Chapter 10 Caligula
CALIGULA
My new owner gives me a little shove with the hand on the back of my neck, directing me to a roaring fireplace right there in the foyer. I give a quiet sigh of relief as the warmth hits my face.
The hand on my neck disappears. “Better?” Damiano stands close enough behind me that I feel his body heat.
“Peachy.”
“I always heard you Clemenzas run cold, just like your snake symbol. That was a good choice, whoever picked it.”
It’s not a snake. It’s an ouroboros, a mystical and philosophical symbol well beyond this man’s understanding.
“I’m warming up,” I tell him.
“Good.” His fingers trace the vertebrae at the base of my neck, a touch so intimate it makes me flinch. “I want you to feel at home while you’re here, golden boy.”
I don’t believe him for a second.
His hands settle on my shoulders, heavy and proprietary. I brace for violence, but all he does is reach for the chain at my neck, the one holding my cloak. He opens it, letting the golden fabric pool around my feet. And speaking of my feet…
“The floor is warm,” I say in surprise. Not just radiant heat from the fire; the whole floor has been warm from the second I stepped in.
“Heated tiles,” Damiano says. “I’m sure you had something similar in your Park Avenue place.”
We didn’t, actually. But I did grow up on Park Avenue. Did he know that, or was it a lucky guess? I scrunch my toes on the tile, stretch my hands out to the fire, and look around to take in more of the foyer.
The entryway is cavernous, with soaring ceilings at least eighteen feet high, but the dark wood makes it feel smaller. The tiles beneath my feet are white, inlaid with an intricate pattern of black and gold. Everything screams old money, but there’s something slightly off about it all.
“What do you think of the place?” he asks. His hands haven’t left my shoulders.
“You…have a lovely home?” I try. He seems satisfied with that response. But in asking that question, he’s confirmed something about himself without seeming to notice.
This is not a man who grew up with money. People who grow up wealthy don’t ask what guests think of the décor, because beauty is expected. It would be like asking someone’s opinion of oxygen.
“When I bought it a few years back, it was a wreck,” Damiano tells me with pride in his voice. “I spent millions restoring it to its 1893 glory. Even tracked down the descendants of the original craftsmen when I could.”
“How dedicated,” I murmur. “Do all Giulianos have such passion for historical preservation?”
His grip on my shoulders tightens just enough to remind me that those hands of his don’t just restore townhouses. They break bones. They wrap around throats. And they own every inch of me for the next year.
If I’m not careful, my mouth is going to get me killed, contract or no contract.
He turns me around, thick fingers sliding to grip my biceps, fitting precisely over the bruises he left there the other night. Up close, he’s better looking than he should be. Except for the look in his cold, dark eyes.
“I built this house for you, Caligula Clemenza. Every tile, every inlay, every fixture—I chose them with you in mind.”
My stomach drops. Not flutters. Drops, like an elevator with severed cables. He doesn’t sound exactly…sane. “That’s very kind of you,” I offer, trying to sound sincere.
Perhaps all my sarcasm in the car was a bad idea. Perhaps I should have been trying to placate instead of defy.
“Kind of me?” He smiles, and I learn something new: his teeth are way too perfect. I bet he’s had them fixed after a life of violence knocked the originals loose. “You shouldn’t mistake anything I do for kindness, little prince.”
Perhaps it doesn’t matter what I do. I drop my eyes and keep my damn mouth shut.
“Why don’t I show you around?” he says at last. I glance up from beneath my lashes. He looks almost disappointed. Because I haven’t said anything more about how amazing his renovations are?
Or because I stopped pushing back?
He lifts up the golden chain, swinging the end of it back and forth. “We can get rid of this now. Right?” For a second I think he means the cage and the plug, but all he does is unhook the chain from the end of that stupid-looking thing on my dick, being very careful not to touch my skin.
At least now he can’t lead me around like a dog.
But his hand curls around my arm again, like he can’t bear not to keep a firm grip on me, and he turns me to the left, so that I can see into the first room. “We’ll start here. They call it a great room,” he says, and guides me forward.
Room after room after room. They blur together after a while, and my legs are getting shaky, and the plug is an agony I refuse to acknowledge, and I keep wondering: where is everyone?
Because there is absolutely no way this psycho who breaks kneecaps for a living also does his own vacuuming.
This place is immaculate. Someone maintains it.
But whoever they are, they’re invisible tonight.
We troop through the first three levels of ever-so-slightly-wrong grandeur, with rooms that flow into each other in an endless, showy parade of money.
The library is lined with leather-bound books with pristine spines.
The music room holds a polished grand piano I very much doubt he can play.
There are some rooms where I swear the seats have never been sat on.
Everything is expensive, top of the line, but chosen like someone who learned about luxury from magazines. It’s too coordinated. Too perfect.
And what strikes me most of all is the emptiness.
Despite the furniture and decorations, there’s a hollow quality.
This is a stage set rather than a home. No photos, no personal touches.
And so much of the artwork he does have depicts mythological scenes of abduction, possession, worse.
Zeus and Ganymede. Apollo and Daphne. Hades and Persephone.
God after god after god, seizing what they want and daring the universe to object.
My stomach drops even further.
“I’m sure you must be hungry,” he says at last. “There are three more floors above and two below ground—but we’ll get there soon enough.”
The plug in my ass is almost unbearable now, and the idea of sitting through a meal sounds really bad, but I’m not going to say a word about it. Damiano guides me to the one room we haven’t seen yet on the third floor: the dining room.
There’s a side buffet set up with an array of silver domes over dishes, and the mouthwatering smells coming from them remind me I haven’t eaten today. Maybe yesterday, either. The only thing in my stomach right now is the bourbon this moron made me drink in the car.
“We’re gonna have dinner,” he tells me. “And we’re gonna get to know each other, Caligula.”
Caligula. No one calls me that, because it’s a ridiculous name that I’ve always hated. But I just nod. “Sounds…”
I trail off as a wave of dizziness hits me. And for the second time, I’m saved from faceplanting by Damiano Orsini. He catches me easily, hoisting me into his arms.
If I weren’t so busy passing out, I’d probably be embarrassed about it.