Page 8 of Disguised as Love

I cringed, pocketing the phone with my thoughts whirling. A year and a half ago, Isamu Yano had killed his uncle?the leader of the Kyodaina?in a coup attempt that had unraveled the entire damn crime syndicate in one fell swoop. Tsuyoshi Mori had no intention of letting anyone else run his kingdom, so he’d left Ito-san with enough evidence to bring the entire house of cards down. A gift from the grave from Mori to those who’d been disloyal. What Yano didn’t know was that he’d unleashed a dragon as the syndicate had fallen. A dragon who was now on my side.

I turned to see Raisa rubbing her locket between both palms.

“How long will your brother last when the others find out he’s responsible?” I asked her. It was both a risky test and a cruel play to see how she’d react to the idea of Malik having taken out their father. I didn’t know her real feelings for her brother. According to the reports, she didn’t communicate with him often, whereas she was on the phone almost daily with her half sister in D.C.

Raisa’s palms stilled for a long moment before she gave the chain a single tug with her eyes narrowed on me. “Are you trying to insinuate that my brother killed my father?”

“Word on the street gives it a fifty-fifty chance.”

“No,” she said. It was strong and firm, but it was belied with the wild look in her eyes.

Our gazes remained locked, neither one willing to be the first to balk.

“Take me back to my house,” she ordered.

“I have instructions to take you to Russia. That’s what’s happening.”

“Your boss in Washington doesn’t have any control over me,” she almost growled, and if it wasn’t such a turn-on, I would have laughed. The little terrier marking its territory in the path of a Rottweiler.

“I’m not talking about them. And I’ll repeat myself one more time. You can’t be careless with this kind of talk. Not unless you want us both to end up in the ground with your dad.”

It brought the pain back into her eyes instead of the defiance that had been growing. “Why should I care what happens to you?” she demanded.

Damn, did I hate the way her words hit me in the chest, but I didn’t have time to stop and analyze why. I had a job to do, and it meant getting her on board and fast.

“Violet and Dawson are a little partial to me. They might be upset if you were the reason I ended up dead,” I taunted her.

A loud clack against the glass of my driver’s side window brought my gaze around to a gun pointed at my face. Behind the gun was her pissed-off bodyguard. There was hate and murder in his eyes.

“Let her go, and I might let you live,” the man said, his accent thick and his tone ominous.

I ignored him and turned back to Raisa.

“If you don’t get on the plane, they’ll just keep coming for you. Next time, it won’t be me?the one person who’ll do their damnedest to make sure you get back to the States alive and in one piece. Next time, it’ll be someone who will chain you to a radiator in a basement with no heat, demanding you hand over everything in that pretty little brain of yours”?I swept my gaze over her, taking my time?“and using that sexy-as-hell body as their weekend toy.”

She flinched. I’d wanted her to. I’d wanted her scared and looking to me to protect her. It was the only play I had left, but as soon as she recoiled, I regretted the crassness of my words.

“I count to twenty, and then I shoot,” the man outside my window said.

She unlatched the seat belt and started to open the door.

“Who will your bodyguard work for now that your father is gone?” I asked, my voice low and full of meaning.

Her eyes flicked from me to the man outside the car. I could see she understood as doubt wavered over her delicate features.

“So, I guess the real question is…” I continued, “do you trust him or your brother enough to protect you? If I go with you, I promise you’ll walk away alive.”

She laughed. “If you think you can promise that, you aren’t very good at your job.”

“I’m very good at my job.”

“Jada Mori would surely tell me otherwise. Didn’t she almost die because of you?”

My stomach lurched. Sins of the past. Even if they weren’t entirely my sins, they still came back to haunt me. “Technically, she wasn’t under my watch. I wasn’t the one who brought her in.”

It was a half-truth. I’d encouraged Dawson to use her hatred for her father against him, and she’d almost died twice for her efforts, even though I’d stuck one of my very best undercover agents with her—someone I trusted with my own life.

The cold, hard truth was that family of mafia were always at risk. And if someone really wanted them dead, there wasn’t a whole lot that could stop it from happening. They’d just keep coming until they got what they wanted, or you proved you were useless to them.

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