Page 103 of Cruel Demands

“Speak up,” Mikhail says, his voice flat, annoyed.

The sharpness in his voice makes irritation flash through me immediately. “I did, but⁠—”

Lev turns toward me, but Mikhail doesn’t let him speak. “Perhaps you would like to apologize, Lev.”

Lev. Not Lev Belov. I don’t know enough about Russian social etiquette to understand every degree of insult available here, but I know that one.

Lev’s jaw tightens. “Of course.” He looks at me. “I apologize.”

“For?” Mikhail asks.

Lev’s eyes flash. “For speaking disrespectfully.”

I hold his gaze. “Thank you.”

Mikhail turns slightly toward the people openly watching now. “There. A misunderstanding resolved.” Conversation starts again almost immediately. A few people laugh with relief. Someone approaches Mikhail with a question about the dinner program. The room moves on.

Lev does not. He stands rigid beside me, humiliated without being permitted to behave as though he has been humiliated. Mikhail leans toward him. I can’t hear what he says. Whatever it is drains the remaining color from Lev’s face. Then Mikhail claps him once on the shoulder and walks toward me. By the time he reaches my side, he’s smiling again. “You tell me the next time someone speaks to you like that.”

I set Lev’s abandoned champagne glass onto a passing tray. “First you threaten me, now you defend me. It seems like you just get off on putting people in their place.”

“Perhaps I protected you both times.”

I stare at him. “You scared me.”

“Yes.”

The answer catches me off guard. “That is not protection.”

“Sometimes it is.”

“That is an insane thing to say.”

“You have mentioned that before.”

I fold my arms. His gaze moves over my face.

“Who is the real Mikhail?” The question slips out before I decide to ask it. His expression changes slightly. “Is there even a real Mikhail?”

For once, he doesn’t have an immediate answer. A few feet away, someone calls his name, but Mikhail ignores them.

“The real Mikhail,” he says finally, “wants you to enjoy the dinner you helped plan without men bothering you.” I narrow my eyes. He glances toward the tables. “Go. Eat.”

Then he walks away before I can answer. A sponsor intercepts him near the stage. Mikhail greets the man like an old friend, and within seconds they are laughing. The little girl who made his bracelet waves at him from across the room. Mikhail lifts his hand and waves back, the pink paper bracelet rattling around his wrist beneath the cuff of his tuxedo.

It looks completely genuine. I’m starting to think it is. That’s somehow more frightening than discovering it was fake.

I have been trying to decide which version of Mikhail Korolev is the performance. The man who frightened me against his office door. The man whose security adviser brings him photographs of his mother being watched. The politician who remembers a factory worker’s sick wife. The man wearing a child’s paper bracelet with a tuxedo. The man who can make Lev Belov apologize without raising his voice. Maybe that’s the mistake. Maybe none of them are performances.

Maybe he’s not lying when he is kind or when he is frightening. Maybe they are all him.

And he knows exactly which man the room needs to see.

23

MIKHAIL

An hour after the last guests leave, the conservatory is nearly empty. The charity event ran long. Of course it did. People with money enjoy pretending their time is valuable while wasting everyone else’s.