Page 14 of Cashmere Ruin

Me, destroy Matvey?

I’d sooner destroy myself.

But I don’t tell him that. This time, I have to be smart.

“Go on,” I say.

“He has your ear,” Carmine continues. “Right now, he’s only angry with you because he thinks you left voluntarily. What if we spun him a tale?”

As he speaks, I start looking around the room for something to fight with. A weapon, a toothpick, anything. The more I see of this place, the more it looks exactly like the cabin serial killers use to turn lost hikers into hamburgers. Slightly less than reassuring.

“What kind of tale?” I ask, pretending to consider his offer.

“A beautiful tale.” Carmine grins. “A tale of love and loss. You didn’t leave that hospital on your own, you see—you were taken. Once he welcomes you back, all you’ll have to do is keep me informed: what he does, who he sees, where he goes.”

“Mm. And who’s the villain of this story?”

“Yours truly, of course.”

The room really is chock-full of trinkets. Antique teacups, tribal masks, glass animals: everything you’d find in an old couple’s home, right next to the postcards from Normandy.

But nothing you could stab a man with.

It’s strange: before today, I never seriously considered killing anyone. The mere thought would have made me sick to my stomach.

But with my baby in his arms, it’s all I can feel: the urge to fuckingmaim. I’d gut him like a fish to stop him from harming so much as a hair on my daughter’s head.

“He’d never buy it,” I say, starting to pace around the room for better access to other potential weapons. “I didn’t do this alone, you know. If my partner decided to talk…”

A sculpted elephant, a Moai statuette, a tiny glass fish…

“What, that blond delivery boy of yours?” Carmine laughs. “He won’t talk. And even if he did, there are ways to keep people silent.”

Crap.Did I just accidentally put out a hit on Yuri? “You seem awfully confident.”

“Let’s just say Yuri’s no stranger to me, either.”

That gives me pause. Someone who knows both Matvey and Yuri; someone I’ve never heard them mention by name, but who seems to be intimately acquainted with them. Enough to act condescending about them.

A Latvian fishscale vase, a Bastet paperweight, a queen bobblehead…

“I don’t want him hurt. He’s been kind to me.”

“I have no beef with the little one,” Carmine assures me. “Only the big boss.”

There.

A stylographic pen, antique. And a really sharp one at that. “Just him? You won’t hurt anybody else? Not even the wife?”

“Would you like me to hurt the wife?”

The mere thought sends a chill down my spine. I may despise Petra with all my heart right now, but homicide still feels a bit much. “No. She’s pregnant.”

“Then let’s hope it’s a girl.”

I shudder so hard I nearly drop the pen. That cheerful voice, spewing such bloodcurdling threats—it’s almost too much.

He doesn’t just want to kill Matvey—he wants to end him. Wants to sever his line by any means necessary.

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