The Beast Who Broke Me (Clemenza Family #2)

Chapter 1

DAMIANO

I’m stomping around in ever-widening circles from my house, fists jammed in my pockets to stop me from putting them through something.

My anger has faded enough to make me feel the cold.

I was so furious I headed out in just a sweater and jeans, and the November air has teeth tonight.

It’s eating into me, and I let it, because what the fuck else am I going to do?

Which I guess just goes to show how much cleverer that little Clemenza snake is than me, since he layered up nice and warm before he slithered out.

He must have been planning it all out while he fucked me into a stupor.

Planning his escape.

I stop on the empty sidewalk, heat running through me despite the icy air.

His hands on my chest as he rode me, the arch of his back, the way his mouth fell open right before he came and those golden eyes rolled shut.

His skin warm against mine in my bed. My bed, my sheets, my house, where he was supposed to stay because he’s mine.

But that fucking virgin used sex to knock me out, easy as taking down a grizzly bear with a tranquilizer dart.

And the worst part is, I went down happy.

I’m almost home, but I head down the nearest alley, find a dumpster, and kick the shit out of it, ignoring the sharp pain in my foot, the ache as the stitches pull in my back and arm.

The metal booms and buckles and I kick it again, harder, because I can still feel him.

Still feel his weight shifting against me when he sank forward and pressed his face into my neck, and I thought—

“You mind, asshole?” complains a voice from behind the dumpster. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

I come around the side and see Shuffles, one of the regular rough sleepers around this part of town. He’s burrowed into a sleeping bag under a flattened cardboard box, his knit cap pulled low, his breath coming out in clouds. “Sorry,” I mutter. “Bad night.”

“Oh, yeah,” he grouses, pulling the sleeping bag tighter, “you sure are down on your luck, Orsini. Get the fuck outta here, would you?”

I pull out my wallet and hand him a twenty. “I said I was sorry. We even?”

He grabs the bill and shoves it under his hat.

“You let me get back to sleep and we’ll be even.

” Then he looks up at the sky, which is low and heavy.

The clouds, which have been casting down snow in fits and starts, are a sickly orange from the city lights.

“Say, you got room at your place tonight?”

He doesn’t mean in my house. He means under the long portico near the front door.

I tried to pay for Shuffles to stay in a hotel once before and he told me to fuck off.

So I offered my porch, basically, and he took me up on it.

He shows up every now and then, telling me he doesn’t like to stick around in one place too long.

But when he does sleep there, I don’t mind.

It’s just that things are dangerous right now.

I’m dangerous right now.

I roll my shoulders back and the stitches pull again, the pain helping me focus on the here and now. “That ain’t a good idea tonight,” I tell him. “Got some trouble going on.”

He eyes me. “Got anything to do with the white van that’s been hanging around your place?”

The white van.

I saw it myself, mentioned it to Sammy just after dinner when we were taking the trash out. I think back, and…no. It wasn’t there when I came barreling out of the house an hour ago. “Why?” I ask Shuffles. “You seen something tonight you wanna tell me about?”

Shuffles is one of my regular eyes and ears around this part of town, so he knows there’s good money in it for him if he has seen something—and he also knows that I don’t put up with bullshit intel. So when he shakes his head regretfully, I know he’s not lying.

If I hadn’t been so angry, I would’ve thought about that van before. I’m a fucking moron.

But that’s not Shuffles’ problem.

“Tell you what,” I say. “When the sun’s up, why don’t you swing by and tell Rosa I said to send you out a hot breakfast.”

“Mighty neighborly of you,” he says, settling deeper into his cocoon. “That woman sure can cook.”

“She sure can. You take care, now.”

“I will. You keep your feet to yourself.”

I give him a nod and head off. Under other circumstances, I would have told him to spend the last few hours until dawn under the portico. But God knows what fire is about to rain down on me.

I should’ve remembered it the whole time he was mine: Clemenzas are never vulnerable. They’re never helpless. They’re twisted, evil snakes. And Caligula Clemenza is the very worst of them.

I stop in the foyer after getting home, struck by the darkness and the silence. He was right here. For weeks, he was right here, and he belonged to me. I had him.

And now I don’t.

I need to keep a cool head. Because the Clemenza will be.

Ice fucking cold, strategic, unemotional.

He’s already three steps ahead of me. That arrogant little prince with the golden eyes and the sharp cheekbones and sharper tongue, making me feel like the dumb muscle even though he was the one with a cage on his cock—

I need to calm down. I need to think.

He wasn’t in any of the subway stations I checked, and he wasn’t huddled up in any doorways.

When the sun comes up, I’ll reach out to the wider Giuliano street network, see what they might know.

But right now I head upstairs to the viewing room in my bedroom, and I do what I should have done before.

I sit down in front of the monitors again and I play the video of Caligula Clemenza leaving me, but this time I let it run past the point where he disappears offscreen instead of obsessively replaying.

And I see what I missed.

After he leaves the frame, the street is empty. Thirty seconds of nothing go by. Then the white van parked opposite my house turns on its lights, pulls out, and turns the corner, heading in the same direction as the Clemenza.

I scrub back, try to get a plate, but it’s covered up. There are no markings on the van at all, the kind of vehicle commonly chosen for a murder run. I’ve traveled in more than one myself. Plain white, no windows in the back, easy to hose out once the job is done.

But even if this van followed him, even if whoever is in there grabbed him, I’ve still got fuck-all information, because I can’t see into it.

Have no idea who might be in there. The Bratva?

The Clemenza Loyalists? Or the person who’s been hunting down Clemenzas for sport, killing them off one by one?

Whoever it was, Caligula Clemenza is mine. I paid ten million dollars for him. More importantly, he owes me for the debt his father carved into my life when I was thirteen years old. He does not get to walk out of my house and disappear into somebody else’s van before I’m done with him.

I will find that snake and break its back. And then I’ll kill whoever thought they could take my vengeance from me. Whoever is in that van has no idea what’s headed their way.

Nobody puts their hands on what’s mine.