Page 118 of Twisting Beauty

“Oh.” She straightened and took half a step away from him. “Mr. Mikhailov got lost looking for the gentlemen’s room.”

She was lying. She was fucking lying to me.

Mikhailov’s accent wasn’t Russian at all two seconds ago. He was Irish.

He wasn’t who he said he was. Who was he? What did he want in my house?

I glared at the imposter, my knuckles cracking as they tightened to fists. “Take off your mask.”

“Lorcan.” She stepped between us. “He’s a guest. You can’t talk to him like that.”

She was protecting him.

Something bright and ugly turned through me.

She knew him. No, not just knew him.

He meant something to her.

The thought went through me mean and feral, jealousy twisting hard. Suddenly my knife was back in my hand.

“Rude boy.” The man behind the mask said, his fake Russian accent returned. “In Russia, we have ways of putting rude boys back in their place.”

I closed the distance between us with another step, my knife tight in my grasp, every part of me braced for blood. “Take off that mask. Or I take it off for you.”

For a moment, he didn’t move.

“Lorcan.” My father’s voice cracked through the corridor behind me. “My study. Now.”

Shit. Not now. But I had already more than tested my limits with Alistair tonight. Any more would be suicide.

I did not turn immediately.

I held the man’s eyes through the mask, locking away the dark eyes, the salt-and-pepper hair, the broad build for the next time we met.

This was not over.

I braced myself and stepped into Alistair’s study, the door clicking shut behind me, the acrid smell of old absinthe stinging my nose.

A fire crackled in the hearth, too hot for the mild fall. He liked it hot. Said it made men sweat, made them confess.

His desk gleamed as he sat behind it. Not a speck of dust. Just a tumbler of scotch, a box of Cuban cigars, and a gold lighter placed beside it, as if this was just business.

He didn’t yell. Not at first. He just stared at me from behind his desk with that calculated stillness, like I was a stray mutt tracking mud onto his Persian rug.

He stood, walked around the desk, and poured a finger of absinthe over a sugar cube in a glass.

“You were quite protective of Rua,” he said as he swirled the green liquid. “Then you walked out. Right in the middle of my toast.”

My spine locked as I swallowed down my justifications. They were useless here. “I’m sorry, sir. It was wrong of me. It won’t happen again.”

“You like her, don’t you?” he asked over the rim of his glass. “I see it. The way you look at her.”

My voice came out flat. “She’s my sister. I was just looking out for her.”

“Mmm.” He took a long sip, then set the glass down with a click. “You lie like a child.”

He began to circle me, a predator circling his next meal.