Page 80 of Masked Don

“I don’t know either,” I tell her. “But I’m going to try to be the man who ends this, and the man you’d let near him after. I don’t know if it’s possible. No one ever taught me how. But I’m going to try, because you’re the first thing I’ve ever wanted badly enough to attempt something I don’t already know how to do.” I pick up the folder, and I offer her my arm, the way I did at the party. “Come on. Let’s go home to him.”

CHAPTER 29

STEVIE

We don’t go home.

A few blocks in, I notice the car turning the wrong way, away from the house, and Matthew and Marta, deeper into the city instead. The old wariness flares, because I’ve learned the hard way that when a powerful man takes you somewhere you didn’t agree to, it’s rarely a good surprise.

“Where are we going?”

“One stop. Ten minutes. Then home, I promise.” Enzo doesn’t look at me; he’s watching the street go by. “I’d have told you in advance, but I didn’t want you deciding how to feel about it before you’d seen it. It’s not a trick. It’s just easier if I show you, rather than tell you.”

The car pulls up outside of a ten-story building I don’t know. It’s a nice building, discreet, with brass letters on the front glass of a pair of last names. Just an office. The longer I look, the more it looks like a lawyer’s office. He opens the car door for me, and I get out. We enter a small, tasteful lobby and walk into a quiet elevator that goes up to the sixth floor. The doors open, and a pretty, middle-aged woman in a nice suit is there to greet us.

“Mr. Accardi. Miss Callahan.”

She shakes my hand and leads us to a conference room, where a stack of documents is waiting for us on the center of the table.

“Sit,” Enzo says. “This won’t take long, and then you can ask me anything you want.”

I sit. The lawyer introduces herself as Ms. Osei and slides the first document toward me.

Enzo says quietly, “I’ll let her explain it. It’s yours to read, not mine to sell.”

“The first document establishes three accounts in your name,” she says. “Not joint. Yours, solely. Mr. Accardi has no signatory access and can’t reverse or freeze them. They’re already funded, and the figure is on the summary page here.”

She turns one of the documents toward me, and I look at the number, but I have to look away, because it’s more money than I have made in my entire life, several times over, sitting in an account with only my name on it.

“The second set of documents concerns your son, Matthew. A trust, independent, with an appointed trustee who’s not in Mr. Accardi’s organization. He’s a lawyer from a court-supervised, neutral firm.”

“A trust?”

“A trust. It funds his care, his education, his security, anywhere, whether or not you stay in contact with Mr. Accardi. By design, it can’t be made contingent on your relationship with him.”

“The third set of documents concerns guardianship and contingency.” Her tone has changed, as if she’s realizing how stunned and speechless I am, and is slowing down, being just a little gentler. “It secures your sole legal custody of Matthew. It establishes housing in your name. There’s a property already held in trust for you, separate from any Accardi asset, and it cannot be traced through his holdings.”

“I don’t know where it is,” Enzo clarifies. “I made sure of that.”

“And this,” she touches another folder, “is what Mr. Accardi referred to as the emergency file: identities, secure contacts, funds, an extraction plan. This is in the event you need to leave quickly and be genuinely impossible to find. It’s designed to protect you and your son from anyone, even from Mr. Accardi, should it come to that.”

“Thank you, Ms. Osei. Give us a minute, would you?” Enzo says to her, and she nods, gathers herself, and goes, and then it’s just the two of us and a table full of papers that make no sense.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “What is this?”

“It’s exactly what she said it is.”

“No, I…” I press my hands flat on the table because they’ve started to shake. “Enzo, this is… you’ve given me everything I’d need to leave you: money you can’t touch, a house you can’t find, a trust for Matthew that pays out whether I ever speak to you again or not, a file designed to hide us from you.” I look up at him. “So what’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch.”

“There’s always a catch.”

He shakes his head. “No. Not this time.”

He’s seated across from me, but he doesn’t reach for my hands, doesn’t crowd me. “You’ve told me that my protection feels like a cage. And you were right. So…” He gestures to the papers, and for the first time since I’ve known him, Enzo looks uncertain. Like he knows that what he’s done, he can’t undo. “These are doors, doors only you possess the keys to. All of them open outward, and all of them open whether I want them to or not. And you have the choice to lock them behind you, should you feel the need.”

“If you leave, that’s your choice,” he says. “But you do it safely. Funded, housed, untouchable. Never again the way you were before, pregnant and alone and surviving on diner tips.”