Page 67 of Disguised as Love

I looked up into my brother’s eyes. There was anger and panic in his face before it was hidden away.

“There’s something wrong with Papa’s face,” I whispered so quietly he almost didn’t catch it. When he did, his eyes narrowed, and he drew a hand away from our mother to tug at my arm.

“Come away, ‘Isa,” he said, but there was a warning in it, as if he was trying to tell me something.

I tried to pull back, but his grip tightened, and then Cruz was there next to me, leaning into Malik and growling softly, “Remove your hand from her before I remove it from you.”

Malik didn’t even seem to care that Cruz had threatened him. He just lifted his chin, met Cruz eye to eye, and muttered quietly, “Get her away from the goddamn coffin.”

They were talking to each other with their eyes. Words I didn’t understand. But something was wrong. Something was completely and awfully wrong. My science brain knew it. Just like I knew when my experiments were going to fail. There was a piece of information missing.

Rurik stepped forward. “Is there a problem?”

Malik hid his panic, but I sensed it, so I did the one thing I’d sworn I wasn’t going to do. I sobbed. I let out a gulp of emotion and air and turned into Cruz as if I was using him for support. It made me look weak, and I hated every single second of it. Just like I hated how my body immediately tingled and came alive as we touched, but I did it because Malik needed me to.

“It’s okay to cry, ‘Isa,” Malik said in a condescending tone that would have driven me batty even yesterday. But because he was hiding something, because he needed Rurik to not suspect there was something wrong, I didn’t react.

We moved away from the casket, Malik hustling us toward the cathedral’s main aisles as the men behind us filed by my father, piling more flowers on him. I looked back over my shoulder to see the workers shutting the coffin, lifting it, and carrying it behind us into the body of the church.

The blood was pounding in my veins. Grief mixed with fear and suspicion. What had Malik done? He’d insisted the night before he wasn’t behind this. He’d insisted he and Papa were on good terms when he’d died, but every single alarm bell in my soul was clanging loudly and frantically as I tried to make sense of what was wrong. The image of Papa’s face burned into my memory as I tried to take it apart feature by feature to understand what about it was off.

I didn’t have time to dissect it like I needed as my eyes were drawn to the crowd in the church. While we’d been in the antechamber, the pews had filled. The shifting and shuffling of people in the benches echoed through the gold-and-mosaic walls as we were shown to the seats at the front. The service began as soon as we were settled. We watched and listened while a priest gave the rights, while Volkov and other people who had worked for Papa talked about him, and while people who’d been on the receiving end of his charity spoke of his kindness. But none of his family spoke. We didn’t tell stories of how much he loved us or how he protected us or how he wanted only good things for us and for Russia. Instead, we let people who only knew the version of him he presented to the world speak on our behalf.

Cruz had not let go of my hand since grabbing it by the coffin, and I realized I was clutching it so tightly my bracelet was leaving pearl-shaped marks in the skin at his wrist. I loosened my fingers and went to pull away, but he held on, running a thumb along the palm of my hand, which was easily engulfed by his. It was a tender move. A reassurance to someone who you cared about greatly. A reassurance to someone you thought was about to come undone.

And I was.

But I also wasn’t because there was a niggling suspicion growing in the back of my brain with flashes of my father. One I couldn’t shake and couldn’t speak aloud. One I didn’t dare believe for me or Mama or any of us. A truth that might unravel everything.

Cruz

BURN IT DOWN

“As the flames climbed into the clouds,

I wanted to fix this.

But couldn't stop from tearing it down.”

Performed by Linkin Park

Written by Bennington / Bourdon

Something wasn’t right. Even if there hadn’t been the little squabble between Malik and Raisa in the anteroom, my senses were screaming it. Manya was a mess, barely holding it together, but the siblings weren’t. The little half-sob Raisa had done by the casket had been all for show. There was no way in hell she would have let any of the people in the room see her cry. She’d held herself together for almost twenty-four hours after I’d told her about her father without ever letting me see a single tear escape, so I knew with every fiber of my being that her crying now hadn’t been real?even when confronted with the harsh reality of her father’s cold, dead body.

The Leskov family sat silent and still in the pew while hundreds, if not thousands, of mourners filled the church to view Petya Leskov’s dead body. The flowers being laid on his chest had to be removed several times, filling baskets that surrounded the coffin. A sea of Russia’s underworld, many of the faces burned into my memory from our wall of most wanted at the Bureau, took turns at the pulpit. They shared story after story of Leskov, making the crowd laugh as well as sob, while his family sat in stony silence.

Raisa tried to remove her hand from mine, and I just held on tighter, not only because I was aware of Rurik Volkov’s eyes falling to the family time and time again but also because I couldn’t imagine letting go. I was overwhelmed with a sense of pride at just how damn tough she was when I had no right to feel anything for her.

The entire family was a complete contrast to what mine had looked like at my father’s funeral. I’d sobbed at his service. My mother and I had clung to each other, and Nana had wrapped us both in her arms as her own tears mingled with ours. We’d been a mess.

Regardless of her outward appearance, it didn’t mean that Raisa wasn’t falling apart just like I had been at my father’s funeral. It just meant she was really good at disguising it. The Leskov family refused to give that kind of show to their enemies?or their friends?and every single part of my soul wanted to comfort them. To comfort her. To have my large shoulders used for something more than bringing justice to the world.

I glanced off to the side of the pews where Ilia stood shoulder to shoulder with Malik’s and Rurik’s men. I was grateful he was there watching for danger because I was too caught up in the grief and loss of the woman at my side to see beyond it. I was also grateful for Ito-san who’d blended into the shadows as soon as we’d arrived at the cathedral, working the crowd for me while staying out of Yano’s line of sight.

We sat for what felt like hours until, finally, soldiers arrived to carry the casket out to the horse-drawn hearse waiting in front of the church. We trailed behind the coffin, and the sea of the underworld followed us. On the street, soldiers in dress uniform sat on horses at the head of the procession, more soldiers with instruments at the ready were in precise rows behind them, and then, even more soldiers with rifles over their shoulders were at attention in front of the carriage with the hearse. Crowds lined the streets as far as I could see in either direction. An open limousine that gave me JFK flashbacks and chilled me to the bone waited behind the hearse for the family. Malik handed his mother and Raisa in, and then Yano blocked the way before Volkov or I could follow.

“Family only,” he said, eyes glinting with pleasure at the idea of kicking us to the curb.

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