Page 103 of Masked Don

“Now we’re talking,” he says.

My hand moves before I tell it to. The slap cracks across his face loud enough to echo off the rafters.

The warehouse goes still.

Luca touches his cheek. Then the back of his hand comes across my face so fast I never see it, and my head snaps sideways, and I taste copper. Matthew screams.

“Hey.” A woman’s voice, bright and bored, from the dark at the edge of the floor. “Luca, baby. Don’t mark her up before the show. It looks desperate.”

Genevieve Accardi walks into the light in a black dress and heels, like she’s arriving at a party.

My heart stops.

“Gen.” Something in Luca’s face loosens, pleased and possessive. “You came.”

“You said there’d be a show.” She doesn’t look at me. She steps right past me and lets him pull her in by the waist and kiss her, and I want to be sick. “And I wanted to see my brother’s face.”

I stare at her, and all of it lines up at once. The cabin. The garage. Somebody always talks.

“You,” I say.

Her eyes finally slide to me. Flat. Nothing in them.

“Me,” she says.

Luca laughs, delighted. “See? Everybody in that family sells everybody else, sooner or later. It’s practically tradition.” He nods toward the rusted glass office at the side of the floor. “Make yourself useful, Gen. Take the kid in there and keep him quiet. I don’t want him screaming over the good part.”

“No.” I wrap myself around Matthew. “No, you’re not taking him…”

Gen crouches in front of me. Up close, her face is calm as glass, and her hands, reaching for my son, are shaking so hard I can see it.

She leans in to lift him, and for one second her mouth is beside my ear.

“When it starts, I lock the door,” she breathes. “Trust me or don’t. Just let him come.”

Then she’s standing, with Matthew on her hip and the rabbit crushed between them, and she walks him into the office and shuts the door. Through the dirty glass I watch her set him on the desk and crouch in front of him and say something that makes him, impossibly, nod.

I don’t know whether to trust her. I don’t have a choice.

The door at the far end of the warehouse opens.

Every gun in the room comes up and swings toward the sound.

Enzo walks in.

He doesn’t hurry. His hands hang empty at his sides, the left one stiffer than the right, the sling gone. He’s wearing a black suit and no tie, and he walks the length of that cold, rotten room like it’s the hallway of his own house. He looks at the guns. He looks at the cameras. He looks at Luca.

Then he looks at me, at my split lip, and something happens to his face that I have never seen happen to it. Not once. Not even on the night he found the suitcase.

Behind him, the doorway is empty. Nothing but dark.

He came alone. Just like Luca told him to.

Luca starts to laugh.

“Look at that. The great Enzo Accardi, right on time, empty-handed.” He taps the laptop, and the little boxes of old men lean toward their screens. “Say hi to the elders, Enzo. They’ve been waiting.”

CHAPTER 41