Damian Cavallo had almost cleared the lobby of his Tribeca office when a voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Mr. Cavallo! Wait!”

He turned to find his assistant, Amanda Sherman, hurrying toward him with a folder in her hands. She was young and beautiful with lively eyes and curves in all the right places. She was also his employee, a boundary he would never cross. Relative strangers were a far safer choice, and the city was full of women happy to oblige him when the need arose.

“I’m sorry to catch you on your way out,” she said. “I thought you’d want to see this.”

He took the folder and flipped it open. The financial report was short. It took him less than a minute to see the problem. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Would you like me to print a check?” she asked. “I could have it sent by messenger.”

“No, thank you.” He headed for the elevator. “Goodnight, Miss Sherman.”

“Mr. Cavallo?”

He turned wearily to face her. “Yes, Miss Sherman?”

Her porcelain skin turned pink at the cheeks. “I… I just wanted to say I think it’s wonderful what you do for them. I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but it’s just so generous and — ”

He cut her off. “We’re a charitable foundation Miss Sherman. It’s what we do.”

He hurried for the elevator, anxious to draw the interaction to a close. He didn’t want to make small talk, didn’t want to demonstrate careful modesty or see the embarrassment on her face when she realized she’d spoken out of turn. It wasn’t her fault. Although she was only a few years younger than him, she belonged to a new group of young people to which he didn’t relate. They shared everything, not only with each other but with perfect strangers.

He, on the other hand, shared nothing with no one.

He gazed dispassionately at his reflection in the mirrored interior of the elevator. He was passably good looking. Tall and broad shouldered, all his features in the right place, a full head of dark hair. He could satisfy someone like Amanda Sherman. Could eventually marry a woman like her, have children.

The idea didn’t appeal to him at all.

Better to seek release in that other hallmark of his generation: the hookup. No commitment, no expectation. Even better, first names often sufficed, allowing him to be just another horny bachelor instead of heir to the Cavallo Financial empire and its corresponding charitable foundation. He would be a disappointment to women seeking something meaningful anyway. They would want things.

Normalcy. Comfort. Love.

All things he couldn’t deliver.

He looked up as the elevator continued past the floors holding the less legitimate aspects of his enterprise.

The data lab on the ninth floor where they ran background on corrupt politicians ripe for blackmail and hacked into the intellectual property of certain companies to earn an off-the-books check from their competitors.

The gym on the sixth floor where his men engaged in mandatory martial arts and MMA training.

The medical suites on the fifth floor used to treat men who had injuries that might lead to uncomfortable questions at a traditional hospital or clinic.

The security offices on the fourth floor that housed all the cameras monitoring the building inside and out from every angle, plus a weapons cache in a hidden vault.

It was a self-contained fortress disguised as a refurbished apartment building from the 1920s. The neighborhood had grown up around it — “gentrified” was the word — and the building now sat in the shadows of Tribeca’s modern skyscrapers.

It suited his purposes perfectly. By using the legitimate work of his late mother’s charitable foundation as a front for riskier forms of revenue, much of which was funneled into the foundation anyway, he was able to conduct Cavallo Foundation business and run the criminal empire that was making him even richer — all from the same location. It was a long way from the Financial District and the offices of Cavallo Financial, his dead father’s tribute to corruption in the name of capitalism.

Which was basically the point.

Damian’s position as CEO of the Foundation was the only thing he’d inherited that was of interest to him. In the five years since his mother died of cancer, he’d shuffled the Foundation’s portfolio, insuring that over half their beneficiaries were domestic violence programs and shelters, after-school programs for at-risk children, educational grants for single mothers, and substance abuse programs.

It wouldn’t change the life his mother had led before the death of his father — the wrath she’d endured on a daily basis, the front she’d had to maintain as the wife of Vincent Cavallo (everyone knew domestic violence didn’t happen to people like them), the bruises she’d hid with carefully applied layers of makeup.

But it was something.

His car was waiting out front per his request, and he hurried around to the driver’s side and slid into the soft leather seat. He tossed his briefcase next to him and started the car, then pulled out into traffic. Less than an hour later, he was pulling up to a brick building, intentionally unmarked to avoid the angry boyfriends and husbands — they were always boyfriends and husbands — who might show up demanding to see the women and children who had fled their abuse.

Damian’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he thought about it, and he forced himself to relax, to think about the people the foundation helped through contributions that paid the mortgage on the building, supplied food, promoted mentorships and job opportunities.

It was important work, and he’d been surprised by how gratified he felt by it. He was still a majority shareholder in the financial side of the business, but its connection to his father made it a hard pass in terms of his involvement. Vincent Cavallo had been a financial genius whose net worth was over a billion dollars by the time he was forty. He’d been on magazine covers, had been touted as an American success story.

It was all a lie.

Damian had been behind the curtain of the theater that was his father’s persona. Had seen the storm of his temper sweep through the big house outside the city, had been victim to it until his mother stepped in to protect him.

Or more accurately, until she stepped in to take the beatings for him.

Damian still hated himself for cowering in his bedroom, listening to the crash of furniture and glass, the sound of his mother whimpering. For years his bedtime ritual had been to promise revenge on his father when he grew big enough.

To step into the room and save his mother.

But his father had died when Damian was just ten years old, still years shy of the height and strength that would have enabled him to make good on his promise. It was a hard pill to swallow, but he and his mother had lived peacefully after that, finally able to speak and move and act without reprisal. The Cavallo Foundation had been her passion, and she’d spent hours poring over charitable organizations that needed money, carefully choosing those that spoke to her, asking Damian his thoughts as he’d grown older.

It had been a balm to their wounds, doing something good with all the money their father earned from behind his mask, and Damian had happily taken over the task after her death.

He grabbed his briefcase and locked the car, then headed up the concrete steps of the brick building. He pressed the buzzer and announced himself, and a moment later a beep sounded from inside the door to indicate it was unlocked.

The lobby was empty except for a boy. He was small and thin, half his body hidden by the door frame to one of the common rooms. He stared at Damian with big brown eyes from a face with the soft cheeks of a toddler.

“Hello,” Damian said softly.

The boy darted up the stairs, leaving Damian alone in the foyer.

He wasn’t surprised. Most of the guests at the Franklin Street shelter were longtime victims of abuse. It was impossible not to see the ghosts in their eyes, and Damian always left hoping his weren’t as visible.

“Mr. Cavallo!” A small woman headed toward him. “I thought that was your car,” she said with a slight Jamaican accent.

“I hope it’s alright that I stopped by.”

He didn’t know why he’d come. He never knew why he came. It wasn’t about the money. He knew it was well spent. It had something to do with his strange affinity for the people here, people with whom he had more in common than anyone in the wealthy Tribeca neighborhoods where he lived and worked.

“Of course it’s all right,” she said. He tried not to cringe as she embraced him. Physical contact wasn’t his thing. “You are always welcome.”

“It looked like you’re having some trouble this month,” he said.

Her cheeks flushed. “We had a plumbing problem on the third floor. Leaked all the way through the ceilings down to the basement level.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve already transferred some money to the shelter’s account. I added a little extra too. It should be more than enough to cover the additional expense.”

She hugged him again. “You’re too good to us, Mr. Cavallo.”

He tried not to show his embarrassment. “It’s my pleasure. Is there anything else I can do?”

“You do plenty,” she said. “We always have more guests than we have room for, but we make it work. We’re a family, and families don’t mind living in tight quarters.”

They spent another fifteen minutes discussing additional improvements that would soon be needed on the old building plus a possible mentorship program with an up-and-coming tech company. Then Damian was submitting to a third hug and stepping back onto the street. He shut the door behind him and started down the stairs, his steps slowing as he spotted a wiry man pacing nearby, muttering to himself.

“Can I help you?” Damian asked.

The man looked up, his eyes wild. “Is she in there?” he demanded. “I know she’s in there. You can’t do this. It’s not right. She’s my wife!”

Damian’s hands worked into fists at his side. “You’re going to want to move along now.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” the man said, narrowing his eyes. “You have no right.”

“Let me say it another way,” Damian said. “If you stay here another minute, you’re going to get hurt.”

Damian knew the man was reaching inside his jacket before he’d fully lifted his arm. He’d seen it in the twitch of the man’s fingers, the angle of his elbow. He didn’t have time to raise it all the way before Damian kicked it out of his hand. Then he was hauling the man into the alley next to the shelter, propping him up against the brick to stabilize him while he threw punch after punch into the man’s face.

He didn’t see the man he was hitting. Not really. It was never his intended victim he saw when he fought. It was always another man, hard and cold, wielding power against Damian and his mother behind the opulent doors of their seemingly charmed life.

Damian didn’t hear the man’s protests. He was in another place now. In a big house with hand-painted murals and antique furniture. A house so far from anyone that the police never came.

By the time he looked down at the man’s face, he could barely make out his features behind the blood and the bruises already forming there. Damian shoved him to the ground and knelt over his body.

“Come back here and I’ll kill you. They don’t belong to you. They never did. Understand?”

The man nodded, then turned his head and spit out a tooth.

Damian straightened, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his hands. Then he headed back to his car and out of the city, the man already gone from his mind. It was always like that after he fought: the adrenaline high, the feeling that he was righting an old wrong followed by complete and utter release.

It was one of the only ways he could forget.

Traffic thinned as he traveled north, the trees growing thicker along the highway as he left the city behind. It was mid-October and the leaves were a riot of color as they dropped to the pavement, fluttering around the car in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t conduct business without being in the city most days of the week, but it never felt entirely comfortable to him. He’d grown used to the self-imposed isolation of life with his mother, their quiet dinners and long conversations. University had been uncomfortable for him at best, his social skills stunted by his strange upbringing, the feeling that he had nothing in common with the rich kids who surrounded him at Yale, the sense that he was keeping a dark and dangerous secret. He’d learned not to say too much, not to give anything away. It had served him well at home with his father.

Out in the real world, not so much.

Not socially anyway.

He exited the highway and continued through leafy, winding roads, past estates set back from the road and sheltered by trees and security gates. He hadn’t seen another property in over a mile when he finally slowed the car, pulled in front of another black iron gate.

Reaching through the open window, he keyed in the security code, waited for the gate to swing open. Then he pulled forward and continued up the long drive, trees towering on either side of the winding road.

He noticed the black car as soon as he’d cleared the drive, but it was the man leaning against it that made Damian open the glove compartment, remove the handgun he kept there. He set it in his lap, and came to a stop some distance away from the other car, keeping his eye on the other man.

Damian recognized him. Knew his reputation.

He also knew if the man wanted him dead, he’d probably be dead already. Either that or the man would have been inside the house, ready to end Damian’s life with a bullet to the back of the head and little ceremony.

Instead he’d breached the security gate to stand in plain sight. He was unmoving even as Damian exited his car and started toward him with the gun in his hand.

He stopped a few feet away, waited for the man to speak. He was even more imposing in person, the scar on his face adding an unnecessary air of menace to his massive frame, the empty eyes.

“Sorry about the gate.” He spoke in a clipped British accent. “I’m Farrell Black.”

“I know who you are,” Damian said.

“Good,” Farrell said. “Now that the introductions have been made, I think you should invite me in for a drink.”

Damian weighed his options, decided he didn’t have many that wouldn’t end in bloodshed.

And besides, he was curious.

He nodded, started for the house without speaking, Farrell’s boots crunching on the gravel behind him. He continued up the wide stone steps and unlocked the giant front door, stood aside to let the other man pass.

He started to step into the house, then stopped when he was next to Damian. When he glanced over, Damian was surprised to see a rakish smile on his face. He clamped a hand down on Damian’s shoulder, looked at the gun still in Damian’s hand.

“Won’t be needing that, mate.” He continued into the foyer. “Not this time anyway.”