Page 106 of Masked Don

“Does anyone,” I ask, “have a question about who holds my father’s chair?”

Nobody does.

CHAPTER 42

STEVIE

Outside, the cold hits me like a slap, clean after the rot of the warehouse.

Floodlights. Black cars. A long line of men on their knees along the fence, Luca’s drivers and lookouts, the few he didn’t hire from Vasari, hands behind their heads while Vasari’s people stand over them. Across the black water of the creek, the Manhattan skyline glitters like nothing happened here at all.

Matthew lifts his head off my shoulder.

“Mama, what was that bang? Gen held my ears.”

“Nothing, bub.” I kiss his hair. My voice is steady. My hands are steady. I didn’t know they could be. “Just a door closing.”

Standing in the floodlights with my son in my arms, I realize it’s the truth.

Ten minutes ago, I killed a man. I keep waiting to feel it.

I keep checking myself for it, the way you check a pocket for keys. Guilt. Horror. Anything.

What I find instead is his face in the last second. Not afraid of me. Surprised. Like after two years of telling me what I was, he finally saw something he hadn’t counted on.

My hands are steady because there’s nothing left for them to shake about. He’s never going to stand in a doorway again. Matthew is never going to see his face again.

It’ll come later, I think. Some night at three in the morning, it will find me, and I’ll let it. But not tonight. Tonight, I’m holding my son.

Beside me, Genevieve lets out a breath like she’s been holding it since the cabin. Her hands are shaking so hard she folds her arms to hide them.

I look at her. She doesn’t look at me.

“You let me think…” I start.

“I needed him to believe it. I had about five seconds with you, so I made them count and let you decide. Then I just let you hate me.” She stares straight ahead at the creek. “You should. It was me. All of it. I told him where the cabin was.”

I should be furious. Part of me is. Pyke is lying on the floor of a cabin three hours north because of the woman standing next to me.

She also locked herself in a glass box with my son and dragged a steel desk across the door.

Pyke, who made me eggs and pushed his gun to the back of the counter so little hands couldn’t reach it. Who saw them coming and spent the last thing he had yelling my name down a hallway so I’d have time to run. I never even thanked him for the eggs.

I press my face into Matthew’s hair until my eyes stop stinging. Later, I promise Pyke, wherever he is. Later, I’ll cry for you properly. And your kids are going to know exactly what their father did.

“He held on to the rabbit the whole time,” Genevieve says quietly. “I told him the rabbit was a secret agent. He said he knew.”

I don’t forgive her. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

She holds out one shaking hand, just a little, like she isn’t sure she’s allowed. I look at it. I don’t take it. Not tonight.

The warehouse door opens.

Enzo comes out alone.

He stops a few feet away, under the floodlights, close enough to see that we’re in one piece and far enough to give us room. The whole left side of his shirt is dark and wet. His hands are empty.

“Can I?” he asks.