Page 107 of Boardroom Ties
He lets out a weary exhale as he leans against the doorjamb. “Yes. Well.” He pulls the tie off his forearm and lifts it to his collar. He starts knotting it without a mirror. “The show must go on.” As he tosses the silk length around, he keeps talking. “I know you’re probably wondering where I’ve been, and I hope you can understand that I’m trying to keep things separate. There are things on my plate this week that I cannot bring home with me. Do you understand what I mean?”
I think of all the things Matvei has either said or implied about Raymond and I shiver. “Sure, of course.”
“Good.” He finishes the knot, fidgets with it, then turns to face me. “I want you to know I appreciate you, Cassandra.”
Put a fork in me, because I am done. We have entered the realm of the unreal.
“I mean it,” he insists. “I haven’t been an easy man to be married to lately. I know that. The pressure of— Well. You don’t need the details. But I see you. I see what you carry.”
I see you, dikarka,says another voice in my head, in another accent, and my throat closes up tight.
Then I freeze as a second meaning to his words sinks in.I see what you carry.Does he mean…? Could he possibly…?
No. He doesn’t know about the baby. He bought my lie about the prenatal vitamins and there’s no way he’s unearthed any other information. I’m just being paranoid. It’s okay, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything istotally fucking fine.
“Thank you,” I say awkwardly, just to fill in the gaps.
He nods crisply. Then he turns toward the bedroom. “I need a little while to prepare. The car is downstairs already. The driver knows where to go.”
“You want me to wait for you?”
“No.” He pauses with his back to me. His hand finds the doorframe. His knuckles are very white against the white paint, the only place on him that gives him away. “Go ahead without me. I’ll meet you there.”
“Raymond—”
He turns just his head, looks at me over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth lifts, not in a smile but more of a pained grimace.
“You know, Cassandra,” he says, “I’ve been thinking. People underestimate how much of a marriage is justwitnessing.Watching what the other one does and what the other onedoesn’tdo.” He raps the doorframe once, lightly, with his ring. “I think I’ve underestimated you. For a long time.”
I’m speechless.
“Anyway. Go on,” he says. “I’ll see you there in a little while. Let’s give Bill the send-off he deserves, yeah?”
With that, he disappears down the hall.
33
MAT
My mind has been full of Cass all week long. Ever since I dropped her off in front of her penthouse, I felt like I was fucking abandoning her. That’s an absurd thought—it’s not as if I could just drag her back into the car and whisk her away with me for good.
Unless…
Unless I justdid.
What if? What if I drove us straight to JFK, abandoned the car in the parking garage, and put us on a flight to anywhere. Lisbon, Buenos Aires, some dusty corner of Croatia where no one would think to look—I don’t give a damn. We’ll leave all this shit behind. I’ll keep a gun buried beneath the floorboards of whatever love nest we find to call our own, because you can only outrun your past so far, but besides that, it’ll be a fresh start.
Her face will never be bruised again.
I’ve played out the fantasy a hundred times this week. It’s gotten more vivid each time. I can see the kitchen window. I can seeher standing in the sun pouring through the glass, belly rounded out, smiling at me like an angel.
It’s an unforgivable thing, for a man like me to want a thing like that.
I didn’t know I was capable of it. I’ve always thought the wanting parts of me had been cauterized at fifteen, when Afon dragged me bleeding out of an alley and my father wasn’t dragged out at all. I made myself into a man who didn’t need shit.
Suits. Whiskey. Women I forgot by morning. That’s all it took to sustain me.
Then a wild filly walked into Khaza and everything got flipped upside down.
