14. Cass
CASS
Raymond is snoring beside me, mouth open, the white tufts of his mustache fluttering with each noxious exhale. He smells like burps, whiskey, and body odor, a sour blend that I’ve come to associate with his particular brand of hangover.
I didn’t touch anything alcoholic last night, but I feel as bleary and wrong-footed as if I’d been guzzling shots for hours on end.
Everything is off. The sheets are too hot.
The duvet is too heavy. The light coming through the wrong gap in the curtains is hitting me square in the eye, and my bladder is screaming, and my stomach is doing slow, sickening revolutions, over and over, like a Ferris wheel that’s going to shear off its bolts and go tumbling over the countryside any second now, leaving havoc and heartbreak in its wake.
I lie very still and do my morning inventory.
Am I pregnant? Yes.
Am I married to a monster? Yes.
Am I now in a secret partnership with a Russian assassin to murder said monster? Also yes.
It’s gonna be a hell of a year.
I ease one leg out from under the covers, then the other, then sit up by slow, careful degrees, trying not to make any noise. Raymond grunts and I freeze. Then he snorts, moans, and rolls onto his back before resuming his snoring at a slightly higher pitch and a significantly louder volume.
I don’t move until I’m sure he’s under again. Only then do I pad to the bathroom on my tiptoes.
I close the door behind me and lock it, then sit down on the toilet and put my face in my hands.
Last night happened. Last night actually, factually, no-takesies-backsies, really did happen. I keep replaying the handshake in the closet, Matvei’s eyes burning blue in the darkness.
Let’s go kill my husband.
I pull my hands away from my face and look at them, positive that I’ll find some sign of what I’ve done. Strangely, they’re not shaking. Isn’t that something?
A month ago, I couldn’t pour orange juice without sloshing it all over the counter from sheer nerves, and now, here I am, calm as a Zen cucumber, plotting murder before breakfast.
Maybe I really am built for this after all.
Or maybe I’m just dissociating.
I flush just to make things sound normal in case Raymond is listening, wash my hands twice, splash cold water on my face, and pat it dry. Goodness gracious, I do not look good. Smudged mascara that evaded last night’s pre-bed makeup wipe blends into a bruise that no makeup wipe can remove.
At least my belly is still flat. Flat enough, at least.
For now.
I press a palm to my stomach, very lightly, and whisper, “Six weeks, baby. Hang tight. Stay skinny. Mama’s begging you.”
Then I put on my robe and go make coffee for two—Raymond’s cup gets a hefty splash of hair-of-the-dog Kahlúa—because that’s what good wives do on New Year’s morning.
Raymond drags himself out of bed around ten. I hear him before I see him: the long, theatrical groan, the lead-footed Frankenstein shuffle down the hall, the wet smacking sound he makes with his mouth when he wakes up dehydrated.
He appears in the kitchen doorway in matching maroon silk pajamas and squints at the light like it’s personally offended him. “Christ.”
“Good morn?—”
“Don’t shout.”
I wasn’t shouting. In fact, I’d barely whispered. But I just smile and nudge his mug of coffee across the island toward him.
He picks the mug up without looking at or thanking me and takes a long sip. Then he plops down on a stool at the island and rubs his temples with his free hand.
“Drink too much?” I ask.
He grunts, “Enough with the fucking Inquisition. Make yourself useful, woman, and put some bread in the toaster.”
Still beaming my Stepford smile, I set two slices of sourdough to toasting.
Then I turn my back to him so I can let my face do whatever it wants for a second.
The moment I’m not performing for Raymond, the corners of my mouth droop south and my eyelids follow in the same direction.
My hand wants to drift to my belly again, but I don’t dare go that far.
Still, it’d be so nice, just to touch, to confirm that?—
“Cassandra.”
“Yes, dear?” I quickly reassemble my face.
“Come sit.”
I plate his toast, bring it over, and perch onto the stool next to him. Not across from him with a nice barrier between us, but next to him, the way he likes, so he can put his hand on my thigh whenever he feels like it without having to reach.
He doesn’t reach, thankfully. Yet. He’s too hungover for it. Thank God.
He doesn’t talk right away, either. He just chomps on his toast, spraying crumbs everywhere, and slurps at his coffee messily enough that it drenches his facial hair and paints the curling ends of his mustache a muddy brown.
“So,” he says eventually. “I’ve been thinking.”
I can’t help but mumble under my breath, “ I hope you didn’t hurt yourself in the attempt.” I keep my voice purposefully quiet and indistinct so it’s impossible to decipher.
Is it smart to play with fire like that? No, but it’s the little things that get me through the day. Without them, life is hardly worth living, is it?
Raymond cuts a sideways look at me. I make my face go bland and attentive, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. He decides that he doesn’t care enough to make me repeat myself, and goes back to his grand reveal.
“Next month,” he announces, “I’m taking you abroad.”
I freeze. “Oh?”
“We’re going to the Caymans. A few days in the sun will do you some good; you’re looking ghastly pale. And I have some friends who want to meet you.”
It’s harder than ever to keep my face composed. “Mm. Anyone I’ve heard of?”
“No.” He tears a corner off his toast. “And you don’t need to know a damn thing; I wasn’t inviting questions.
You just need to look pretty and shut up and let me do the talking.
Same as last night. You did fine last night.
Mostly.” He frowns and adds, “Except for when you wandered off. I didn’t like that. ”
“I told you, the line to the?—”
“I know what you told me.” He swallows audibly as a huge chunk of coffee-drenched toast slides down his esophagus. “Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good girl.”
All of the not-a-damn-thing I’ve eaten this morning threatens to come back up. I swallow it down with willpower alone and smile at him over the rim of my mug.
He gives me a curious look, and I wonder if I’ve accidentally let something slip, some subtle intention, a giveaway of all the things I want so badly to do to him.
But then his eyes flick down to my robe, to the line of my collarbone, where just enough cleavage has revealed itself to distract him from whatever inquisition of his own he might’ve been about to launch.
I brace myself for what I know is coming.
Sure enough, a second later, that heavy hand thuds onto my thigh with a meaty slap. Only the thin silk of my robe prevents the skin-on-skin contact I’m dreading. I have to fight every muscle in my body not to jerk away.
“You know,” he muses, chewing with his mouth open, “we haven’t, in a while.”
I stay perfectly still, like a rabbit caught wandering too far out of the underbrush.
“A man has needs, Cassandra.” His hand creeps higher. “Come back to bed, why don’t you?”
“Ray, I?—”
“It wasn’t really a question.”
He sets his mug down with a clack that says he’s already deciding it for both of us.
His palm has wormed its way onto my hip now, fingers scrabbling ever higher upward, and he’s leaning in close enough that I can smell the Kahlúa on his breath mixing with the burps and the B.O.
and whatever foul things have taken root on his tongue overnight.
I think faster than I’ve ever thought in my life. “Raymond, I— I— I’m on my period.”
His hand stops moving.
“I started last night, actually. Right after we got home. That’s why I went to bed so fast.” I make my mouth pucker up small and apologetic. “I didn’t want to ruin your evening.”
He tears his hand off my thigh like I burned him. “Christ.”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
“I don’t want your fucking sorries.” He shoves the stool back from the island with a screech that puts my teeth on edge. “Goddammit. I told you to start tracking that thing on your phone. I’ve told you a hundred times. I don’t want surprises.”
“I know. You’re right, of course. I will. I’ll download the app today.”
“See that you do.”
He stands up, swaying a bit, and snatches his coffee mug off the counter. A drop of it sloshes onto the marble, but he doesn’t wipe it up, because Raymond Snyder has never wiped up a single drop of anything in his entire life. That’s what wives are for.
“I’m going to shower,” he announces, not like I’ve asked. “Don’t bother me.”
“I won’t.”
“And put on something that isn’t that godawful robe. You look like a skeleton in it.”
“Yes, darling.”
He shuffles out of the kitchen, muttering under his breath about fucking timing and useless and a few other words I don’t bother parsing. I get the gist; they’re nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times before.
The second I hear the bedroom door shut down the hall, I let out a whistling, frightened breath.
My hand finally, finally drifts down to my belly. Just for a second. Just one little stolen second.
While it’s secret.
While it’s safe.
So, just in case there was any doubt left to sort through, it is now clear that Matvei wasn’t bluffing. Every single thing he told me last night in that closet is real, and all of it is happening.
For no real reason in particular, my mind floats back to the first time Raymond hit me.
It was a month into our marriage and I’d burned a roast. He came home, smelled the char from the foyer, and swept into the kitchen and slapped me so hard I bit my own tongue and started bleeding all over the tile floor.
Then he told me to clean myself up and we went out for sushi. He held my hand across the table and told me he loved me and that he was sorry and it would never happen again.
I have not, until this exact moment, allowed myself to fully reckon with what he really is. I’d always known he was a bad man—no, scratch that, an evil one—but even I wouldn’t have nightmared quite this hard.
A violent man who killed my sister is awful enough.
The head of an actual criminal outfit? That’s leagues worse.
I thought, when I first bound myself to this vengeance mission at Giana’s funeral, that it would be over soon. If you’d told me then that her killer would still be breathing five years later, I wouldn’t have believed you and also go to fucking hell.
Not only is he still alive, though, and not only is his death proving to be more complicated than ever, but I’ve also found myself more compromised than I ever planned on being.
Matvei is my only way out. If he doesn’t come good on his promises… I am, to put it plainly, fucked.
They’ll keep you and use you as leverage… Or worse.
A hostage to a shadowy criminal syndicate, in a country where the law is whatever the richest man in the room says it is… A pregnant hostage, no less…
Once upon a time, before that double pink line, I used to think that if it was just my life at risk, I could afford to be reckless.
I could throw myself at this whole thing with both hands and not care if I got my fingers chewed off.
I’d sworn to Giana over her closed casket that I’d get him, and I’d meant it, and if I died trying, well, I’d see her on the other side and we’d have a nice long yap about it.
I still feel that way about my life, mostly. My life can burn. Fine. I’ve made peace with that.
But it’s not just my life anymore.
There’s a person in there. A barely-there, blueberry-sized person who didn’t sign up for any of this, who is currently sharing my bloodstream with four years of cortisol.
Six weeks from now, that teeny-tiny fruit will be on a plane to the Caymans, the hidden carry-on luggage stashed inside a woman who is being shepherded into a room full of men who would think nothing of putting a bullet in her if it gets them one inch closer to whatever it is they want.
I hear the clank and gurgle of the pipes above me as Raymond starts his shower. The flush of a toilet follows a moment later. The biological reality of him is as unchanged as ever. He’s a man, just a man, soft and hungover and killable.
And yet.
And yet.
I know in the marrow of my bones what he’s capable of. If I get on that plane, I am not getting off it. Not really. Not as me. Maybe my body comes home to JFK, but the rest of me—and the small thing inside me—will not.
One blue-eyed bastard is the difference between which of those fates comes to pass.
I don’t feel sick about how much I have to trust Matvei. I don’t feel scared, even. I feel something a lot meaner and a lot steadier than that, something I haven’t felt since I stood over Giana’s casket and made my promise to a closed lid.
I feel angry.
Mama Bear, it turns out, has teeth. And now, she has a friend.
Will that be enough?