Page 110 of Masked Don

“Without a doubt. It’ll take him twenty minutes, and he’ll bite the head off of anyone who tries to help, but he’ll do it.”

“Then let’s let him.”

“Oh, I intended to. I’d like to keep my head.”

We watch Carmine take the first stair, then the second, Marta scolding him the whole way.

“When this is done,” Enzo says, “I’ll be a man who owns a few construction companies and a great deal of property. If we’re lucky, Matthew will grow up thinking his old man’s work is a little on the dull side.”

I laugh. “I’d like that.”

“On paper,” he adds.

“On paper?”

“The elders will still come to me when something needs settling. Accardi Holdings will file its taxes on time, and every man in this city will still cross the street when he sees me coming.” He kisses my knuckles. “I can give up the business, tesoro. I can’t give up being the reason nobody touches what’s mine.”

I should probably mind that more than I do.

CHAPTER 44

STEVIE

Six weeks later…

“Wear the new dress and be ready at eight.”

That’s all he said, and he refuses to tell me where we’re going.

I have to admit, that makes it all a bit more fun.

Marta spent two hours on my hair, the particular smugness on her face of a woman who knows something interesting but refuses to say a word.

But when the car pulls up outside the club, I get it.

“I know this building,” I say. “I worked here. Enzo.”

He smiles just a little. My stomach tenses, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m excited or nervous or both.

“I know.” His hand finds mine in the dark of the backseat. “Trust me. Ten minutes.”

I turn toward the club and watch men and women in gowns and tuxedos walking in. They’re all wearing masks of lacquer and feathers and gold, all of them pouring into the same ballroom where a man whose name I don’t even like to think about made me a punchline and started a grudge that nearly destroyed everything I had.

“You brought me to the masquerade.”

“It’s a masquerade. Not the same one as that night. Different. No auction, for example. And the evening can be different, too.”

He reaches into the console between the seats and takes out a box. Inside, on black velvet, is a mask. It’s a gorgeous, emerald-green one to match the dress, delicate and gold-trimmed at the edges. It’s nothing like the cheap thing I had on that night so many years ago. It’s beautiful.

“That night was a wonderful night for me. It’s the night we made Matthew, after all. But it was complicated, too.”

“Yeah. Complicated. That’s one way to put it.” I turn the mask over in my hands.

“But this night, I want to be very uncomplicated. We enter and we have a wonderful time. And when we’re done, we leave. And years from now, when you think of the night of the masquerade, you think of this one, not the other.”

I look down at the mask again and take a deep breath.

“Ten minutes?” I ask. “That’s it?”