Page 60 of Boardroom Ties
18
CASS
In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have done it quite like this.
But the whole night has been a slow drip of poison, and somewhere between the fish course and Raymond’s fourth bourbon, I just… overflowed.
I sat there in this scratchy black silk, smiling at Bill’s wife while she yammered about her grandkids, and every time Raymond’s hand twitched toward me, I went a little colder inside. Then he called me a “coat hanger.” What a charmer. Matvei’s hand on his glass went so white at the knuckles I thought the crystal might shatter.
That’s when I started shaking.
With shame, anger, fear—you name it, I felt it. I couldn’t stop thinking, over and over again, that we were right at the finish line.
In fifteen minutes, my husband will be dead.
We’re so close, Gi.
I’m sorry it took this long, but we’re so close now.
By the time Raymond stood up to excuse himself to the restroom, the hope and the dread had braided together so tight in my chest I genuinely thought I might be sick on Bill Oglethorpe’s loafers.
What I’m struggling to make sense of is Matvei himself. He explained to me why he was doing this; he and/or his shadowy bosses have their own reasons for wanting Raymond six feet under. But that’s something else I can’t stop thinking: It feels like there’s more to it.
Why is he doing thisfor me?
He doesn’t owe me a damn thing. We’ve known each other for what, not even two months? Half of that I spent pretending he didn’t exist.
He, on the other hand, has literally taken a knife in the ribs on my behalf. He could’ve walked away after the alley and called it square and no one in the world could blame him.
Instead, he keeps showing up.
There’s something about the way he moves through the world that makes me want to crawl inside his coat pocket and live there. He’s notcarefulwith himself, exactly. He’s justcertain. Sure of his hands, sure of his aim, sure of where the exits are.
Men like Raymond bluster and bullshit.
Men like Matvei simplydo.
And maybe that’s the part I’m not supposed to admit out loud, even to myself: I like it. I like that he’s dangerous. I like that the same hands that cleaned blood off my knee will put a bulletin my husband tonight without flinching. I like knowing that, whatever kind of weapon Matvei is, he’s pointed at my enemy now.
Good girls don’t fall for monsters.
Lucky for me, I gave up being a good girl a long time ago.
The only downside is giving up the satisfaction of being the one to do it. The vengeful sister in me, the Mama Bear, wants to be the one pulling the trigger. I went to Khaza in the first place for a reason. Giana deserves my finger on the metal. Not someone else’s.
But the rest of me is overwhelmed with gratitude. Killing is not an easy thing. But Matvei? He’s going to carry that for me. On top of every other thing he’s done without asking what he gets in return.
And he doesn’t even know about the baby.
So maybe that’s why I grabbed him. It wasn’t fair to let himdoon my behalf, again and again, without showing him the full picture. He deserves to know, and it fell to me to inform him.
Again, though: My timing is probably less than ideal.
Matvei has gone perfectly still in front of me. His hand is frozen halfway to the small of his back, lips barely parted. I need him to move. Let’s take a quick timeout here and break out of operator mode, so I can put a thumb in his chest and say,Hey. Hey. Look at me. There are two of us now. You have to come back from wherever you go when you do what you do. Because I need you to. Becauseweneed you to.
Then he blinks. Just once. It’s the only part of him that moves.
“Mat. Hi. Hello. Are you with me?”
