Page 82 of Masked Don

“Why?”

“Because I got you here the way my father would have,” he says. “I won’t keep you here that way.”

I should be furious. Part of me is. There’s a smarter version of me who stands up right now, takes the folder with the extraction plan, and never looks back.

But nobody ever looked for that version of me. Nobody spent five years trying to find her. Nobody ever closed every door in the city just to open one for her.

The worst part is that it doesn’t frighten me as much as it should.

And some dark, starving thing in me is thrilled.

“Let’s go home,” I say.

The house is asleep when we get back. Enzo walks me up the stairs the way he has every night since the suitcase, one careful step behind, and stops at my door the way he always does.

Except tonight, I don’t go in.

I turn around, and he’s closer than I expected, close enough that I have to tip my head back to see his face. The hall light is off. There’s only the city through the window at the far end, gold and gray across his jaw.

“Stevie.” A warning. Or a question. With him, lately, I can’t always tell the difference.

I put my palm flat on his chest. His heart is going hard under my hand, harder than I’d have guessed a man like him would ever let it. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t touch me. His hands stay at his sides, curled into fists, like he’s holding something down by force.

“All those keys,” I say.

“They’re yours.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“It means you can lock me out.”

“It means I get to decide which side of the door you’re on.” I let that hang, and I watch it land. His eyes go dark. His breathing goes uneven. “Not tonight.”

His jaw tightens. “Then when?”

“When I decide.”

Something in his face slips, just for a second, and I see the man underneath all that restraint, the one who kissed me in front of a whole room without asking. He leans down until his mouth is a breath from mine, close enough that I can feel the heat of it, close enough that all I’d have to do is lift my chin.

He doesn’t close the gap. He waits for me to.

I don’t.

“Good night, Enzo.”

I step back into my room and turn the bolt, and I stand with my back against the door, shaking, listening to him not leave for a long, long time.

CHAPTER 30

STEVIE

A few days later…

Genevieve finds us in the kitchen a little after seven, which is early for her by about five hours.

Matthew’s sitting at the kitchen island working through a plate of eggs and toast cut into strips the way Marta does for him, and now he won’t eat them any other way. I’m seated next to him, my coffee still steaming, half ready for work, the day’s calendar running through my head.

Genevieve rolls in like a weather front, in silk, hair loose, not drunk yet, with the scraped-raw look of someone who didn’t sleep.