Page 86 of Boardroom Ties
I’ve always been a good screamer. Since the night I arrived at Mount Sinai and saw what Raymond had done to Giana, I’ve always had air in my lungs to scream.
Giana.
Giana.
Giana, who once drove four hours through a blizzard in a car with no heat to bring me a sheet cake on my twentieth birthday because she didn’t want me to spend it alone in my dorm. Giana, who slipped twenty-dollar bills into my wallet when I wasn’t looking all throughout college. Giana, who was working a job that made bruises bloom along the top of her breasts just so that I wouldn’t have to take out another loan. Giana, who told me,I’m okay. I’m always okay. That’s my thing, remember?Giana, who paid for me, again and again, with her body, with her time, with her sleep, with her dignity, with everything she had—until a man in a hotel room cracked her skull open against a marble bathtub.
Even if this choice costs me Matvei, even if things go wrong and I end up in jail, all I have to do to make that okay is remind myself of the price Giana paid.
She paid with herlife.
This is the least I can do.
I move slowly. There’s no room to screw this up. One shot—literally.
I spread my feet. The shotgun comes up off my forearm and into both my hands as if it has been waiting to do so my whole life. I used to think I’d want to say something cutting and savage right before I did it, but I don’t give a shit about speeches anymore. I just want this shitover with.
I level the barrel at his chest.
Only then does Raymond finally drop his gaze and find me in the underbrush. The parallel lines between his furry brows deepen. The smarmy smile twitches at one corner.Cassandra?, his eyes say, before his mouth can. He has not yet fully understood. His brain has not yet given him permission to understand.
That’s okay. He’ll catch up in another second. When he does, though, it’ll be too late.
I’m sorry, Matvei,I think.
I’m sorry, baby.
I love you, Gi.
The morning is very quiet around me, except for a single crow overhead, calling once against the sky.
I curl my finger around the trigger.
28
MAT
FIFTEEN MINUTES EARLIER
The wind cuts under the collar no matter how high I turn it up. I shrug my coat tighter and snarl at myself yet again to stop looking for her.
Do I do it anyway?
Of course I fucking do. I’m attuned to her. She’s my magnetic north, and no matter how hard I try to resist the temptation, I can’t help but seek her out.
There she is. A flash of red coat through the birches, two flagged positions down the line. A bobble hat. Mittens. A shotgun she has no business holding.
I wrench my gaze away and slap myself across the face for good measure. One hard crack in each direction.
Get your shit together, son,I hear my uncle’s voice bark in my head.Now is no time to lose yourself in fantasy.
Because that’s what thoughts of Cassandra are: pure fucking delusion. No matter how bad I want her, I cannot have her. She is a scapegoat, nothing more. It’s kind of fitting that the knockeron her hotel door is a ram. Or is that a sheep? Fuck it, I don’t know. I’m here to kill Raymond and pheasants, in that order. Everything else is irrelevant.
So I look at the trees, instead. The birches. The grey sky where the sun is trying, half-heartedly, to struggle above the horizon. I count crows when I see them. There’s an old rhyme my father used to mutter when he saw them gathering on the power lines of Brighton Beach.
One for sorrow
Two for joy
