Chapter 5
DAMIANO
When I climb into the back of Big Gee’s armored Jeep, I half expect him to put a lead slug in my head.
But he just glares at me as I settle back on the bench opposite him, where he’s wedged in between two of his bodyguards.
There’s barely enough room for all of us.
His three guards—Paulie, Meatball, and some new guy whose name I haven’t bothered learning—are all around my size, but size is their only advantage.
They’re large enough for Big Gee to duck behind, but they’re not smart.
The Boss stares at me in silence as we pull out into the traffic. “You really love fucking me over, don’t you, Orsini?” he says at last.
After the phone call, when he asked why the hell Luca D’Amato was calling us in for an early morning meeting, and I explained about the Russian I killed, I expected a lot worse. Screaming. Threats. The usual. What I got was a long silence, and then Big Gee telling me he’d handle it.
Handle it. Like it was a parking ticket.
He was more worried about the meeting with the Morelli Boss. That’s what he was calling about in the first place, to tell me he was on his way to pick me up for a face-to-face with D’Amato.
“This Bratva thing,” he says now. “The guy was a degenerate and everyone knew it. Nobody’s going to start a war over that piece of shit.
” He leans forward, making Paulie shuffle sideways as he spreads his legs wider.
“No. That’s not why D’Amato called this meeting.
So tell me, you been treating that Clemenza kid right? ”
“The Clemenza’s grateful. He’s been telling me that the whole time.” I’m not going to tell Big Gee that the Clemenza is gone. Not yet. Because I’m watching his face, and what I see there isn’t anger. It’s fear. Big Gee is scared of Luca D’Amato, and that’s a problem. Fear makes men stupid.
“Yeah, well, he better keep telling everybody that.” Big Gee jabs a finger at me. “That whore of yours better be the most grateful little—”
“He’s not my whore,” I say fiercely, before I can stop myself. Big Gee’s eyebrows go up. The new guy coughs into his fist. I backtrack fast. “He’s an asset, Boss. That’s all. I got him under control.”
“You better,” Big Gee mutters. But he’s looking at me differently now, and I don’t like it. Big Gee’s been jumpy as a cat lately. Paranoid, even. Not without cause, I guess, given what I did last night at the Obelisk.
Maybe D’Amato has it in for us. Maybe that’s why Big Gee is looking so jittery.
If it feels like cement shoes are in my future, I’ll have to do something about it.
I’m not going down, not before I find that golden snake.
I can take out several men with my Beretta, and rely on my hands to do the rest.
But I’ll be on my own in the fight. Big Gee’s bodyguards will go down easy. In fact, it surprises me he didn’t call in…
“Seb Conti,” I say aloud. “He meeting us there, too?”
“Why the fuck do you ask?”
I shrug. “Just thought you might have invited him along, too. Or maybe D’Amato did.”
Big Gee’s eyes narrow. “Why? What you heard?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Boss.”
Big Gee says nothing more. He just sits back, crosses his arms, and watches me closely for the rest of the ride.
By the time we pull up in front of an old warehouse, I’m glad enough to get out first when ordered, to stretch my legs and take a look at the situation.
Parked nearby are a dark-windowed town car and a silver Mercedes, against which Nick Fontana is leaning.
He nods at me and I nod back, wondering again why Seb’s not here if the Morelli Underboss is.
The bodyguards come out after me, looking this way and that in a showy pretense at scanning for threats. Meatball has his hand on his holster like a kid playing cops and robbers. Big Gee clambers down behind them. Fontana strolls over and puts out his hand.
Fontana used to be one of us back in the day. A Giuliano. Look at him now, second in fucking command to Luca D’Amato. That’s the kind of Family the Morellis are. Rewarding rats and turncoats.
Big Gee shakes his hand, though, and grins away like he’s pleased to be here, because what the Clemenza said that one time is true: Big Gee is currently D’Amato’s bitch, and that means he has to play nice with Fontana, too. Treat him like an equal—to his face, anyway.
Fontana seems tired, and not particularly friendly, but there’s nothing murderous about him. He offers his hand to me, too, even though we’ve only ever said a few words to each other. “Orsini,” he says, looking me head to toe.
He’s sizing me up, I guess. Wondering how many bullets it would take to put me down. I take his hand cautiously. “Fontana.”
“Let’s go inside,” he says.
Big Gee and I glance at each other as he turns, thinking the same thing.
He didn’t pat us down. Didn’t even ask if we were armed.
I can see Big Gee’s shoulders relaxing, but I stay tight.
Who knows what we’re walking into? Might be a killing floor, and us having a couple of handguns won’t make a goddamn difference.
I follow Fontana first, and Big Gee trails after, surrounded by his bodyguards like a cloud of flies on shit.
It’s dark inside the warehouse, so it takes a second for my eyes to adjust. When they do, the first thing I see is the Morelli Boss, Luca D’Amato, with his back to the door as though he’s got no reason at all to watch it.
He’s leaning down to murmur into his husband’s ear, that cotton-candy-colored hair unmistakable.
They both turn to look at me, and when they take a step to the side, I stop dead in my tracks.
Caligula fucking Clemenza is standing there behind the two of them, back straight, hands behind it, chin up in that imperious goddamn way of his.
I forgot. In the hours I spent stomping around in the cold and smashing porcelain and driving through half of Manhattan, I forgot what it’s actually like to be in the same room as him. The pull of him. Like gravity gets heavier around him.
He looks me straight in the eye and gives a smile. “Dami!” he says brightly, moving forward a few steps. “I’m so relieved to see you. I was kidnapped off the street by—”
“Alright, that’s enough,” D’Amato drawls, lifting a hand, and the Clemenza stops moving and shuts his trap at once.
Something about his instant obedience to another man hits me wrong, that beast in my chest snarling and snapping. He didn’t obey me like that. Not even when I had him in chains. And now here he is, coming to heel for Luca fucking D’Amato.
Something of that must show in my face, because D’Amato is much less casual all of a sudden. “Thank you for coming,” he says in a clipped tone. “I wanted to clear up a few things.”
My eyes are glued to the Clemenza. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who sees his brows draw together, the slight warning shake of his head at me.
Big Gee walks around me like I’m an inconvenient pillar and offers his hand to Luca D’Amato. “No problem, D’Amato, no problem. I was a little surprised, can’t say I wasn’t, getting a call this damn early in the morning…” He trails off in a chuckle.
D’Amato doesn’t smile back. “Do you know who this is?” he asks, gesturing to the Clemenza.
Big Gee glances at him, uninterested. “Sure. It’s that Clemenza kid Orsini’s been looking after.”
“This is the heir to the Clemenza Family.”
“Sure. But…” Big Gee shrugs, a whole world of unsaid words in the gesture.
Sure, but he’s just a kid. Sure, but the Clemenzas are extinct. Sure, but the Clemenzas aren’t a consideration.
He doesn’t see what I see: that Luca D’Amato thinks they are a consideration. It occurs to me that he might have invited us here to watch him put the kid down, witness the true end of the Clemenza Family.
I’m not going to let that happen. The only person in this room with the right to do that is me, and I—
“Orsini,” D’Amato says. “I’m told you have a vendetta against the Clemenzas.”
I pull my attention off the snake at last and look at D’Amato. For years, I thought my vendetta was a secret. In the last few weeks, I’ve learned how far from the truth that was.
“I put a leash on Orsini,” Big Gee growls. “He’s not the one killing them.”
“I’d like to hear that from him,” D’Amato says mildly.
D’Amato’s husband is studying me, staring hard from my face down to my hands that haven’t unclenched since I walked in, to my legs locked in place like I’m a rooted tree. It’s unnerving, mostly because I don’t know what he’s looking for, and I don’t know what the Clemenza has told them.
“Orsini,” Big Gee snaps. “Tell the man what he wants to hear.”
“I’m not the one killing them,” I say after a pause.
“Not exactly a resounding rejection of the idea,” D’Amato says. “But it’s true you have a grudge?”
If I look at the Clemenza again, I might lose it, so I keep looking at D’Amato. “My father was murdered by Cesario Clemenza. His—” I flick a finger at him. “—father.”
“And yet,” pipes up Finch D’Amato, “you’ve offered the son protection? How does that work?”
None of your fucking business, I want to tell him. But I shrug instead. “There’s an order of protection out on the Clemenzas,” I say, my brain finally chugging out of the shock of seeing the one person I didn’t expect to see here. “This one was offering himself up at the Obelisk. So I bought him.”
“Listen to him. Not an ounce of shame,” Finch marvels with a smile.
“What does he have to be ashamed of?” Caligula asks sharply. “He’s the only man in New York who put his money where his mouth is and protected me.”
“And where has that mouth been since?” Finch holds up a hand as I give a jerk. “Bad joke. I apologize.”
“Baby bird,” D’Amato says, without looking at his husband, “this is business. Why don’t you…”
“I’ll wait over here,” Finch says. “I don’t get involved in business. Usually.” He winks at me and wanders about three feet away to lean against the metal shelving.
It just means I’ve got a clearer view of Caligula Clemenza, who hasn’t taken those golden eyes off of me.
“Mr. Clemenza asked me to call the two of you in,” D’Amato says. “After my people picked him up on the streets early this morning. He says you’ve been very kind, Orsini.” D’Amato’s tone suggests he thinks it’s more likely hell froze over.
He’s right, of course. But I know the game the Clemenza is playing. He hates the Morellis more than he hates me. He probably thinks he can slip away from me again, as long as he can talk his way out of Luca D’Amato’s hands.
“I wanted you both, Don Morelli and Don Giuliano, to know how honorable Dami has been,” the Clemenza announces in that snotty tone that drives me crazy. “He hated my father, but he doesn’t hold me responsible for my father’s sins. What reasonable man would, after all?”
I am going to kill this asshole so fucking hard once I get him out of here.
“Mr. Clemenza insists he wants to be released back into your care,” D’Amato goes on. “But I couldn’t do that without seeing for myself what kind of man you are, Orsini.”
I open my mouth to say something, and find nothing.
“He’s a good man,” Big Gee says at last. “He does what he’s told.”
“Is that what makes a good man?” D’Amato asks. “Rhetorical question,” he adds, when Big Gee starts blustering out a reply. He looks at me. “You’re telling me you’ve given up your vendetta?”
“You completely misunderstand our relationship, Don Morelli,” says the Clemenza. He pushes past D’Amato and practically runs at me, throwing his arms around my neck and then—
He’s kissing me. Full on the fucking mouth.
My arms go around him automatically, and the world shrinks down to the feel of him. His lips, his arms, his body winding around mine. He fits against me like he was cut to measure, perfect as a Lorenzo Benedetti suit.
I hear Big Gee make a noise of disgust from behind me, but D’Amato and his husband are watching me carefully, so I can’t fuck this up. I try to let Caligula go, and all he does is cling tighter and shove his tongue into my mouth. I pull him off my damn lips at last and try to make it look natural.
But he doesn’t pause there. He snuggles into me with a look of adoration and sends a brilliant smile back at D’Amato, whose face is unreadable.
“Oh, so you two are, like, a couple?” Finch breaks in. “How totally adorable.”
“I told you,” the Clemenza says, with that ice-cold bite I’ve come to expect from him sometimes. “You don’t understand our relationship.”
I mean, he’s right. Even I have no goddamn clue what’s going on, except that the Clemenza is playing every man in this room. And even though all of us know it, he’s getting away with it.
Despite telling his husband to stay out of things, D’Amato turns to him, eyebrows raised. Finch gives him a nod, and D’Amato sighs. “Alright, then. I will allow Caligula Clemenza to leave here with you, Orsini. But I want your word—your word to me—that you’ll protect him.”
“I…” The Clemenza’s spit is still all over my lips, and I have to fight the urge to wipe my mouth down. “I give you my word, Don Morelli. I’ll protect him.”
I’ll protect him from anyone else who wants to kill him. But only because I plan to do it myself.
Luca D’Amato nods, and I take a step back, pulling the Clemenza with me.
“Before you go,” Finch says with a sugar-sweet smile, “I just want a word with Cal. In private.”
From around my neck, the Clemenza’s arms reluctantly disengage. I have to fight the instinct to grab him back. “You don’t mind waiting a moment, do you, Dami?” he asks.
For the first time, I give a smile, though it feels more like a snarl. “I don’t mind at all.”
Waiting is my forte, after all. I waited long enough to get my hands on Caligula Clemenza in the first place. I can wait another few minutes for Finch D’Amato to whisper in his ear.
But once we’re alone again, no power on earth is going to stop me choking the life out of that son of a bitch.