Chapter 37
CASSANDRA
Itake the hospital side entrance, then the service corridor off Fifth, hood up, head down, cash hidden in my pocket.
Mount Sinai looks like it’s in the center of a snow globe.
At the entrance, I flash my visitor band, smile softly, and ride the elevator to Clara’s floor. I keep my phone off. It sits in my bag like a lump.
The nurse at the station recognizes me and brightens. “Good timing. She’s been asking for you.”
“Is she okay?”
“Better every hour. I don’t want to make any promises, but an early January release looks possible.”
Happiness surges through me, but I keep myself in check.
“Go on in,” she says. “It isn’t visiting hours, so keep it to fifteen minutes.” She finishes her sentence with a conspiratorial wink.
“Fifteen minutes it is. And thanks.”
The hall is lined with New Year’s tinsel. My arm throbs under the bandage when I push Clara’s door.
She’s propped up, pale but awake. No oxygen. Hair in a messy loop that’s pretending to be a bun. The monitor draws a calm little mountain range in green.
“Happy almost New Year,” she says and smiles.
“I have to say,” I tease, “the way you handled this whole thing was very rude.” I set my bag down. “You were supposed to wait to almost die until after New Year’s. Champagne, then hospital.” I grin, and she matches it.
“Ugh, champagne. Pass the ginger ale.” She reaches for my hand. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I have.” Lie. “Mostly.” Another lie.
Her eyes skim my face. I look away and fluff her pillow to avoid her gaze. There’s a table with a water cup and the TV remote. I slide an envelope under the tissue box.
“What’s that?”
“Rent, food, a buffer…. In case you need anything.”
“Cass,” she says in that knowing tone only an older sister has. “What’s going on?”
“It’s for peace of mind. I’m going to be away for a while.”
I drop the sentence like it’s nothing but a little, insignificant detail. Silly me, thinking she wouldn’t pick up on it.
“Away where?” she asks.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why?”
“Because.” I force a smile. “It’s complicated.”
“You don’t get to ‘because’ me.” She sits up tall, her sign that she’s gearing up for a fight. “What is going on?”
“I’m just… resetting some work stuff.” Liar, liar, winter coat on fire.
She stares at me until I feel twelve again. “Cass, don’t you dare leave this room without telling me what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Part of me hates how she can give me one look and make me feel like a kid again. But more than that, I hate that she’s right. My chest gets tight, my blood runs cold.
I try another joke, but it crawls out dead. “You’re supposed to be lying still and making pretty green lines on the monitor, not grilling me.”
“Talk.”
So much for getting out of it.
I sit. My hands find the corner of the blanket and smooth it nervously, trying to put off the confession I know I need to make. My delay lasts four seconds before the dam breaks fast and furious. I’m bad at lying to the one person who taught me not to.
“Okay,” I say, exhaling sharply. “There’s a company called The Velvet Ledger.
They advertise executive placement, but that is not what they do.
I’ve been taking jobs through them for a couple of months now—clean ones.
Escorting. No sex, I swear. Just standing next to rich men and making them look more interesting. ”
Clara’s mouth forms a tight line. She’s not happy.
“Go on.”
“One of those placements was with Damien Kozlov.” Saying his name here feels like lighting a match at a gas station.
Her eyes go wide. “Damien Kozlov? The billionaire? With mob ties?”
“The very same.”
She closes her eyes, processing the information. Then, “Go on.”
“They said I’d be a hostess for his Christmas party. Interview first. At his place.”
“His place,” she repeats.
“It wasn’t a normal interview.” I laugh humorlessly because otherwise I’ll cry. “It was a test. Blindfold, rope, rules.”
Clara blinks. “Cass.”
“I lied.” It’s easier if I stack the sins quickly. “I told them I was a professional. I’m—”
“A professional what.”
Her tone does not mirror the friendly way it might when someone is asking a question. This is a hard interrogation.
“A professional… sub.”
She sighs, shakes her head, and looks away.
“Please don’t stress yourself,” I say desperately.
Another few beats pass.
“Keep talking.”
I take a deep breath. “Obviously, I’m not a professional sub. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I said yes anyway because I needed the money and the surgery date moved up and—” My throat closes. I push through it. “And he hired me for a month. His rules.”
Her eyes widen, fear and fury dancing there. “What rules?”
“Privacy. Precision. Truth.” I could recite them in my sleep. “And submission.” The word feels big and complicated. “Clara, it wasn’t like I thought it would be. It was more. He is more.”
She’s quiet. That’s worse than yelling. I fill the quiet with the smaller truths I can stand to say.
“He paid your hospital bills. He insulated my job so I wouldn’t get fired.
He had my shifts covered. I didn’t ask, he just did it.
He made sure I ate. He—” I stop because what is this list, exactly?
A defense? Something I’m offering up as proof that the billionaire mobster who fathered my child actually cares about me?
“And the danger?” she asks softly.
“There was a shooting at his Christmas party. Someone tried to run us off the road. It’s not about me. It’s about his world and someone who hates that he wants to make his businesses legit. But—” I swallow hard. “Standing next to him makes me a target, so…”
“So you’re leaving him.”
“I’m leaving New York.”
Silence again. Then she says my name the way she did the night she signed the paperwork to become my legal guardian, taking me out of that house that smelled like stale cigarettes and sadness.
“Cassandra.”
“I know.” It comes out small. I’m so tired of being brave. Or at least pretending I am.
“What else?”
I stare at my hands. For a second, I want to tell her that’s all of it but I can’t keep this one back.
I look into her eyes. There’s no hiding the truth from Clara. And besides, I’m tired of the lies.
“I’m pregnant.”
The word seems to suck all the air out of the room and replace it with frost as surely as if a window had just been opened.
She covers her mouth as tears jump to her eyes.
For a few moments, she just sits there, eyes glistening. I have no idea what she’s thinking.
“Oh, Cass.”
“It’s early,” I say quickly. “Like, weeks. The blood test was positive. They’ll retest but—” I press my lips together because if I keep talking it will come out as a torrent of worries and doubt. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
She laughs. “Who would I tell? My large social calendar?” Her face crumples with everything at once—joy, terror, the bone-deep ache of a sister who loves me more than she loves her own life. “You’re going to be a mom,” she whispers, awe and fear braided tightly together. “Oh my God.”
“I know.” I squeeze her fingers. “I have to keep it safe.”
She nods too hard then winces because of the stitches. “Then you can’t be near him.”
“The cops can’t help,” I say before she can suggest the obvious.
“They can’t touch him. And even if they try, I’m the one who gets squeezed.
Or you. He wants legit fronts now, but that doesn’t mean his enemies do.
There’s a war brewing, whether or not he invites it.
I can’t be the easiest way to hurt him.”
Clara swallows. She is brave, my sister. Braver than I am most days. “Then leave him,” she says. “But don’t disappear. Stay close. Let me help. Please don’t do this alone.”
“If they find me with you, you become leverage.” The words taste like metal. “I can’t risk it.”
She studies my face, then delivers the truth I’ve been avoiding. “You love him.”
I open my mouth to deny it but a stupid laugh pops out instead. “Does it matter if I do? Loving him doesn’t stop bullets.”
“It matters to me.” She squeezes. “Because love makes you stupid and brave at the same time. If you’re going to run, at least admit what you’re running from.”
I drop my head and shake it once, helpless and honest. “Yeah. I love him.” The words unstick something in my chest, hurting in exactly the way they should. “But there’s no future there. Not with this. Not now.”
We sit in the noise of the room. The monitor ticking its gentle metronome. Voices floating in from the hallway and softening at the doorway.
“I don’t like this,” she says finally.
“Me either.”
“I’m mad.”
“Me too.”
“I’m also happy.” She sniffs, her smile crooked. “You’re having a freaking baby!”
I huff a laugh that turns into a near sob.
She reaches for the tissues. The envelope peeks out from underneath the box. She pulls it free, weighs it, and eyes me. “How much?”
“Enough to let you breathe for a while.”
“I don’t like you owing anyone,” she says, the same line she used when I told her the bank “expedited” the loan. She knows that was all theater.
“I like you alive,” I say, and it’s the only argument I need.
Her lower lip trembles. “Promise me something.”
“Name it.”
“If whatever you try next doesn’t work, we go together. I don’t care what we leave behind.”
“Deal,” I say. We hook our pinkies, because that’s how we’ve always signed the contracts that count.
A gentle knock comes and the nurse leans in. “How are we doing?”
“Just fine,” Clara lies, blotting her cheeks.
“I’ll give you a few more minutes,” the nurse says kindly and disappears again.
I check the clock. My window is almost up. If I stay much longer, I won’t leave at all. I get up and do the small helpful things I can to convince myself I’m useful: adjust pillows, refill her water cup, and line the remote up with the edge of the tray so she can easily reach it.
I leave the photo album. “For company,” I say with a weak smile.
“Come back,” she says. Not a question.
“When it’s safe,” I reply. Not what she wants to hear but the only promise I can keep right now.
“Text me code words. Something. Anything.”
“I’ll call you from random numbers and you’ll send me to voicemail and I’ll leave puzzles.” We grin, because joking around has always been a part of survival for us.
We hug and hold on, long and hard. I don’t ever want to let her go. I kiss her forehead.
“Love you, sis,” she says. “Even when you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Love you, too. Even when you tell me I’m a pain in the ass.”
I don’t let myself look back when I step through the door because I know if I do, I’ll break.
The elevator is slow as hell so I take the end stairwell. Once on the main floor, ,s to see that snow is coming down steadily now, quieting the world. My boot soles squeak against the tile. I keep my hood up, face down, breath even.
Outside, the side street is a narrow canyon of parked cars and half-plowed edges.
The main entrance glows two blocks away like it’s a portal to another world.
I aim toward Third, thinking three blocks then an Uber.
I pass a smoking area with nobody smoking and a delivery bay with nobody delivering.
My world narrows to the crunch of salt under rubber heels and the itchiness of my scarf.
“Keep walking,” a voice says at my right shoulder, low and deep. “Don’t scream.”
Something hard presses into my ribs before I can turn. The metal shock is clean and clear. My heart jumps so high I nearly swallow it.
I do what he says. I keep walking.
He’s close enough that I can smell mint gum and expensive cologne. Another shape detaches from a van and falls into step on my left side. I don’t turn around.
The gun presses in a fraction, reminding me it’s there. The world narrows again to the gun, the sidewalk, the slush, my pulse pounding loud in my ears.
“Wrong street for a walk,” the first one says, friendly but mocking.
We approach a line of parked cars. A back door opens fast. A hand roughly cups the back of my head and forces me inside.
“You aren’t Damien’s,” I hear myself say, small but furious.
“Smart girl,” the second one mutters. “Shut up.”
I think of the baby shining like a tiny candle under my ribs and I put my palm there to force reassurance.
The engine starts. Slush hisses under tires. The hospital slides past the window like safety being pulled away.
My last clear thought before the fear truly blooms is simple and sharp: This is how they get to him. Through me.