31. Cass #3
I rest my palm over his heart. It thumps once, hard, like it’s surprised to be noticed.
“Fifteen years ago,” he says, “he and my uncle Afon had something going on the side. A little hustle for extra cash. It was something Lukas, the pakhan , had told them very specifically not to do. They thought they could keep it quiet and hidden from him. But as it turns out, they were wrong.”
“What happened?”
His ribs go very still under my cheek. I can feel him picking through the words.
“They got caught in an alley by suppliers who’d decided they were no longer worth the risk. I was there. I shouldn’t have been—they’d warned me not to follow—but I thought I was old enough to get involved. Fifteen-year-olds know everything, in case you weren’t aware.”
The joke is too bitter for me to laugh at it. Especially when I can already see where this is going. “Oh, Mat.”
“If it weren’t for Afon,” he says, “I’d have gotten killed as gruesomely as my dad did. But Afon dragged me out while my father took on the worst of it.”
I close my eyes and think of a fifteen-year-old boy crouched behind a dumpster, looking when he was told not to look. The same boy who, fifteen years later, would haul a stranger out of an alley because he couldn’t stomach being the one who didn’t intervene.
“Afon was supposed to die, too,” Matvei goes on.
“Lukas had every right to execute him. Me, too. Going behind the pakhan ’s back—that’s a death sentence.
But Afon dropped to his knees and begged.
He made a trade. If Lukas spared me, Afon would work for him forever.
And Lukas—who is a complicated man, to say the least—took the deal. ”
“So Afon’s been working for him ever since.”
Matvei nods. “For fifteen years. Doing whatever he’s asked. Never a no. Never a hesitation.” He swallows. “Because of me.”
The dwindling fire in the grate pops. A coal tumbles down from the top of the pile.
“And so now…?” I prompt.
“Now,” Matvei says slowly, “a new opportunity has popped up. Technically speaking, Lukas released me from the Bratva’s employ fifteen years ago.
But Raymond and his friends are doing things that Lukas can’t quite figure out how to counter.
So he asked me to take care of it for him.
In return, he’d release Afon from his debt.
We’d both be free. Or at least as free as anyone like us ever gets.
” His hand finally stops moving on my stomach and just rests there.
“So when I tell you Raymond is going to die, dikarka , it’s not just you I’m trying to save. It’s the uncle who rescued me, too.”
I press my mouth to the scar on his side. He winces, then settles, like something about the kiss soothes him. “Then we’ll do it,” I declare. “For you and your uncle. For your dad. For me. And for our baby.”
He hums a soft sound of agreement.
“I’m sorry I ruined this chance,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. We aren’t out of chances yet. There’s another window coming up next weekend.”
“The DeMaris wedding.”
“You remembered.”
“I’m an over-preparer in all things. It’s a sickness.”
He chuckles and pulls me closer. “It’ll be more complicated,” he warns. “Josiah DeMaris doesn’t do anything halfway, especially not when it comes to marrying off his daughter. Comes with the territory of being a United States senator, I suppose.”
“How complicated?”
“It’s a serious affair. Black tie. Three hundred guests, press in the lobby. Coat checks, security, Secret Service… It’ll be a fucking mess.”
I tilt my face up so I can see him properly. The fire’s last orange light is catching on the side of his jaw, the column of his throat, that one lock of hair that’s fallen across his forehead and refuses to behave.
In eight months, I think again, maybe we’ll have a chance to try this for real.
“What will I do?” I ask.
“You will wear something pretty and stay where I can see you.” He catches my hand and kisses the inside of my wrist. “More importantly, you do not pick up a gun, or a knife. You do not pick up so much as a cocktail fork with intent. Am I clear?”
“No cutlery. Got it.”
“I’m serious, Cass.”
“I know you are.” I nuzzle my forehead into the warm hollow of his throat. “I won’t go rogue. I promise. I’m done improvising.”
He’s silent for a moment. Then, to himself, he whispers, “One more week. We can do one more week.”
I nod against him. “For your father,” I whisper.
“For our baby,” he whispers back.
“For our baby,” I agree. “And for us.”
We make love twice more before I fall asleep. The next thing I know, I’m being pulled up out of something black and dreamless by a strange cacophony.
Voices. Boots. A radio crackling below the window.
“Mat.” I shake his shoulder. “Mat, something’s happening.”
He’s awake between one breath and the next. His hand finds my wrist in the dark and squeezes once— Stay —then he’s up and at the window, lifting the heavy curtain an inch with one knuckle.
The light that comes through paints his bare chest in candy-cane stripes. Red, blue, red, blue.
“Ambulance,” he reports. “Two of them. And a fire truck.”
I’m out of bed and across the room before he can tell me not to, dragging the duvet around me like a toga. I press up against his side and peer down through the gap in the curtain.
The circular drive is a mess of lights. Two ambulances, like he said, plus a fire engine angled across the gravel, and now, a sheriff’s SUV with the door flying open and deputies pouring out. Silhouettes move to and fro, turning the snow beneath their boots to gray slush.
And in the middle of it all, two gurneys.
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
Susan is in the first. I’d recognize that wheat-blond chignon anywhere, even half-undone, with an oxygen mask over the bottom of her face. They’re rolling her toward the nearer ambulance. A paramedic is jogging alongside, squeezing a bag attached to the mask to flood her lungs with oxygen.
Behind her, on the second gurney, is Bill.
He isn’t moving at all.
“ Mat— ”
“I see it.” His voice is very, very flat.
I’m turning, hunting for clothes, any clothes. The first thing I find is Matvei’s discarded shirt, which I shove my arms into. He’s stepping into his pants without a word, then handing me my own from the floor. I drag them on under the shirt, hopping on one foot, then the other.
In the hallway, the animal knockers glare out at me from every door as we run past.
A porter is at the foot of the main staircase with a walkie-talkie pressed to his collar, his face pale. He startles when he sees us coming and holds up both hands like he’s trying to slow traffic.
“Mr. Satyrin. Mrs. Snyder. Please, just— If you could just stay?—”
“What happened?” Matvei barks.
The porter swallows. “There was a— a gas leak. In the Oglethorpes’ suite.”
“A gas leak?” I repeat in shock.
“Yes ma’am. The fire department’s up there now. They’ve got it shut off, but?—”
“Are they alive?” Matvei cuts in.
The porter’s eyes dart to the front doors, where another deputy is stomping snow off his boots. “Mrs. Oglethorpe is. They got to her in time. Mr. Oglethorpe…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. They were working on him a long time. I’m not supposed to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
He turns and leaves, still ashen.
I look at Matvei. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?” I whisper.
“No,” he says, shaking his head in dismay. “I don’t think it was.”