Page 44 of Boardroom Ties
“Anywhere that isn’t here. Now.”
Matvei finds a corridor off the ballroom, past the coat check and down a narrow service hall, and opens a door onto what appears to be a storage room for extra banquet chairs.
He steps in and I follow. Then he shuts the door and leans his back against it.
He doesn’t seem interested in talking right away. I decide we’d better not ignore the elephant in the, er, closet. “You didn’t think to mention this key detail at any point during our previous conversations?”
“I didn’t know who he was to you,” he replies. “You wouldn’t give me a name, remember?”
In fact, I do remember. I also remember exactlywhyI wouldn’t give him a name.
And I remember, with sickening clarity, what Matvei promised he’d do if I did.
Once you tell me, I’m going to hurt them.
I’m going to hurt them very badly.
“Oh, God.” I sit down hard on one of the stacked banquet chairs. “Oh, Great God Almighty.”
“Breathe.” He crouches in front of me, but he keeps his hands to himself. He knows better than to touch me right now, which is one of the thousand infuriating things about him: that he knows exactly when to and exactly when not to, with a precision thatRaymond has never once come within a country fucking mile of in the four agonizing years of our marriage.
“Look at me.”
Reluctantly, I do.
“The job you tried to hire for at the bar on the night we met. Tell me now and tell me plainly. Who was it?”
I almost laugh. Because here we are. Here we finally are, months later, in a coat closet off a New Year’s gala, and the question I wouldn’t answer in an alley or a hospital bed is about to come out of my mouth anyway, whether I want it to or not.
“Raymond,” I whisper. “It was Raymond.”
He closes his eyes. Just for a second. “Yeah,” he says. “I figured.”
“You figured?”
“I put it together about ten seconds after my uncle put a folder on my desk last month.”
“After yourwhoput awhat?—”
“Shh. Lower your voice.” He opens his eyes. They are the color of a gas flame right before it turns white. “The Bratva—my people—want him dead,” he explains quietly. “My uncle dropped the assignment in my lap three weeks ago. Raymond runs an outfit that’s been muscling into our territory. I’m supposed to be the one who puts him down.”
I hear myself make a strange, strangled, highly concerning little squeak. “You’re kidding.”
“For many reasons, I wish I was. But I’m not.”
“You are telling me that you, the man I tried to hire to kill my husband, alsoworkfor my husband, and your Russian mob bosses have also decided tokillmy husband, andyouare the one they picked to do it. Am I summarizing the situation correctly?”
“Impressively concise.”
I put my face in my hands. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mutter into my palms. “Is there a hidden camera? Is someone going to jump out with a microphone? Is this a bit?”
“Unfortunately not.”
I drag my hands down my face, careful not to smudge my mascara, and look up at him. “Okay,” I say. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Let me think.”
He nods.
So I think.
