Page 123 of Boardroom Ties
I stare at him in slack-jawed disbelief. It’s so strange and surreal that this beautiful, terrifying man is sitting on my husband’s silk rug, in my husband’s penthouse, telling me he’d trade his life for mine without blinking.
“You can’t say things like that,” I murmur at last.
“Why not?”
“Because nobody says things like that to me. And I’m silly enough to believe you, because you look like you mean what you say. So, if you say things like that to me, I’m going to startbelievingthem, and then where will we be?”
“Free, I hope.” He brushes a strand of hair off my cheek with one knuckle. “Eventually.”
Free.That word is a coin dropped into a wishing well. I close my eyes and try to picture it. Some far-off room with sun in it. A baby on a hip that isn’t bruised.
“Stay with me tonight,” I hear myself whisper. “Just until morning. He won’t be back.” I open my eyes. “Please. Just one night.”
I drag my thumb along his knuckles. There’s a faint scrape at the base of one—senatorial in origin, I’m guessing. It’s already scabbing.
We sit in front of the fire for a while, not saying much. I’m dying to know what he’s thinking, but Matvei’s face shows no signs, no hints. He’s beautiful and remote there in the fire, his blue irises dancing with reflected gold flames.
He doesn’t try to touch me, and he doesn’t try to fix the growing dread in my chest with another speech. He just sits beside me, his shoulder warm against mine, and lets me marinate in his presence until the dread peaks and then starts, slowly, to feel a few sizes smaller.
After a while, he speaks. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“That’smyline.”
“I’m borrowing it.”
I think for a moment, lips pursed. “Okay. When I was nine, I tried to dye my hair with Kool-Aid. Cherry. Giana caught me with the packet open over the bathroom sink and laughed so hard she almost puked. Then she went out and bought me real dye from Sally Beauty, and we did it together.”
“Your sister sounds wonderful.”
“She was the best.” I swallow. “Now, your turn.”
It takes him a second to gather his thoughts. “When I was six, my father took me to a man’s apartment for what he said was a business meeting. He told me to wait in the hall. I waited four hours, sitting on the floor outside the door. When he came out, his knuckles were bloody. We stopped on the way home and he bought me a stuffed rabbit.”
My throat closes up. “Do you still have it?”
“No,” he says. “I burned it after he died.”
“Why?”
“Because it was a lie.” He looks at me, very calm. “I didn’t want any of those kinds of lies in my life anymore.”
I look around and think about how full my life has become of lies. Lies multiply when you’re not looking—like rabbits, funnily enough. One leads to another, leads to another. Giana lied to me about what she was doing for money, and Raymond lied to the police about how she died, and I lied to Raymond about who I was, and on and on.
Now, my life is just muddy with lies everywhere I look.
Yellow tulips on the counter—lies.
This ring on my finger—an ugly, ugly lie.
“Matvei,” I say slowly. “I don’t want any of those kinds of lies in my life anymore, either.”
My gaze falls to my left hand lying in my lap. Matvei follows it, sees what I’m looking at. Then he reaches over and plucks my hand up.
He brings it up between us, palm down.
The ring catches the firelight. It’s particularly grotesque tonight, as if all the nastiness of these four years have made it fester and grow like a tumor. A fat, monstrous ring chosen by a man who wanted to advertise his ownership of me to the world.
Matvei looks at it for a long moment. Then he looks at me.
