35. Cass
CASS
The Plaza ballroom is doing its best impression of a Disney movie tonight.
I, meanwhile, am doing my best impression of a woman whose husband is not slated to die before dessert.
Senator Josiah DeMaris has spared no expense for his daughter Tabitha’s wedding.
The ceiling is festooned with crystal chandeliers, and below them, ten thousand white roses have been wrestled into the shapes of arches, columns, and a chuppah-adjacent canopy thing under which the bride and groom are currently slow-dancing to a cover of At Last performed by a singer who I think might actually be Etta James.
Like, the Etta James, exhumed for the occasion.
A jazz band waits in the wings for when the bride’s father gets sufficiently liquored up to abolish Etta and demand Sinatra instead.
The cocktail menu is themed: a DeMaris Daiquiri , a Tabitha Twist, a Senator Spritz.
I’m sipping on a flute of sparkling cider, cradling it close to my chest so no one asks me if I’m avoiding alcohol and, if so, why.
My dress is a column of midnight-blue silk with long sleeves, a high neck, and an open back that exposes me from nape to coccyx.
It’s meant to be elegant, but in actuality, it’s freezing my tucchus off.
Goosebumps have been crawling up and down my spine for the better part of an hour.
I keep telling myself it’s the air conditioning.
It is—partly.
It’s also the fear of imminent death.
Raymond seems clueless, so that’s good, I guess. His hand has stayed glued to my bare spine. He’s been guzzling bourbon since the cocktail hour kicked off and is sliding rapidly down the very slippery slope from charming to less than.
“Snyder!” booms a voice from across the parquet. “There’s my favorite goddamn lawyer!”
Senator DeMaris himself is barreling toward us with both arms out, bowtie already cock-eyed, the bottom buttons of his tuxedo shirt straining over his commitment to the Capitol Hill Brunch Lifestyle.
He’s about Raymond’s height with a face the precise pink of poached salmon, and he is, unmistakably, the man of the hour, the true star of the show.
The bride? Pfffft, never heard of her.
It’s the senator that everyone gives a damn about.
“Josiah!” Raymond booms back as they clasp hands. “Tabitha looks stunning. You must be so proud.”
“Proud and broker than hell!” the senator hollers. “You see those flowers? You see this goddamn ballroom? Fuck me, I should’ve had a son. ” He turns to me and, I shit you not, licks his lips. “ Cassandra! Don’t you look— mm . Don’t you look just lovely .”
I feel sick. I’ve met this man maybe twice at some of Raymond’s functions. I do not like that he remembers my name. It speaks to a certain kind of attention I’d really like to avoid. Especially given the current circumstances.
“Senator DeMaris,” I say smoothly. “Congratulations. Your daughter is breathtaking.”
“Takes after her mother.” He winks at me.
“Lucky for her.” Then, before I can step back, he leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek that lands a hair too close to the corner of my mouth.
His breath could strip varnish, and his hand could qualify for a restraining order if it sneaks any further south toward my ass.
Raymond guffaws like this is just the funniest damn thing he’s ever seen. “Watch it, Jozy—that’s my wife you’re nuzzling.”
“I’m just saying hello, Ray!”
“Say hello with your hands in your pockets next time, you dirty dog.”
DeMaris winks at me again as he pulls back. I take a sip of my sparkling cider and stare over his shoulder at a centerpiece.
As I do, the one man I actually want to see comes into view.
Matvei is at the bar across the room, in a tuxedo cut so precisely it makes the other men look like they’re wearing rented clown costumes. He’s facing away from me, talking to another guest, and not returning my gaze.
He is, however, aware of me. I can feel it the way you feel a hand hovering an inch above your skin.
After exchanging a few more side-mouthed jokes with Raymond about the various sets of cleavage on display, Senator DeMaris wanders off to abuse another guest. When he’s gone, Raymond steers me toward a knot of partners by the ice sculpture.
I trot out my hostess smile as we do the whole small talk song-and-dance.
But the whole time, I can feel Matvei across the room, not-looking at me.
Until—
“You’re better off asking— Hold up, where is…? There he is!” Raymond announces suddenly, lifting his glass toward the bar and roaring over the hundred-plus heads separating him from us. “Satyrin! Get over here!”
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no.
Matvei pushes off the pillar with slow, lethal ease and crosses the parquet toward us. Every step he takes peels another year off my life expectancy.
“Mr. Snyder,” he says when he’s close enough to talk at a reasonable volume. He nods to the partners. “Mr. Lowery, Mrs. Harrington. Mrs. Snyder, hello.”
“Matvei,” I say back. “Lovely to see you.”
To my credit, it comes off with the appropriate aloofness. No way does anyone know I’ve been whispering his name into my pillow for days on end now.
His eyes hold mine. “You look very well.”
“Doesn’t she?” Raymond yanks me an inch closer to his side. “I had to threaten to break her arm to get her into that dress, but here we are. Worth it.”
A horrible little silence settles over the group. No one laughs, but Matvei somehow laughs the least. His eyes roam over Raymond like he’s deciding which limb he’d most like to sever first.
“It’s a very flattering color on her,” he says calmly, putting a merciful end to the tension.
“Isn’t it?” Raymond drains his bourbon and drops it down on the tray of a passing server. “Cassandra, you gonna finish that? Alright, I will.”
Without waiting for my reply, he snatches my cider out of my hand and chugs it.
My face goes ashen.
The result is as bad as I expected. Raymond turns and spits a thin stream of liquid onto the floor next to his feet. “What the fuck is this? Cider?”
Everyone is looking at me expectantly. I swallow hard. “I was, uh, easing into the evening. I haven’t eaten much today.”
My husband looks beyond disgusted. But beyond that surface-level disgust is the same curious gleam I saw when he found the prenatal vitamins, when he walked up to me in the woods at the pheasant hunt.
He knows.
He has to know.
But if he does, he says nothing. “Get me another bourbon,” he orders.
“I’ll go,” Matvei offers, already turning. “Allow me.”
“No, no, no, let her go,” insists Raymond. “She needs the steps. Look at her, she’s getting hippy.”
That’s a lie. I am, in fact, getting more not-hippy by the day, courtesy of the morning sickness that has me parting ways with breakfast on the regular.
But I smile and make my exit. It’s actually fine by me—every second I’m not standing next to Raymond is a second that I’m… well, not standing next to Raymond. Which is nice.
I beeline for the bar.
Behind me, I hear Raymond saying to no one in particular, “You never know, do you? You really never know. Life can change like that. ” And I hear him snap his fingers. Like that.
It can’t mean anything. It’s just Raymond talking.
He does that. Whenever he drinks, the bourbon unlatches a muzzle that, for the sake of the world, would be much better off staying locked.
And then he just goes off. Saying the damndest shit, just for the sheer pleasure of hearing his voice fill the room.
But then he says it again, louder, to Lowery, “I’m just saying, Hank. You never know when it’s all gonna change. One little surprise and boom. Everything you love goes up in smoke.”
I hurry away to a bar out of hearing range of Raymond’s voice, just to buy myself a few minutes away from him.
He’s still going when I get back, though. He takes his double bourbon on the rocks from me without so much as a muttered thanks, then resumes a high-volume story about a deal that fell through in the Nineties and a man who learned the hard way that you don’t try to outsmart Raymond Snyder.
As he blabbers on, I resume my station at his side, with my smile plastered on. Raymond glows pinker the longer he talks. The alcohol is doing its slow and steady work.
But I don’t have any toxins in my bloodstream to calm me down. Not unless you count fear, and it’s not calming anything.
He doesn’t know, I tell myself. He cannot possibly know. The cryptic looks I keep catching are just Raymond being Raymond, fishing for a reaction so he can twist the hook. He fishes like that constantly. He always has.
Besides—even if, by some miracle of his rancid intuition, he does know about the baby or the plot or my relationship to Giana, it isn’t going to matter. Not for much longer.
Because Matvei is here.
Before the night is out, Raymond will be in the ground.
All I have to do is keep smiling until then.
Senator DeMaris reappears at our elbow. Since I last saw him, he has acquired a bridesmaid: a thin redhead in lavender chiffon who is twenty-three if she’s a day.
He’s whispering something in her ear and she’s giggling in a way that makes me want to throw her over my shoulder and carry her out into the street for a well-deserved timeout, followed by a woman-to-woman scolding.
“Ray. Ray, listen to this. Listen.” DeMaris ropes Raymond in with a chummy arm around the shoulder. “Brittany here works for the Brooklyn D.A.’s office. Isn’t that something? Brittany, tell Ray what you told me about that thing…”
The bridesmaid launches into some anecdote, and Raymond is suddenly very interested in her. Brittany’s reciprocal interest in Raymond appears to be at least partially related to the gleaming Patek Philippe on his wrist.
While they’re talking, the senator winks at me over Raymond’s shoulder.
Then, without further ado, he grabs my ass.
I freeze. The senator’s palm is hot and damp through the silk, and beyond repulsive. He’s toying with the lace edge of my underwear. “You holding up okay, sweetheart?” he murmurs in my ear. “These things can be a slog.”
“I’m fine, Senator.” I take a strategic step forward, out from under his hand. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” He’s sure his fingertips graze the curve of my butt as his hand falls. “Anytime at all, Cassandra. I mean that.”
“That’s very kind of?—”
I look up to find Matvei looking at me. To the untrained eye, he looks as calm as ever.
But his knuckles around the glass are white.
I shoot him a microscopic shake of my head. Don’t. Not for this. Not now.
His jaw ticks. The knuckles stay white. But at least he trusts me enough to handle this myself.
Murdering my husband might be beyond my skillset. But dealing with handsy creeps? Like every other woman I know, I’ve been doing that since puberty.
Luckily, my first defensive attempt is enough. A cousin comes swaggering drunkenly over and steals away the senator. To my other side, Raymond and Brittany are canoodling quite closely.
A brief lull in the music allows a snippet of their conversation to float over to me. “You never know, Brit,” he’s telling her, just like he did when I first left to get his refill. “You really, really never know.”
“What don’t I know, Mr. Snyder?” she asks, batting eyelashes thick enough to swat a fly.
“What tomorrow holds.” Raymond swirls his bourbon.
“What the next minute holds. People go around acting like everything’s permanent.
But nothing is.” He shoots me a look across the bridesmaid’s shoulder.
“Nothing’s permanent, sweetheart. Not one thing.
The world turns. People disappear. Trust me. I’ve seen it happen plenty.”
Brittany giggles like he’s just told her she has pretty eyes.
I take a step back. I don’t feel so good. I know the baby can’t be kicking, not yet, but I still feel something going haywire low in my belly.
As the music picks up again, couples start to flock to the dance floor. Is it louder now, or is that just me? Are the lights brighter, or am I imagining it? Are those lilies I smell?
“Excuse me,” I say to no one in particular. “I’m just— Uh, bathroom. Excuse me.”
No one notices me leave.
Well, not no one.
I feel Matvei’s eyes peel off my back as I cross the parquet, but I don’t look at him.
Going faster and faster with every step, I weave through the tipsy crowd at the edge of the dance floor.
A waiter offers me a crab puff and I wave him off.
I duck around a six-foot ice swan and slip through the gap between two enormous floral pillars into the side corridor that leads, according to the gold-leafed placard, to POWDER ROOMS / TELEPHONES.
Thankfully, the corridor is nice and dim after the brightness of the ballroom. The roses give way to wood paneling and oil paintings of long-dead Plaza patrons, and with it comes quiet.
I lift my hand to my face. It’s shaking, but I don’t feel the tremors at all. It’s like the whole thing belongs to a stranger.
Six more hours left in this chapter of your life, I tell myself. Maybe fewer. Hopefully much fewer.
I just have to get through tonight. I have to let Matvei do what he came here to do, and not torpedo it the way I almost torpedoed everything in the woods last weekend. I have to be the wife at the wedding. I have to be the wife at the wedding.
Until I’m not the wife anymore.
Until I’m the widow.
Until I’m just Cass again.
The arm comes out of the dark. It’s around my shoulders before I’ve even processed that there’s an arm there at all—heavy, masculine, the wool of a tuxedo sleeve dragging against my bare skin—and then a second hand clamps over my mouth and I’m yanked sideways, off my feet, through a velvet drape, and into the shadow of a nearby alcove.
A mouth comes to my ear.
“Don’t scream yet, sweetheart. You’ll want to save it for when it counts.”