Epilogue Cass
The sheets are wrong.
I mean that in the best possible way. Gone are the eight-hundred-thread-count, ice-cold, custom-monogrammed RWS sheets that I’ve spent the last four years entombing myself in, night after night. What I wake up in now is better in every way.
They smell right, for starters. Cedar and rain at night, a faint hint of cigarette smoke, and that tantalizing fire-incarnate that I’ve never been able to properly name.
Another thing that’s different: the ceiling. In Raymond’s apartment, the ceiling was tray-ceilinged with elaborate, hand-carved crown molding, lit by a chandelier I had to dust with a special microfiber wand.
The ceiling in Matvei’s apartment, by contrast, is flat, white, and smooth, broken up only by a single recessed light and the iron beam that runs the width of the loft like a dark spine.
This has become my happy place. No more late nights staring up and wondering where it all went south. It’s cozy and comforting. It’s home.
The only thing I dislike when I wake up today is that I’m alone in bed.
I have a vague, blurry memory of Mat kissing me on the forehead before he slipped out of the penthouse.
Since everything that happened with DeMaris at the detention center, he’s been spending every day from dawn until dusk cooped up in a conference room at Lazarev Global with Lukas, Kir, and a phalanx of LG’s finest lawyers.
They’re waging war on many fronts: legal, PR, and of course, eradicating the Vainakh Syndicate’s footprint from all of the Lazarev Bratva’s territories.
I pout out my lip. I want to be there with them, but Matvei expressly warned me that, if I tried to follow him in, he’d tie me to the bed.
You’re growing a human, he’d chided. That’s all the work you need to be doing right now.
So here I am, alone. Untied as of now, but you never know when I might get a defiant itch and go pound on the door of that conference room until the men let me in.
Sighing, I roll over onto my side and reach out to touch the lingering warmth and indent where Matvei slept. I drag his pillow over my face like I’m smothering myself and take a deep, greedy inhale.
Ahhh. I don’t think that will ever get old.
I could stay here for a while, but I’ve started doing a yoga routine first thing in the morning, which my blossoming little blueberry—who has actually graduated to strawberry status by now; yay for summer fruits and on-target fetal development—seems to appreciate.
So I roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and make myself half-decent by pulling on one of Mat’s t-shirts.
Out in the living room, I turn on the TV. Mat disapproves, but he can’t keep me completely hidden from the world. I like to know things, too. The news fires up with pretty much exactly what I expected it to say:
SENATOR DEMARIS RESIGNS AMID WIDENING FEDERAL PROBE
Below that, in smaller text: Senator Cites “Health Concerns” — Justice Department Confirms Grand Jury Convened.
It scrolls past, replaced by a B-roll of the Senator’s last press conference, in which the makeup couldn’t quite cover the bruise on his cheekbone where Afon had slapped him into the next millennium.
He’d stood at a podium in his I Respect The Laws and Institutions of This Country Very Much outfit, which consists of the same bland blue suit and red tie that every politician since John Adams has worn when they want to court the centrist vote.
He made some grand, vague overtures about “strain on his family” and “the privacy of his daughters,” the “necessity of letting the investigative process play out without political distraction.”
Unsurprisingly, he was way too much of a coward to take any questions from the press. That’s a pity—Jillian was in the front row and ready to tear his freaking head off.
But whether DeMaris wants to hear them or not, the questions are being asked. Every reporter worth their salt is sinking their teeth into the meat of this case. Bill Oglethorpe’s ledger has been torn apart and led to a dozen other arrests, inquiries, indictments, and such already.
The Vainakh infestation was foul and far-reaching, but thanks to the Lazarevs and their friends, it’s quickly being obliterated.
Good riddance, in my opinion.
The chyron flips. SNYDER MURDER CHARGES DISMISSED — D.A. CITES “MATERIALLY ALTERED EVIDENTIARY LANDSCAPE.”
That one makes me almost as happy. From the start of this whole thing five years ago, I never cared much what happened to me. If I got hurt or killed or jailed in the process of avenging Giana, well, that’s just the cost of doing murdery business.
But it’s not just myself I have to live for anymore. I’ve got others who care. One whom I carry around with me all the time, and the other who would carry me around all the time if I’d let him.
Regardless, the takeaway is simple: Mat and I are free now.
Maybe some of the authorities—Detective Kramer comes to mind—suspect that we were involved in some nefarious shit.
They’re correct about that. But the optics of nabbing a sitting congressman with obvious criminal ties are way more palatable than going after an abused wife and the man who dared to love her.
We’re free. Free. Free as freaking birds.
I like saying that word until it loses all meaning, because then when I think it again, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time.
Free.
6 Weeks Later
The Mercedes rolls up to the wrought-iron gates of Green-Wood Cemetery a few minutes before ten in the morning. Mat puts the car in park without saying anything. He just looks at me, his hand on the gearshift, waiting.
“You don’t have to come in,” I tell him. “I mean, I want you to. Eventually. But not yet. Not today.”
“That’s okay, Cass. I’ll always be waiting where you need me.”
He shows absolutely no signs of being offended or put-out, which I appreciate more than I could ever say out loud.
Mat has a way of letting me lead in the moments that matter. That’s something I am still getting used to. After four years of being shoved through doorways by Raymond, I’m now with a man who waits patiently at the threshold with his hands in his pockets, asking, Where to next?
You’ll have to forgive a girl for needing a little time to adjust.
I look out the windshield. The path past the gates curves up a small hill, lined with maples just barely starting to put out their tiny, fist-clenched leaves. Up there and to the left, in a plot in the shade of the grove, is a piece of granite with my sister’s name on it.
“I left flowers in the back,” Mat says. “Peonies. The pink ones. Is that right?”
“Coral charm,” I correct. “They were her favorite. How did you know?”
He gives me a small, lopsided smile. “Because I listen when you speak.”
Oh, jeez. I’m going to cry before I even get out of the car at this rate. I take a deep breath, then another, and lean over the center console to kiss him.
“I’ll be back,” I tell him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“ Dikarka, ” he says as his palm comes up to cup my jaw tenderly, “I’m not going anywhere. Ever. Take your time.”
I get out before I lose my nerve and/or underwear. I retrieve the peonies from the trunk, then walk away, knowing the whole time that Matvei’s eyes are on me.
Watching.
Loving.
As blue and pure as the sky is wide.
The path up the hill is steeper than I remembered, or maybe I’m just out of practice on hills. I suppose that’s my fault; I haven’t had much of an appetite for getting back to my Pilates classes. I tell myself that Matvei and I are getting plenty of cardio of the horizontal variety, anyway.
Or I could do what I always do, which is blame the baby. For a juicy little lemon, she sure has a gift for making her presence known by tweaking various ligaments and stealing my breath at inconvenient moments.
I stop halfway up, hand on a maple trunk, and breathe.
Could you take it easy on me? I think down at my belly. We’re going to go visit Aunt Gi. I’d like to have some air in my lungs when we get there.
I get a wave of nausea in response. Well, at least there are open lines of communication between us.
It takes me a minute to find her. But then I round the corner and there she is. Section 119. A simple granite marker, rose-gray.
GIANA LORELAI MADDEN
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER
1989 — 2021
It’s simple. Maybe too simple? Looking at it now, though, I think Gi would’ve liked the plainness of it.
She always thought epitaphs were tacky. If they have to spell out on a rock that you were a good person, you probably weren’t, she said once at our grandmother’s funeral.
Mom had hissed at her to shush, and I’d laughed into my sleeve for ten solid minutes.
I lower myself down onto the grass in front of the stone. It’s been a warm April, but the ground is still cold through my jeans, even though the sun is doing its best.
I lay the peonies along the base. The coral catches the light and seems to glow, pink and perfect.
“Hi, Gi.”
The wind moves a little in the maples above me. At the bottom of the hill, a groundskeeper’s mower whirs to life.
“I, um...” I rub the heel of my hand in my eye, suddenly tired for no reason at all. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you in a little while. Things have been busy, to say the least. There’s a lot to catch you up on.”
I dig my fingers into the grass on either side of me.
“I got him, though.” I let out a wet laugh. “Can you believe that? I got him. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger in the end, which I know is a little embarrassing for the home team. But hey, a win’s a win, and we won. He’s gone, Gi. Raymond is gone. ”
I pause and reminisce. I’ll never forget the joy I felt when that sleeping pill dragged me under, and then the confused terror I felt when I was woken up by the SWAT team.
The highs and lows of murder plots by amateurs, I suppose. This was always destined to be a bumpy ride.