13. Cass
CASS
But even though we’ve said it, the decision has been reached, the line in the sand crossed, Matvei doesn’t let go of my hand.
I don’t let go of his, either.
I think we’re both aware that, the second we drop our fingers, the spell breaks, and I have to walk back out there and be Mrs. Snyder again.
So we just stand there, a bit too close in a banquet chair closet, while the muffled cheers of a thousand drunk Manhattanites bleed through the door, neither one of us daring to move.
“Matvei…” I whisper into the dark. “I have to tell you something else.”
That right there—opening the metaphorical door to this conversation—was the hardest part of the whole shebang. And yet I’m still finding myself lost for words, because the rest of what I have to confess isn’t that much easier.
“It’s—it’s a… It’s, well… I’m… You’re…” I laugh crazily, all breathy and wrong. “Okay, this is harder than I thought it would be.” I suck in a deep breath. Rip the Band-Aid. Go ahead, just tear that sucker off and let it bleed. Open your mouth and say, “I’m ? —”
“Cassandra!”
But it isn’t Matvei who spoke. That voice is coming from somewhere out in the corridor on the other side of the door, muffled but unmistakable, a brash, booming, country-club bray that I’d recognize from across an ocean.
It’s Raymond.
Every cell in my body folds itself up small.
“Cassandra,” he bellows, “where are you?”
He’s not close. Not yet. He’s far down the hall, almost certainly bullying some poor coat-check girl into scouring the ladies’ room for me. But he’s looking, and he’s loud. The volume is the warning.
Be where I can find you, or there will be consequences.
Matvei’s hand goes tight around mine. “Well?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. It can wait.”
He searches my face in the darkness. Whatever he finds there, he doesn’t like, but he also doesn’t have the time to dig.
“Fine,” he says. “Listen to me. Don’t talk, just listen. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because we only have six weeks to get this done.”
That makes me do a double-take. “Why six?”
“In six weeks, Raymond’s getting on a plane to the Caymans. Some kind of sit-down with his network down there. And he’s bringing you with him.”
I remain puzzled. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“Same reason he brings you to every other function: A pretty wife on his arm makes him look like a respectable man instead of what he actually is. But these aren’t steakhouse dinners with boring lawyers and bankers, Cassandra.
These are dangerous people. If anything goes sideways in that room—and with Raymond, something always goes sideways—you won’t be coming home.
They’ll keep you and use you as leverage… Or worse.”
I try to swallow and find I can’t. “How do you know all this?”
“I hacked his calendar.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” I say breezily. “As one does.”
“Don’t sound impressed. It’s lazy on his end. The point is the ticking clock. Six weeks. That’s our window.”
I’m nodding so much I probably look like a bobblehead.
But I’m doing some other, very important math in my head as I do it, and my brain is screaming at me, because six weeks is also approximately the amount of time I have left before my belly stops being a secret I can continue to hide under a backless emerald gown.
I haven’t gone to a doctor yet; I haven’t dared. But I know that, give or take six weeks from tonight, I’ll be past the point where Spanx can save me. And there is no excuse on God’s green earth that explains a pregnancy to a husband who hasn’t touched his wife in months.
Six weeks it is, then.
If Raymond isn’t dead by that point…
… I’ll be dead soon afterward.
“Six weeks,” I repeat. “Got it.”
“Good.” Matvei’s thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, and I almost forget to breathe. “One more thing. We can’t be seen together. Not like this. Not ever, if we can help it.”
“Pity.”
“Which means we need a way to talk that isn’t running into each other in coat closets.”
“Not that I haven’t enjoyed the ambiance,” I interject. “Sorry. Bad habit. Defense mechanism, as my therapist tells me. Anyway, continue.”
His brow is furrowed and serious. “So I’ll get you a burner phone.”
“How? Raymond goes through my purse. In a frisky mood, he’ll check my coat pockets. He’s been known to go through my tampon boxes when he’s feeling especially paranoid. A real prince amongst men, in other words.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Matvei says. “I’m good at this, remember? I’ll find a way to get it to you. You won’t see me coming. One day soon, it’ll just be there.”
“Okay,” I say. “Vague and ominous, but okay. I’ll wait.”
“When you find it, keep it hidden. You hear me?”
“Cassandra, goddammit, where the hell are you?” Raymond’s voice is closer now. There isn’t much time left.
Matvei’s eyes go to the door, then back to me. “Go,” he says.
“Matvei—”
“Go. Now. Out the door, turn left, walk back like you got lost looking for the bathroom. Don’t run. And whatever you do, don’t look back at this door.”
“What about you?”
He still hasn’t let go of my hand. I look down at our fingers, knotted together in the dim, and I try to memorize the feeling, because I don’t know when I’ll get it again.
Then Matvei lifts our joined hands, presses his mouth to my knuckles, right on top of Raymond’s awful diamond, and lets me go.
“Smile,” he says. “Big and pretty. Like you’re not plotting anything at all.”
Only then does he finally let me go.
I crack the door an inch, peer down the empty hall, and slip out.
The corridor is mercifully deserted, occupied by nothing but brass sconces on the wall and a runner so thick it eats the sound of my heels.
I walk out the way Matvei told me to, smooth and unhurried, like I’ve simply gotten turned around looking for the powder room.
I step back into the ballroom on a wave of confetti and tinny Auld Lang Syne. Popping champagne corks and giggling, drunken wives.
“There you are! For Christ’s sake, where have you been?” Raymond swarms at me from the right, his face flushed pink with whiskey and irritation. I plaster on the smile Matvei told me to wear and turn toward him with both hands lifted, palms up, helpless and apologetic.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, darling,” I tell him. “The line for the ladies’ was a mile long, and then I couldn’t find my way back. This place is a labyrinth.”
He looks me over. Top to bottom. Searching. I keep my hands loose at my sides, my chin up, my smile small and embarrassed, every bit the silly, empty-headed, docile little lamb he expects me to be.
“Don’t do that again,” he orders at last. “Stay where I can see you. Understand?”
“Of course. Sorry, dear.”
His hand comes back to the small of my back, hot and proprietary, and steers me toward a knot of men in tuxedos by the bandstand. I float beside him on autopilot, nodding, smiling, laughing at all the right things.
Six weeks, I think. Six measly weeks .
One way or another, it all ends then.