Page 137 of Boardroom Ties
Before I’m finished with all the build-up, the prologue to this fucking shitshow, Afon is grimacing. “Bozhe moy.”
“Yeah.”
“So she’s pregnant.Tvoy?”
“Yeah,” I say again. “It’s mine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Bozhe moy,” he repeats. “Alright. Keep going.”
So I do, everything up through what happened last night. When I get to the part about Raymond being dead before I walked in, Afon grunts. Then he pulls over.
“What’re you doing?” I ask in alarm.
My uncle wouldn’t kill me for my failure to handle Raymond properly, would he? Lukas wouldn’t order my death, would he? Would they?
No. Surely not.
Unless…
“Relax, nephew. I’m pulling over,” he explains, “because you look like you’re going to be sick, and if you throw up in my car, then I really will fucking murder you.”
He’s right—I’m pale and shivering. He’s got the heat blasting, hotter than the vents of hell, and sweat is beading up on my forehead. As he slows down, I press my face against the cool glass and let it reorient me.
He steers into a service lane just past the bridge, on a stretch of cracked asphalt under a graffitied overpass, and throws it in park. Then he waits.
After a while, I sit back up and look at him. “It was Vainakh,” I say. “It was Vainakh who killed Raymond.”
He sucks his teeth. “I know that, Matvei. Why do you think I bailed you out?” He undoes the clasp of his watch and rubs at the skin underneath. “We didn’t kill Raymond Snyder. Someone beat us to him, someone good. This is not the work of amateurs in a back alley. That can mean only one of two things: Either there is someone we don’t know about who wants Vainakh territory for themselves...”
“Or it’s Vainakh,” I conclude, “cleaning their own house.”
He nods.
I switch the jail envelope from one hand to the other. Inside, the sonogram crinkles, the smallest sound.
“So I was right,” I conclude, remembering the day I laid out my theory to Afon at Café Volna. “Raymond wasn’t the head; he was the face. And when he saw how much money was coming through, he got greedy. He was robbing the Syndicate blind. Bill must’ve known it, and that’s why Raymond had him killed. Susan, too. They were calling him in to that meeting in the Caymans with no intention of letting him leave. He would’ve weaseled his way out, left Cassandra behind as collateral, and then disappeared for good, letting them keep her to do with as they pleased.”
Afon takes all that in with a straight face. “Does it feel good?” he asks. “Being right?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be right. I want her out. And I want them dead.”
That earns me a withering scowl. “Oh, yeah?” he asks sarcastically. “Do you? Here’s a question for you, nephew: Who the fuck isthey?Do you know wheretheyare? Do you know whattheylook like? Do you even know iftheyhave a name?”
When he sees I’ve been silenced, he nods with grim satisfaction. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.Bozhe moy,you’re just like your father sometimes. All action, no forethought.”
Maybe I’m like my father, maybe not. I wasn’t yet a man when I lost him, so there’s no telling for certain what his impact on me would’ve been if he’d survived. All I know is that there’s afire burning me up inside, and every second I spend here while Cass rots in a jail cell, framed bymyown choices and oversights, is a second of divine fucking vengeance delivered to me and me alone.
Which is pretty fucking funny, when you think about it. I got everything I wanted. Raymond is dead, I’m free, and Cass is taking all the heat.
But it doesn’t feel funny. Not one bit.
“If you say so,” I tell him coldly. “But I won’t sit idly by. These motherfuckers, whoever they are, have been watching me. The whole shit was choreographed, down to the timing of the police call. They framed the framer. I was the punchline to a joke I didn’t even know was being told.”
He nods. “At least you understand that much.”
