Chapter 40 Caligula
CALIGULA
The next time I open my eyes, it’s still pitch black, but I’m wrapped up in Damiano’s strong arms and I’m in his soft bed and my ass feels a little sore and very thoroughly…
Used.
I grin to myself and have to fight the urge to wriggle around in pleasure. I don’t want Dami to wake up and turn back into some surly grump. But he’s already stirring, his arms shifting and then tightening, and his nose snuffles at the back of my neck, breathing me in.
“G’morning,” he rasps.
“Might be more like good evening,” I tell him. “I have no idea what time it is.”
“Fuck.” He gets out of the bed, which is exactly what I didn’t want, and snaps on the light, making me wince.
He scrabbles around in his clothes on the floor and comes up with his phone, which starts buzzing like a beehive with incoming messages when he turns it on.
“Fuck. It’s past four in the afternoon!”
“We were up all night,” I point out.
“Yeah, but I…” He sighs. “I shoulda got in touch with Big Gee or Seb. Given them a heads-up after that business at the Obelisk. They’re asking questions…” He turns his attention to the phone again.
I’ve been ditched for Big Gee and Seb.
“What do they say?” I ask casually.
“Seb wants a meeting. Tomorrow, though, so I guess it’s not urgent.
Otherwise Big Gee himself would be here, banging on my door—” He breaks off, then adds slowly, “Big Gee’s been looking for an excuse for a fight with the Russians, anyway.
Doesn’t like the way they’ve been cutting into our profits.
Maybe he’ll see it as an opportunity instead of a… ”
“Catastrophe?” I suggest.
“I was gonna say a fuckin’ mess. But yeah. That too. Seb’s more restrained. Doesn’t want a war with anyone. If he wasn’t a Gee, he’d probably be happy with the way the Morellis are running the place.” He looks at me. “Don’t know why I’m saying all this to you.”
I prop myself up on one arm. “It’s interesting to hear. I knew more about the old Don, Jimmy Gee, than I do about his son.”
“His son’s more of a thug than Jimmy was,” Dami says, and then rubs a hand over his face. “Forget I said that.”
Damiano Orsini is not a good man, or a kind man. But he is loyal to the death to those under his protection. I’ve seen the proof myself.
That sense of loyalty seems to have been tested by his own Boss, though.
“How’s your back feeling?” I ask.
“It’s fine,” he says automatically. “How’s your ass?”
I’m busy filing away these little slivers of information about Giuliano business, but when he asks that, I come back to the present with a bump. “Um. Fine. I think. I could use a shower, though. I stink of…well, you.”
He nods. “I could use a wash, too. You wanna go first?”
“No.” I crawl across the bed. “We can both fit in there.”
We can both fit with room to spare, in fact. And it’s time to find out where I stand after last night. I’m not stupid enough to think things have completely changed. But maybe I’ve gained a little ground.
Dami ducks his head, but not before I catch a little smile. “You offering to wash my back again?”
“That and every other part.”
He stares at me hard for a second, then grabs the lube. “Come on, then.”
As it turns out, we have to be careful of his bandaged wound, so Dami’s the one who does most of the washing.
He soaps me up all over, gentle and soft between my butt cheeks.
And then he pushes me up against the wall, the cool tiles a shock against my hot skin, and drops to his knees behind me to nuzzle into my crack.
My hole is still so tender, but when I feel his flat tongue lapping over it, soothing and slow, I’m glad I trusted him.
He licks around for a while until I reach back and thread my fingers through his wet hair, pressing him closer in a wordless plea.
His tongue wriggles in, a slick, dirty invasion that has me panting.
He knows when I need more without me having to even ask.
He stands just before I start begging, spreads my legs wide with one of his, and slicks himself up with the lube.
I brace for discomfort when he lines up the head of his cock with my asshole, but he slides right in to the hilt like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
And I take it with a deep groan of satisfaction. The water from the showerhead is running between us, down my ass, trickling over my stretched hole where we’re joined. Dami starts a slow, easy rhythm, and his orgasm, when it comes, is just as slow, a lazy pulse that makes me feel warm all over.
He stays inside me while he washes my hair, which is nice for a minute, but soon becomes a strange kind of foreplay. By the time we’re done, he’s hard again, and he starts to fuck me in earnest this time, jacking me off while he does, until I splatter the tiles.
“Messy,” he tells me with a grin.
I can only laugh.
By the time we get out, I’m starving. I dress in some of the clothes the Benedettis sent over. “I’ll get Rosa to send something up,” he says. “We should talk about this Tiberius guy.”
I catch his hand. “We need to do that. But let’s eat down there in the kitchen. With them.”
He looks at me in surprise. “Uh. Sammy’ll…be there.”
“It’s time Sammy and I got used to each other. Besides…” Should I bring this up? “You should warn them. About the Bratva.”
His face darkens—but not at me. “Yeah,” he says gruffly. “You’re right. I don’t want any of them blindsided. They need to know the situation.”
He lets me keep his hand as we go downstairs, but I release him as we enter the kitchen. I don’t want to push too much. Rosa is there as usual and the place smells deliciously of sizzling pancetta and garlic. She glances up as we enter. “I’ll send something up,” she says.
“We’ll eat down here tonight,” Dami says.
Rosa’s eyes meet mine briefly, but she just nods and sets out a few more places at the round table in the small dining area.
“Sammy and Vito gonna make it to dinner?” Dami asks. “I gotta talk to you all.”
“They’re always here,” Rosa says with a shrug.
Sammy comes in not long afterward, though he stops dead seeing me at the table. “I’m not going to break bread with a Clemenza,” he says at once.
“That’s fine,” Dami says to him. “You can watch the rest of us eat. But you come and sit down, because I need to talk to you all.”
Sammy comes to the table. Slowly and angrily, but he comes.
He takes the other seat next to Dami and slumps back in his chair so that he doesn’t have to see me.
Vito comes in soon after, and then Rosa serves up dinner to us all: a creamy carbonara on her handmade pasta to start, followed by chicken saltimbocca with a side of roast vegetables, baked ziti, and two different kinds of bread.
At first it’s enough food to seem excessive, even for an Italian household, but as I watch Vito and especially Dami start to wolf it down, I can see she knows exactly how much food she needs to make to keep the men of the house happy.
Even Sammy picks up his fork about half a second after Rosa sets the noodles down in front of him.
Halfway through the meal, when the atmosphere is more convivial, Damiano starts laying it out to them: that there might be trouble, that they need to be extra careful, that they should stay in the house as much as possible.
He points a fork at Sammy. “That means you stay away from the markets, too,” he says sternly.
“I ain’t chancing someone coming at you while you’re there. You hear me?”
Sammy looks pleased that Dami singled him out. “I hear you. But what about groceries?”
“We’ll get them delivered.”
“Won’t be as good,” Rosa sniffs. “These places get rid of the worst of their stock on delivery orders.”
“You’ll make it taste as good as it always does,” Dami tells her. “And you, Vito, I want you with Rosa when you’re not with me. Just in case.”
Vito gives a reassuring smile to Rosa. She flushes a little and busies herself serving out more baked ziti onto his plate.
“I mean it,” Dami says. “This is serious shit. And you see anything, hear anything, you come to me right away.”
After Dami’s pronouncement, an atmosphere of camaraderie seems to settle over us. This little group of strays will pull together, I think.
And me with them.
I have to look down at the second helping of chicken—that Rosa served me without even asking—to hide a sudden prickling in my eyes.
I’m not a crier. Learned early that it wouldn’t be rewarded in the Clemenzas.
But this sense of belonging, of family, is exactly what I’ve been missing since my father died.
He and Nonna Mellie and me, we were our own little group.
We’d have fun together when I was small, and we’d meet at Bergdorf’s for lunch once a week.
The three of us were simpatico, my Dad used to say.
God, I miss them so much.
The evening goes on. Rosa brings out dessert—torta della nonna, the custard still warm, pine nuts golden on top—insisting that I take a piece even when I groan that I couldn’t possibly.
Even Sammy seems to thaw slightly toward me, or at least is less inclined to scowl when he looks my way.
And between us, Dami seems relaxed and happy.
I’ve never seen him smile or laugh so much, either at Rosa’s stories or my occasional sarcasm, or at Sammy’s description of the fishmonger he usually goes to, who knows Rosa personally and is always terrified she’ll send back the fish.
Eventually, Rosa says she needs to clean up.
I offer to help load the dishwasher, and Vito helps dry things that need to be washed by hand.
Sammy gathers together the trash to take it out, but Dami stops him.
“I’ll come with you. I meant what I said, Sammy—you keep your eyes open and don’t take risks. ”
I’ve just finished stacking the dishes in the dishwasher when I find another small trash can under the sink that needs to be taken out. “I’ll run this bag out to them,” I tell Rosa and Vito, who barely hear me. Rosa’s been busy chattering in Italian, and Vito’s hanging on her every word.
With a smile, I head toward the back door of the kitchen and find my way after Sammy and Dami. It’s easy enough, because they’ve left the door that opens to the street ajar, and cold air is seeping into the dark hallway.
But I pause there behind the door as I hear my name.
“…glad you’re getting along better with Caligula.”
“I’m not,” Sammy says. There’s a rustle of plastic bags. “I hate him. I always will. But for your sake, Damiano, I’ll put up with him.”
There’s a pause. “Well,” Dami says at last. “Love and hate ain’t got nothing to do with Family. So that’s good enough for me, Sammy.”
“How much longer will he be here?” Sammy sounds forlorn.
“A while.”
“Why are you being so nice to him?”
“Hey.” There’s a warning in Dami’s voice. “You don’t get involved in business, Sammy. What I plan to do with him—”
“He’s a Clemenza,” Sammy spits.
There’s a silence, and then Dami speaks again, but so quietly that I have to lean closer to the gap to hear.
“…keeping him away from some people who are looking for him. A group that calls itself the Clemenza Loyalists. They want to crown him king, put him in as a figurehead, get the Clemenza Family going again. Now, you don’t want those fuckers gaining ground again any more than I do, right? Right. So trust me on this, Sammy.”
“I always do, Damiano.”
The Clemenza Loyalists aren’t all dead and gone.
In fact, they’re alive and looking for me.
Why not go to your Loyalists? Dami asked me, when he was wondering how I’d ended up at the Obelisk. I remember, too, how quickly he changed the subject when I showed no knowledge about them.
And just a few days ago, he looked me right in the eye and told me they were dust.
“Come on,” he’s saying, “let’s get back inside. I don’t like the look of that van over there.”
I slide silently back up the hallway and make my way down again much more noisily, trash bag in hand. “Oh, hi!” I say when we all run into each other. “You missed one.”
I hold it out to Sammy. He takes it with a wide, fake smile. “Thanks,” he says, but then Dami grabs it from him.
“You two get back to the kitchen,” he growls at us. “When I come back inside, we’re going into lockdown again.”
“Yes, Damiano,” Sammy says, and slides past me, that smile still plastered on his face.
I watch Sammy go on ahead obediently, but I wait there until Dami comes back in. “What did I just say?” he sighs.
“I know. But I wanted to do this.”
I wind my arms around his neck and kiss him, press my mouth to those lying lips to find out what deceit tastes like.
Daniel King’s cut-off words echo in my head as I do. Do you have any idea what some people out there would pay to see a Clemenza—
See a Clemenza what? Suffer, as Dami suggested King was going to say at the time, before a right hook silenced him? Or see a Clemenza rise again, take control of the Family, resurrect it?
I sold myself at auction because I had no other options—or so I thought.
Damiano Orsini knew I had another option.