Page 66 of Masked Don

“Doing what?”

“Standing in front of me, like the room’s still dangerous.” She looks up at me, more clearly than I expected, more tired than I’ve ever seen her. “It’s not. You can sit.”

My first instinct is to argue, but I push that down and I sit. After a moment, her hand finds mine under the blanket and grips it hard, and neither of us says anything about it.

I want to tell her this is my fault. Not the guns; I don’t yet know whose fingers pulled the triggers. But the danger, that’s all mine. The blood on her dress, the man she watched me kill. It all happened because she was too close to me, too close to the storm.

A detective walks over to us, plainclothes, tired, mid-fifties, the kind who’s worked this city long enough to know whose party this was and how little he’ll be able to prove.

“Reyes,” he says. “Homicide. Rough night, Mr. Accardi.”

“I’ve had better.”

“Four shooters came in through the service level. Two deceased, two in the wind. No IDs. They came clean, no wallets, filed off serials.” He watches me. “That’s money and planning. This wasn’t a robbery.”

“No,” I agree, “it wasn’t.”

“Want to tell me who’d do this to you?”

“I’d tell you if I knew.” Which is true, technically. I have a name in my mouth but no proof behind it, and a detective is the last man I’d hand it to, regardless.

“Was anyone hurt?” Stevie asks. “I mean, aside from Marcus.”

Reyes runs his hand through his hair. “A few injuries. All strays. Aside from the poor SOBs who pulled this stunt. Could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. But you two don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Good,” Stevie says.

“Funny thing.” Reyes doesn’t look away. “Luca Santini was a guest tonight. Left a while before it started, his people say. He’s at the precinct right now, being very cooperative. Real broken up about what happened.”

Luca was here and gone before the guns. He’d come in and made a scene and then left. I snort, shaking my head. He was forging an alibi. Hundreds of people at the party can now place him there, his little tantrum the biggest thing they’ll remember from tonight. Well, the second biggest.

And I wonder… Did the war start tonight?

“I’m sure he’s devastated,” I say.

Reyes turns to Stevie. “Ma’am, I know it’s a bad night, but I need to ask a few questions. You were with Mr. Accardi when it started?”

She straightens her posture under the blanket, and she lies for me like she was born to it. “We were upstairs,” she says, steadily. “He was showing me the private rooms. I’m his assistant, he hosts business up there, and I needed to see the layout. We heard shots and Carmine got us to cover. Mr. Accardi protected me the whole time. He saved a wounded server. If he hadn’t kept his head, more people would be dead.” She holds Reyes’s eyes. “Whoever did this came for him, Detective. He’s the victim here, not whatever you walked in assuming he was.”

Reyes looks at her a beat too long. Half the party watched me kiss her an hour ago, and he knows it. He writes it down anyway.

“She’s wrong,” I say.

Reyes’s eyebrows arch. “Is that right?”

“About one detail. She was the one responsible for saving the server. I only helped.”

Reyes writes it down. He thanks her and moves on.

I sit there holding her hand, watching as the detectives take a few more statements, my eyes moving over the shattered glasses on the floor.

Under Stevie’s steadiness and loyalty, there’s something else. She watched me kill tonight, watched how quickly and calmly I can take a life. It’d all existed in the abstract to her, but now it’s real and undeniable.

I know that look. I’ve spent my life watching people get their first real glimpse of what I am. They don’t come back from it the same. Nobody ever has.

Carmine appears at my shoulder, hand wrapped, still running my security one-handed because he won’t stop for a cut. “Car’s downstairs. You should both be gone before this turns into paperwork.”

“Two minutes.”