4. Cass #2
I don’t know whether to be angry or impressed. In the end, I decide on neither. All the air goes whistling out of me as I sag back against the alley wall in defeat, eyes fluttering closed with exhaustion. “I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?”
“I’d say it’s not your forte, no.”
He hesitates in an odd way. I crack open one eyelid. “What? What is it?”
“It would be better for both of us if I didn’t ask.”
“Well, now, you’ve piqued my curiosity. You have to.”
“Oh?” he says, eyebrow raising again. “Are you going to make me?”
It occurs to me, sort of out of the blue, that I’m alone in an alleyway with a strange, dangerous man. Yes, he just rescued me from several other strange, dangerous men, but who’s to say he doesn’t have even more nefarious plans of his own for me?
But I just don’t get the same sense of alarm as I did with the Kitchen Implement Crew over there.
I mean, yes, I’ve got plenty of alarms going off in regard to the Blue-Eyed Bastard here, most of them situated frighteningly low in my belly and/or between my legs, but they’re not the kind that make me want to get up and run.
On the contrary, these alarms are begging me to stay.
Stay here, with him, for as long as he’ll let you.
… because it’s the first time you’ve felt safe in four years.
“I get the feeling no one makes you do anything you don’t want to do,” I say truthfully.
Matvei pauses, tilts his head to look at me from a new angle, and then nods. “They did once,” he says. “And they’re trying to again. But, you know… fool me twice, and all that shit.”
“I can never remember how that one goes,” I reply. “If they fool you twice, who’s the shame on?”
He doesn’t joke back, though. There’s a sudden cloud over his eyes, as if he’s remembering things that have haunted him for a long time.
I’m inclined to ask, being the nosy sort of person that I am, but then I stop and reconsider. If he just senselessly brutalized the guys down the alley without batting an eye, then what kind of trauma would actually leave a mark on him? Something tells me I don’t actually want to know.
So I swallow the question and mind my own business for once.
“By the way,” I say instead, “the question you weren’t going to ask. I’m officially making you.”
He grins for half a second before it fades away and his face lapses back into that stony distance. “If you’re making me, I suppose I have no choice, do I?”
“None whatsoever,” I agree grimly. “As you no doubt noticed, I’m a very dangerous woman.”
“There’s no denying that.” Sighing, he rakes a fallen bang off his forehead. “Alright then. What were you hiring for?”
Do you ever get that feeling where you know, you just know , that whatever comes out of your mouth next is going to matter? Not in the way most things matter, which is barely and temporarily. But in the real way. The permanent way.
It’s a fork in the road with two destinations.
On the one hand, I could make up something silly, thank this Blue-Eyed Bastard for the rescue, limp to my car, and drive back to Park Slope. He’d forget me by morning. I’d forget him… eventually.
Or I could tell him the truth.
And then we’d be tangled. Tied together. Possibly for good.
I’m still unsure which route I’m going to take when I open my mouth.
“I’m not going to make you, you know,” Matvei interrupts.
Whatever choice I was going to make suddenly seems irrelevant. I frown. “Because you won’t, or because you can’t?”
The smile he flashes then is equal parts wicked and taunting.
“Oh, dikarka, there are many things I could make you do. But I won’t do this one.
” He glances down at my left hand where it’s lying limp in my lap, then nods and juts his chin toward it.
“I’m guessing it has something to do with that, though, doesn’t it? ”
I follow his gaze to see he’s talking about my wedding ring.
Words can’t explain how much I hate this thing.
It’s a four-carat emerald-cut diamond flanked by two smaller stones, set in platinum.
Raymond picked it out himself. It cost half a million dollars, and he made damn sure that everyone knew that.
I’ve thought about flushing it down the toilet more times than I can count. But I wear it. Every fucking day of my life, I wear it. Because that’s what good wives do, and good wives don’t get hit as often.
I look back up at Matvei. He’s watching me closely. Unblinking. Aware. Seeing so much more than I ever knew I was showing.
When I don’t answer right away, he rises, bringing me with him.
Then he does something I wasn’t expecting.
He takes my left hand and turns it over so my palm is facing up. And with his thumb and forefinger, he grips my wedding ring and works it off my finger.
The ring comes free. The skin underneath is pale and slightly indented where the band has sat for four years. I feel ten pounds lighter.
That’s not the end of it, though. Matvei flips my hand over so it’s palm-up, fingers splayed wide. He sets the ring in my open palm and folds my fingers closed around it. “No one can claim you for themselves in this world, you know,” he says. “Only you can choose to give yourself away.”
My throat closes up. I want to say something, preferably something sharp and funny and deflective, because that’s what I do. That’s my whole thing, really.
But nothing comes. My brain is just blank white noise.
I look at the ring in my fist. Then I look at him.
“You don’t even know me,” I whisper.
“No,” he agrees. “I don’t. Isn’t that the appeal?”
His hand comes up to the side of my face. His fingers are still warm and tacky with the drying blood. The pad of his thumb rests against my cheekbone, right over the spot where the concealer is covering Raymond’s handiwork.
He scoots closer. Or maybe I do. Hard to say. The gap between us shrinks to nothing and his head tilts down toward mine. I can smell him—cool and clean, as if dark green had a smell, something that reminds me of rain on pine trees. My eyes close on their own.
His breath is warm on my mouth. My hand—the one holding the ring—rests against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt.
Our noses touch. His lips are right there. A centimeter. Less.
And then?—
Matvei’s breath fans over my face in a surprised grunt. My eyes fly open. His face looks stricken, eyes wide with surprise, mouth pressed into a grim slash. “Matvei, what…?” His gaze falls down, and mine goes with it…
… That’s when I see the knife sticking out of his rib.