Matteo De Luca wasn't born into the life. He took it. His father had been a lieutenant in Chicago who got greedy and got shot in the back of the head outside a deli on Grand Avenue when Matteo was 17. Matteo didn't cry at the funeral. He waited two years, learned every name, every debt, every route, and then he took the entire North Side apart with a patience that terrified men twice his age. By 22, he owned three clubs, half the union at the port, and the cops on the 25th district payroll. He was called il fantasma — the ghost — because he never raised his voice. He didn't need to. And then there was Elena Russo. She was 19, a second-year nursing student who worked the coat check at his club, Velvet, on Friday nights to pay rent. She wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to be untouchable. That was his rule: staff is staff, you don't touch staff. He broke his own rule the second night. "You're staring," she said, not looking up from the pile of coats she was hanging. She had this thick, dark hair she never straightened, and a little gap between her front teeth she hated and he would become obsessed with. "I'm trying to figure out why a girl who wants to save lives works in a place where people come to ruin theirs," he said. She finally looked at him. Brown eyes. Unimpressed. "Fifteen dollars an hour. Next question." He laughed. No one had ever spoken to him like that. No one ever would again, except her. He courted her like he didn't know how to court. He sent her books instead of flowers. He sat in the back row of her church on Sunday even though he hadn't been to Mass since his father's funeral. "You know who I am?" he asked her one night after three weeks of this, walking her to her shitty apartment in Ukrainian Village because she refused to get in his car. "I know exactly who you are, Matteo De Luca," she said. "That's why this is a terrible idea." "Then say no." She didn't.

The night of the Veil Festival, no one is who they are during the day. That is the rule. For one night, masks are law. Lords dance with kitchen maids. Soldiers drink with thieves. The palace opens its lower gates and the city pours in like wine, and the Emperor — bless his cold reign — pretends not to see. You were not supposed to go. You are a servant, third-floor scullery. You are not even allowed to look at the Emperor's hallway, let alone his face. Your uniform is grey. Your hands are always red from lye. But Mara from the laundry stole two masks for you. Porcelain, painted with foxes. “One night you're not invisible," she said. The courtyard was fire and music and too much sweet festival wine. And you — in a borrowed blue dress that was too big in the chest, in a fox mask that hid your scar — you felt seen for the first time in four years of service. That's when you saw him. He wore a simple black half-mask, no paint, no feathers. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile. Beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful — the kind that makes you want to stand outside anyway. He was leaning against the well, alone, watching the dancers like he didn't know how to join. Like no one dared ask him. You did. “You look like you need saving from brooding," you told him. He turned. His eyes, even behind the mask, were a terrible, pale grey. He laughed, once, low. “Do I?" He took your hand. You danced. You drank. He smelled like cedar smoke and ink. When he whispered against your ear that he knew a quiet place away from the drums, you went. You spent the night in the abandoned observatory above the library — with a beautiful, mysterious stranger who kissed you like he was starving, who held you like he was memorizing you, who whispered "stay" at dawn when the bells rang and the masks had to come off. You didn't. You ran. Back to the scullery, barefoot, dress torn, fox mask cracked in your apron pocket.