Page 50 of Masked Don

The door swings open and Genevieve wanders in. She looks like hell, paler than usual, her sunglasses pushed up into unbrushed hair. She heads straight for the orange juice and pours a glass. Her phone buzzes against the marble. She glances at the screen, turns it face-down, and doesn’t touch it again.

Matthew watches her with open interest. “How come your hands are shaking?”

The kid notices everything, even when he shouldn’t. “Matthew.”

Genevieve doesn’t get upset. Instead, she lets out a huff of a laugh, like she’s amused and surprised all at the same time. “Because kids make me nervous.” She’s trying to make light of it, though the joke doesn’t entirely land.

Genevieve regards me with a strange look in her eyes, as if she’s trying to figure out the right words to say what she wants to say. “Listen, Stevie. That first night,” she says. “You…” She stops and starts over, stiff, like the words are a language she’s not familiar with. “You didn’t have to do that, get me up the stairs. You could’ve left me there. Honestly, most people would’ve, and they’d have been right to. So, thank you. That’s all. Don’t make it weird.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” She finishes the juice, sets the glass down, and on her way out, she pauses by Matthew’s chair and looks down at his toast tower. The ghost of a smile crosses her lips. Then she’s gone, and everyone in the room lets out a collective breath.

“That,” Marta says quietly, “is the most I’ve heard her say to a houseguest in a year.”

I’m still turning that over when the door opens again and Enzo walks in. He’s dressed for the city, wearing a charcoal three-piece, looking unfairly handsome. Just the sight of him makes me ache between my thighs.

For a second, he just stands in the doorway, taking in the scene. Something crosses his face. It’s there and then it’s gone, but I’m starting to be able to read him. He didn’t grow up with mornings like this, with a full table and friendly faces waiting for him to join them.

Then Matthew sees him. “Up,” he announces, already lifting his arms. “Up, up.”

My gut tightens. Matthew hasn’t seen much of Enzo over the last few weeks, and I’m pretty sure that’s by my design, and Enzo has honored it. He doesn’t know who Enzo is yet, but he is drawn to Enzo in a way that’s uncanny, like he knows about their connection on some level.

I hesitate. Everyone in the room is very carefully not watching me hesitate.

“Go ahead,” I finally say, and my voice is almost level.

Enzo crosses the room and lifts Matthew out of the chair, and he’s better at it than I expected, more like a man learning the weight of his own child. Matthew settles against him, entirely at ease, and immediately gets to business.

“I’m hungry still.”

“You ate a building made of toast,” Carmine notes.

“That was carbs,” Matthew says, a word he has clearly learned from me and deployed with devastating confidence. “I need fruit now.”

Enzo, without missing a beat, reaches into the bowl on the sideboard and pulls out one of those little pouches of sliced organic fruit I always see at the store, the kind I always want to get for Matthew but can never afford to.

“The pantry,” Enzo says, catching my expression, “has been stocked. Everything on the list a child his age likes, and a few things I’m told his mother likes, too. If there’s something missing, you tell Marta and it’s here by evening.” He says it flatly, almost businesslike.

“Thank you,” I manage to say.

Enzo holds my gaze a moment and then, mercifully, lets it go. He passes Matthew gently to Marta, who eagerly receives him.

“We have somewhere to be,” he tells me. “You and I. In the city. Carmine will drive.” He turns to Marta: “He’s yours for an hour, maybe two.”

“Hear that?” she asks Matthew. “You’re tutto mio.”

Matthew’s already squirming his way toward a second fruit pouch and doesn’t even look up to watch us go.

Enzo helps me into my jacket in the front hall while Carmine brings the car around. It’s a small gesture that involves his hands briefly touching my shoulders, just long enough that my skin breaks out in goose bumps.

“Why am I going with you?” I ask. “You don’t take me to meetings in the city. It’s always too dangerous. So what’s going on here? What’s different about this?”

He hesitates, and I can see him deciding how much to tell me.

“If I’m coming with you, you tell me everything,” I say before he has a chance to edit his response. “Everything.”

He purses his lips, then nods. “Five years ago, I stood in a room and watched a man try to make a woman feel small in front of the whole underworld.” His mouth curves just a bit. “He tried, but he failed. The room laughed at you, but you didn’t care. You stood up for yourself in a way that most of those men would never dream of.