Page 173 of Cashmere Ruin

What happened?I want to ask again.What forced you to do this? What made you think you had no choice?

Why didn’t you justtalkto us?

I try to reach for him through the bars, but he slips away in an instant.

“I take it you haven’t told her?” Carmine inquires.

“Told me what?”

“Shut up,” Yuri seethes, but not at me. “There’s nothing to tell. She has nothing to do with it. There’s no need to involve her.”

“I’d say she’s already involved,” Carmine counters with a shrug and a pointed look at my cage. “But sure. Whatever you want.”

“Would everyone please stop talking as if I’m not here?” I snap.

That seems to amuse Carmine. “I love nothing more than a dramatic reveal, Ms. Flowers, but I’m afraid this isn’t my story to tell.”

Then they start walking away.

“Wait!” I yell. “Where are you taking her?! Give me back my daughter!” I start rattling my bars again. “May! MAY!”

“April, ENOUGH!” Yuri yells back. “Seriously, just… stop. This isn’t helping anyone.”

“How can you ask me that?” I croak. “How can you ask me to just give her up like this?”

“I’m not,” he says. “But until this is over, you need to trust me.”

“I did trust you. And look where that got me.”

Pain flashes across Yuri’s face. Agony, deep and raw and true. “I’m sorry,” he says, and for the first time, I believe him. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

Then he’s turning away again, walking back into the dark tunnel at Carmine’s heel.

“Wait!” I call after him. “Whatever he said to you, whatever he promised you—he’s lying! He’s a liar, Yuri! He may be your father, but he’s?—”

“Oh, will you just shut the fuck up, youshlyukha?”

If he hadn’t spoken, I never would’ve seen him. A third man, hiding in the shadows behind them. Neither Yuri nor Carmine seems surprised by his presence, probably because he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

The second I recognize him, my eyes go wide. “You…!”

52

MATVEY

Meet me here.

“Fucking finally,” I mutter under my breath.So my brother isn’t dead after all.

My eyes scan the location attached to Yuri’s unusually cryptic text: a café in the smack-middle of Times Square. “What the hell is he thinking?”

I start to type a reply, but another text from him comes right after.

It’s important.

Goddammit.“Grisha, change of plans. We’re stopping here first.”

He cranes his neck at the first red light and squints at my phone. “Busy place to be. Probably won’t be able to find parking.”

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