world did.

“The funeral. Then, Hawaii.” It was the first time in my fourteen years as an agent that I put something else?someone else?in front of the job I had to do.

It tore a hole in my chest.

I turned and walked away, knowing he’d stand guard in front of her door until Ito-san came to relieve him. As I headed out to the garden, letting the brisk air and scent of the sea hit me in the face, a conversation I’d had with Dawson Langley years ago came back to me of its own accord. We’d been in the middle of an op to catch the Moris with their hands on a bunch of guns, and Dawson’s now-wife had been dragged into it. He’d been on the verge of breaking his cover and jeopardizing everything we’d worked years on to protect her. I’d told him, “You have to stop letting your personal feelings cloud things.”

And he’d responded, “You haven’t even come close to seeing my personal feelings. If something happens to her, you’ll know what I mean.”

I’d been pissed at him then. For risking everything for a woman from his past. For a woman he’d told me he could never have and was determined to keep away from. And here I was, a few years later, doing the same goddamn thing. Risking everything so that nothing happened to Raisa Leskov.

Raisa

RUNNING UP THAT HILL

“Is there so much hate for the ones we love?”

Performed by Placebo

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