Page 38 of Lethal Obsession

“I’m coming with you, too,” Masha says, sidling up to me and slipping her hand into mine.

“No.” Roman gives his youngest daughter a forbidding look. “You will come with us, Masha. Congratulate your sister, then we’re taking you back to the hotel with Deda Sergei and Rosa.” His blatant order receives an extremely mutinous expression from Masha that has me hiding a smile that is, for once, entirely involuntary.

“Go with your Papa, myshka.” I touch her shoulder briefly.

Masha turns her face up to me, still frowning. “Will I see you tomorrow? Will you still be here then?”

Suddenly, I’m extremely aware of the brief lull in conversation, as half a dozen sets of ears all strain to hear my answer.

I have the kind of giddy sensation I remember from being a kid, when I was sitting at the top of a long slide, my balance teetering before I let go.

Well, here we go, I guess.

“Yes, myshka.” I smile at her as I push off, feeling the first exhilarating rush of descent into the unknown. “I’ll still be here tomorrow.”

Roman gives me a skeptical look. “They don’t like too many people going backstage,” he says evenly. “Why don’t you take these two with you and meet us at the bar?”

“Roman—” begins Darya.

“Sure.” More than a little grateful to delay the coming encounter with Ofelia, I cut my sister off. “See you there.”

I exit the Philharmonie complex with Benny and Lourdes trailing several steps behind me. I can almost feel the twin rays of their disapproval piercing my back as I go. Oddly, I feel more of a desire to laugh than I do to take offence.

Ofelia has clearly told her friends a little more than she has her family.

I can’t quite work out if I’m happy about that or pissed off.

“Drinks?” I ask as we enter the limo, already reaching for the Scotch, which I definitely fucking need.

“We’ll have bubbles,” Benny answers for them both. “After the way our girl played tonight, it’s definitely a celebration.”

“It wasn’t just me, then?” I open a bottle of Veuve for them, genuinely interested in his answer. “I thought it was fucking amazing, but I don’t know anything about classical performances.”

“Si.” Lourdes eyes the glass I hand her like it might contain poison. “Ofelia played brilliantly. I think even Dittorio maybe stopped frowning for a moment. The conductor,” she adds, in case I somehow couldn’t manage to read the program for myself.

“She knocked it out of the fucking park.” Benny raises his glass. “To our Russian princess,” he says, clinking Lourdes’s glass without even pretending to include me in the toast. “The bitch fucking did it again.”

They both shoot me a slightly challenging glance, but I just raise my own glass and drink with them.

“No thanks to you and your late entrance,” he adds, eyeing me over the rim of his glass. He mutters something that sounds like “typical Pirate Boy bullshit,” which is clearly meant to escape my hearing, going by the sharp nudge to the ribs Lourdes gives him.

I’m not given to casual conversation, any more than I am to mixing it with classical music concertgoers. But something about a one-way ticket with no fixed plan has lent me an uncharacteristic sense of freedom, as if I’m playing hooky from real life.

So instead of just ignoring Benny’s aside as I might normally do, I take a measured sip of my Scotch and fix him with my blankest stare. “Are you making fun of my disability, Benny?”

I find the deafening silence that follows my comment absolutely hilarious, but by the panicked expressions on the faces opposite, I’m the only one who does.

“I, er—I mean—I’m sorry,” he eventually stutters out. I swear he has actually gone red beneath his olive complexion.

I arch the brow over my functional eye and maintain a wounded silence.

“Really, he is,” Lourdes adds emphatically, shooting Benny a glare that could strip paint.

I tilt my head and don’t answer, although I have to bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from bursting into laughter. After the hardcore banter of my men, their politically correct horror at having possibly offended me is beyond comical.

“Perhaps,” I say, struggling to keep my tone completely devoid of emotion, “you could advise me on the right words to compliment Ofelia on her performance. I’m hoping for something that falls between the bitch fucking did it again and the rather banal exquisite that seems to be such a crowd favorite.”

Benny regards me for a long moment, his eyebrows drawn together, then takes a large swallow of champagne. “Exquisite,” he says eventually, still eyeing me warily, “is what boring boomers who don’t know a fucking thing about music say to sound impressive. So definitely don’t say that.”