Page 34 of Masked Don

She’s thirty-two, dressed in designer clothes and heels with nowhere to be but the liquor cabinets of this house, and her beauty has gone a little brittle. There’s a gray cast under her eyes and a tremor in her hands that makes me wonder if she’s on the verge of another incident.

“Is it really a good afternoon?” She plops into the chair across from my desk, then settles and peers at me from over the rim of her glass. “You’ve got a look on your face. Was it something the help said?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m maintaining.” She says it lightly, a line she’s used so many times, it’s worn smooth. “There’s a difference. You’d know it if you ever let yourself feel anything long enough to need maintaining.”

I let it pass. Whatever cruelty she throws at other people is nothing compared to what she saves for herself.

Genevieve was supposed to be standing where I am. And she’ll tell you that, given enough scotch. She’ll tell you the business was supposed to be hers, that she was sharper, hungrier, and that the only thing keeping her down was a father who didn’t take her seriously, and the fact that she was born a woman.

She’s not entirely wrong. She was brilliant from the start. But the part of the Accardi blood that makes its men killers came out in her as a free-floating rage she could only quiet with drink and pills and cards.

My father looked at his brilliant daughter and saw a liability, and he told her so until the bitterness calcified.

“Whatever you’re doing today,” I say, “do it sober. Or do it somewhere that isn’t my study.”

“There it is.” She offers a knowing smile. “That tone. You sound just like Father when you talk like that, you know?” She knows precisely where a comment comparing me to our father lands. And I must show it, because a tinge of satisfaction appears on her face.

“Enough. If you have something worth my time, say it. Otherwise, take your scotch and go.”

The look of satisfaction fades, and she just looks tired. She shakes her head. “God, look at us.”

“Gen…”

“You’d never know we are siblings.”

“Or maybe that’s exactly how you’d know.” I almost smile. “Seriously, Gen, I’ve got work to do.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” She drains the glass, sets it down too hard, and stands. At the door, she stops, one hand on the frame. “Anyway, I didn’t come in here just to stir up bullshit. I came to tell you that the old man wants to see you. He sent down word an hour ago, said it’s time, whatever that means. He wouldn’t tell me. He never tells me anything.” She pauses. “Maybe he’s finally dying. Anyway, a girl can hope.”

“Don’t.”

“Why not?” Now she turns. “He never spent a day worrying about whether I lived or died. I don’t see why I should spend my life worrying about him.”

She leaves, and the door clicks shut behind her.

I stand alone in my study with the afternoon sun turning the room golden, Stevie’s face still on my mind. I think about her, I think about her boy, and I think about what she’s not telling me.

Then I think about my sister, giving herself over to her demons with such intensity, she just might end up buried before the old man.

I straighten my cuffs, button my jacket, and go up to see my father, because in this house, you answer when you’re called.

CHAPTER 8

ENZO

“Close the door. You’re letting the cold in.”

It’s my father’s usual line when I step into his suite. He doesn’t joke, and sometimes I wonder if this is the closest he comes to one.

“Pop.”

He’s seated by the window in the chair he no longer leaves for much, a blanket draped over his knees despite the heat. He’s a man who once possessed a frame big enough to fill a doorway. Men once crossed the street to avoid being on the same sidewalk as my father.

Those days are gone. Now, my father is mostly skin and bones, his hands spotted and trembling the same way my sister’s do, but for a very different reason. Only his eyes are unchanged. They’re flat and black and merciless, taking ruthless measure of me the same way he does any man who crosses his path.

“You look tired,” he says, but it’s not out of concern. It’s an assessment, the way a buyer notes a flaw in a product. “You’re letting it show. I taught you better.”