Page 157 of Boardroom Ties
“I really wasn’t asking,plemyannik.”
“And I’m really not?—”
“Matvei Gervasievich.”
That, of all things, stops me cold. Afon hasn’t used my patronymic, my father’s name nested inside my own, since I was a boy. Not since the night he hauled me out of that alley with my father’s blood on the front of his shirt and showed me how to wash my hands in a puddle.
I look him in the face for the first time in a long time. Up close, I can see the gray in his stubble, the broken capillaries at the corners of his eyes, the deep line that’s been carved between his brows for fifteen years. The toll that time, grief, and hard work has taken on him. Thepricehe’s paid.
“You listen to me,” he growls, low. “You think I did the things I’ve done for the last decade and a half just to waltz off into the sunset when my kin needs me? You thinkthatis what I bought with my service to thepakhan?”
“Uncle—”
“I’m not finished yet.” He grabs me by the wrist hard, a reminder of what his scarred hands are capable of. “I gave Gervasii myword that I would protect you, and I have kept that promise for fifteen years. I am not breaking it today. Where you go, I go.Konyets.”
His eyes are damp. I have never, in my entire life, seen Afon Satyrin cry.
I swallow and nod. There’s nothing to say.
He releases me, smooths my lapels down, and pats me once on the shoulder. Then he strides past me out the door.
Over his shoulder, in his normal voice as if nothing ever happened, he says, “And give me the keys. You’ve never been able to drive for shit.”
50
CASS
“It won’t all be bad, you know,” says DeMaris, with another beaming smile like he really does believe that that’s an awfully kind form of reassurance. “You have several options, and some of them are downright pleasant.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” I snap. “I was so worried that this was going to end badly for me.”
He laughs softly. He laughs at almost everything I say, I’m noticing. It feels like a very well-rehearsed act. I’m sure some voters find it charming.
I, however, find myself wanting to staple his mouth closed.
But the geometry of the room is really against me getting close enough to do that. It’s also set against me getting as far away from him as I’d like to. The door at my back is locked, the window is barred, and all the furniture is bolted to the floor so it can’t be weaponized. I’m “stuck up piss creek without a paddle,” as Giana used to say.
“Are you sure you won’t sit?” he presses.
“I think I’m just fine where I am.” I inch back into the corner just to be sure.
“Very well then. Have it your way, honey.” He uncrosses his ankle and recrosses the other one over it. “Standing’s fine. You’ve certainly got the legs for it.”
God,he is gross. I’d forgotten, in the day-and-a-half since I last had to be near a man like this, just how gross they are. The cologne. The piggy little eyes doing that constant inventory of all my female bits and pieces. The pet names.Sweetheart.Honey.
All of it greased with the unshakable confidence that whatever room he’s in ishis.
“Can you just get on with whatever you came here to do?” I ask.
“You’re quite right. Let’s not waste each other’s time,” he agrees. “I’m a busy man, and you’ve got… well, laundry to fold. So here’s what’s going to happen, Cassandra. You’re going to plead guilty to murder in the second degree. My people will arrange a deal with the district attorney’s office by the end of the week—I have some friends over there, you might be surprised to learn—and you’ll do fifteen years upstate. With good behavior, you’ll see daylight at thirty-eight. Forty, tops. I daresay that’s plenty of time to find yourself a nice, relaxing hobby to make the years pass by that much faster. Pottery, maybe. Bird-watching.”
He’s got this pleasant, banal drone in his voice that reminds me of a waiter at a fine dining restaurant.
The veal is lovely.
The wine is French.
The fifteen-year prison sentence comes highly recommended.
