19. Mat
MAT
Raymond’s voice slithers through the door of the bathroom. Cass goes rigid in front of me. The pink in her throat drains down to the dress’s collar and doesn’t come back.
“Go,” I murmur.
“Mat—”
“Now. Before he comes looking.”
She blinks up at me. Her eyes are glassy, lashes wet, and I want to say something else, something she can carry back out into that ballroom to sustain her. But I can’t think of a single word that’s good enough. So I just press my thumb to the corner of her mouth, very lightly, and tip her chin up.
“Smile for him,” I tell her. “You know how.”
She nods. She does know how. That’s the worst fucking part. She never thought she’d have to do it again.
She steps back from me, pats the silk down her hips with both hands, then she shakes out her hair, presses her lips together, and reaches for the bolt.
The lock thunks. The door cracks. A wedge of amber hallway light cuts in, and she slips out through it without looking back at me.
“Oh, my God, there you are!” she crows. “I’m so sorry, darling. I think the fish was off, I had to?—”
“I don’t want to hear about the fucking fish,” he sneers.
“Of course, of course. I’m so sorry. I’m coming.”
Her voice gets fainter as Cass steers Raymond away from the bathroom. Her bright, apologetic patter ripples over the top of his drunken grunts like icing over a rotten cake.
Then there’s nothing.
I stand stock-still until I’m sure they’re gone. Then I lock the bolt again.
I make it to the vanity before my legs decide they’re done with this nonsense and I have to grab the edge of the countertop with both hands to keep myself upright. The marble is cold under my palms. Veined gold in cream. Some interior designer made a lot of money picking this slab.
I look up. The mirror is a clean, brutal piece of glass framed in brass, shined to a perfect polish, but the man in it doesn’t look like me.
All the features are the same as they always have been. Pale skin. Black stubble. Blue eyes. But there’s a sheen of sweat at my hairline and my tie is sitting half a degree off-center.
My hand is on my chest. Not on the gun, but on the inside breast pocket of my jacket. Through the wool, I can feel the square of paper she pressed into me. Stiff. Folded along old creases.
It’s yours.
I’ve heard a lot of things in this lifetime. Confessions. Threats. The wet hitch of a man’s last breath when his trachea has been bent out of shape. None of them ever rearranged my insides like those two words.
It’s yours.
I drag a hand down my face and breathe out through my teeth. My rib aches and stings all at once. But I can’t spare my own pain any mind. I need to focus on the plan.
The plan. Fucking hell, the plan.
Christ. I need to pull myself together.
I straighten my tie, then run a finger along the line of my jaw to wipe away the spot where Cass’s lipstick smudged. I shake out my cuffs, then touch my breast pocket once more.
I check the hang of the gun under the wool. It’s right where it’s supposed to be, but it won’t be coming out to play tonight.
Things have changed.
In the ballroom, the dessert course is being staged. White-gloved waiters glide between the tables with little plated towers of chocolate and gold leaf. The lighting has dropped a notch. The room has the heady stench of espresso and roses going slightly past their prime.
Raymond is back in his chair, slumped sideways and gesticulating with his bourbon at Zimmerman, who looks like he’s been embalmed and propped up.
Cass is in her seat, once again nodding at Bill’s wife’s never-ending stories.
Her smile is wide, bland, pretty, unobjectionable. Just like I told her to do.
I sweep up to the table from Raymond’s blind side, pull my phone from my inside pocket, and let my face assume a concerned expression.
“Ray.” I stoop low and put a hand on the back of his chair. “I’m sorry. I have to step out.”
“What?” He burps. “No. We haven’t had dessert.”
“I know.” I show him the dark face of the phone like it’s evidence.
“Greg Gordon’s lawyer just called. He wants to amend something in the paperwork.
They’re throwing a tantrum about the indemnity language and threatening to walk before Monday morning.
I need to put out the fire tonight or it’s gonna be a mess. ”
“Gordon’s a fucking pussy,” Raymond declares to the table at a hideous volume. “Tell him to grow a pair.”
I let a tight, deferential smile pull at my mouth. “It’s a thirty-minute fix on the phone if I do it now. Better for all of us if I just handle it tonight.”
Raymond squints up at me. His eyes are pink at the corners and the white tufts of his mustache are flecked with crumbs. He’s an inch from belligerent. But he knows as well as I do that some business must be done under cover of darkness.
“Fuckin’ hell.” He waves the bourbon glass. A little of it sloshes out onto the cloth. “Fine. Go.”
“Raincheck on dessert.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He’s already pivoted back to Zimmerman. “Where was I? Oh, right, so I was playing eighteen with the mayor the other day…”
I disperse goodbye nods around the table as I stand and button my jacket. I save Cass for last.
“Mrs. Snyder.” I incline my head. “Apologies for the abrupt exit.”
She looks up.
In a movie, this would be a long beat. Music swelling. The held look.
Here, in real life, it’s a flick of green eyes over the rim of a water glass, half a second long, and a small, polite tilt of her chin.
“Oh, no apology needed, Mr. Satyrin. Work always wins. Drive safe.”
“Thank you.”
That’s the full extent of it. But she holds the glass at her mouth a bit too long after I turn away, and I see it in her reflection in the mirror behind the bar as I cross the room. She watches me go, the rim still resting against her lower lip, her throat working once.
I tear my gaze away and I don’t look back.
Coat check. Tip the girl. The valet comes fast. I tip him, too, then slide in, and pull away from the Pierre at a clean, lawful pace, hands at ten and two like a guy who has not, in the last ninety minutes, had his entire reality dismantled by a pencil-eraser-sized blot on a piece of thermal paper.
I find a stretch of curb on a side street where the brownstones are dark and the street lamps are weak, and I pull over and kill the engine. Quiet rushes in. I sit with both hands on the wheel and stare through the windshield at nothing.
The Glock at my back is digging into my spine. I shift, pull it out, and lay the weapon down on the passenger seat. The black grip gleams, dark and ominous.
Then I take the sonogram out of my breast pocket. I unfold it on my thigh and smooth it flat with the heel of my hand against the wool of my trousers. Funny how a little black speck can change so much at once.
It’s a dot. A nothing.
And yet a whole fucking world.
My father has been dead fifteen years. Most days, I don’t think about him at all. He’s a smell, mostly—Belomor smoke and cheap aftershave from a green bottle he bought in bulk at some Brighton Beach pharmacy. A rough-edged laugh I can’t quite reproduce in my head anymore.
I wonder, sitting here in the dark with the engine cooling down, if he ever had a moment like this.
Did my mother press something similar into his hand and give him the good news?
Was he happy or sad when she did? Did he wonder, like I’m doing, what kind of man he’d have to become now, and whether the man he already was could be salvaged or if he’d have to throw the whole thing out and start from scratch?
I’ll never know. He’s dead now, and so is she. Any help they might’ve had to offer died with them.
I refold the paper along its creases, slow and careful, and tuck it back over my heart.
Then I take out my phone.
“ Da. ” Uncle Afon answers right away. I’m not surprised; he’d be awake at this hour even if he weren’t waiting for this call.
“It’s me.”
“Tell me good news, nephew . ”
I look at the gun on the passenger seat. “It wasn’t the right night.”
The silence on the other end is prickly.
“I’ll take the next one,” I say. “The firm retreat upstate in two weeks will be a better chance anyway.”
A car drives past. Its headlights wash over my face and move on.
“Mm.” That’s all he gives me at first. A single syllable. A grunt that could mean anything. “You don’t usually disappoint like this.”
My grip on the wheel tightens. “It is what it is. I’m not stupid enough to rush something like this.” I can hear him breathing through his nose, slow and even. “It’ll get done,” I promise. “Tell Lukas he has my word.”
The line clicks dead in my ear.
I expected no less. My uncle loves me, in his own way, but he’s never been one to waste words or gush over with feelings. I lower the phone to my lap.
I feel guilty, in ways I didn’t know I could feel. That’s mostly because I understand, with a flat and terrible clarity, that I have just done a thing that cannot be undone.
I have lied to my uncle.
The man who pulled me out of an alley fifteen years ago with my father’s blood drying on his hands.
The man whose freedom is twined with mine.
The man to whom I owe every breath I take.
I lied to him. For her.
No—for them . Cass and our baby.
Jillian’s voice sneaks into my head. Lies live forever. You can’t outrun them.
Yeah. I’m starting to suspect she might be right about that.
I close my eyes for a moment and rest. Then I open them, turn the key, and start the engine. The dash glows up. Heat begins to push through the vents. I tuck the Glock back where it belongs, beneath the wool of my jacket, against the same spine that’s going to have to carry whatever comes next.
I’ve got two weeks now to figure out what happens next. Fourteen days to come up with a plan that works.
Not just for me.
But for all of us .