Chapter 7
DAMIANO
I’m lucky Fontana’s ride is so smooth, because I’m distracted by the view of the Clemenza in the back seat. I have to fight to keep my eyes on the road, and force my hands, white-knuckled on the steering wheel, to turn with the road.
Soon these hands will be around a golden-skinned throat, and I’ll be able to put everything behind me. Because I’m ready to finish this. Finish the journey I started at thirteen years old.
Once I kill Caligula Clemenza, my own death will follow fast.
I’m okay with that. I’m tired of living. Tired of having every thought tangled up with that snake in the seat behind me. I wouldn’t put it past him to push a stiletto into my spine if he could, but the woman next to him is keeping a close eye on him under cover of chattering.
And the Clemenza is chattering back, ignoring me completely, even though he knows I keep looking at him.
There’s been a lot of talk over the last year about the Morellis letting a woman into their ranks.
Talk and laughs, but I know Nick Fontana wouldn’t have anyone working for him who wasn’t lethal.
So if the Clemenza thinks he can charm Sophia Vicente—granddaughter of a renowned Morelli Capo—he’s gonna find himself shit out of luck.
“I hope you didn’t get too knocked around,” Vicente is saying.
“Not at all,” Caligula replies graciously. “You were very professional.”
“Thanks,” she says. “First time. Next time it’ll go smoother.”
He actually laughs. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Fontana, next to me, is silent. He’s staring straight ahead but in that focused way that tells me he’s actually watching me. Making sure I don’t take a suicide run off the bridge.
I’m gripping the wheel so hard the leather is creaking, thinking about the exact pressure it takes to crush a human windpipe, and the Clemenza is making friends with the woman who kidnapped him.
He could charm the devil out of his pitchfork.
That’s what makes him so dangerous. That’s what makes him—
My eyes go back to the mirror, and for the first time, the Clemenza meets my gaze. I have to jerk back into the lane when I realize I’m drifting.
“You okay, Orsini?” Fontana asks at once.
“Fine,” I snarl back. “Don’t worry, I won’t scratch up your car.”
“It’s Carlo’s,” he says, referring to his lawyer boyfriend, a smarmy shark that I’ve only seen from a distance. “And believe me, you don’t want to be on the end of that mouth when he’s pissed.”
I’ve got a bitchy mouth of my own to worry about right there in the back of the car. I wonder what he spilled to the Morellis? Well, it doesn’t matter much. Once we’re alone in my house, I’ll silence him forever, then sit down and wait for death to arrive on my doorstep.
Funny how I don’t feel much when I think about that. I’ll have fulfilled my life’s purpose. Everything I’ve been working toward.
Won’t have anything left driving me once that’s done.
Fontana shifts in his seat. “I guess your new Boss is pretty much the same as the old. Doesn’t like the queers much, does he?”
He keeps his voice low enough that the back seat can’t hear over Vicente’s chatter. I don’t respond, because what the hell is there to say? And I’m not going to badmouth the Boss to a Morelli asshole.
“We never crossed paths when I was working for the Giulianos,” Fontana goes on. “But we would’ve been just starting out. Worked different crews, I guess. And I wasn’t with the Gees all that long.”
“Yeah,” I scoff. “You got a better offer.”
“You know how it happened?” I don’t answer.
“They beat the shit out of me,” Fontana goes on, like he’s talking about the weather.
“My so-called brothers. And they set me up for a stretch inside. Framed me. I’d still be rotting in there if Carlo hadn’t shown up, sent by the old Don, Tino Morelli.
He sent his best lawyer to get a Giuliano nobody out of jail.
A man I’d never met did more for me than the Family I’d bled for. ”
I can believe it. But things are different under Big Gee. His own brother is gay, and he made Seb his Underboss, same level as Fontana. “Times have changed,” I say abruptly. “Big Gee’s cool with his brother, and he’s cool with me, too.”
“In my experience, the Giulianos don’t stay cool for long.”
“What is this?” I ask derisively. “A recruitment drive?”
“Just a friendly heads-up.”
I snort. “I appreciate the concern. But I know what I’m doing.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought, too.”
We ride the rest of the way in silence, the city scrolling past outside the tinted windows. Gray buildings, gray sky, the first real cold of the season sitting heavy over the gray river. The Clemenza’s laugh drifts up from the back seat at something Vicente says.
I tighten my grip on the wheel and think about my father.
At last I pull up to the curb at the front of the house, and Fontana and I get out. So does Vicente.
And the Clemenza just sits there patiently until I open his fucking door for him.
“Thank you, Dami,” he says with that sickening smile. And then he slides his arm into mine and looks up at me with an adoring face.
Oh, I’m going to enjoy killing him.
“Let’s go in,” I say, pulling him around the car and under the portico. Fontana is standing on the sidewalk staring up at my house, taking in the security shutters over every window and door, the reinforced frames, the cameras.
“How the fuck do you get in?” he mutters, almost to himself.
“You don’t,” I tell him. “Unless I want you in.”
He grins. “That’s not an invitation, I take it. Still, I’ll wait here until you get inside. Boss’s orders.”
Vicente raises a hand in farewell to the Clemenza. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she says.
“Oh,” he responds blankly. “Right. Happy Thanksgiving.”
Like me, he forgot all about it. We’ve been too busy with each other over the last couple of weeks to even think about Turkey Day. And the only thing I’ll be giving thanks for this year is the opportunity to kill this fucker before I die myself.
I pull him down the few steps under the portico. Shuffles has disappeared, thankfully. The Clemenza smiles and snuggles up close. “Hurry up, Dami,” he coos. “It’s chilly.”
He’ll be colder when he’s dead. I stab my finger down on the panel and the steel door slides smoothly up, revealing the front door, which has also automatically unlocked. I push open the door. “After you,” I tell him. He waltzes in.
I turn to Fontana and raise a hand, relieved that this is almost over. “Be seeing you.”
“Better hope you don’t,” he says. “But you think about what I said, Orsini.”
I give a contemptuous smile. “Safe travels.”
The two of them get back in the car, though the look on the Morelli Underboss’s face is troubled. He can hardly demand to come in and chaperone forever, though. I watch the car drive away and breathe in the cold air, thinking about my father.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Dad,” I mutter under my breath. Christmas would be more appropriate, since I’m about to give him a gift.
I head into my house and pull the heavy door shut behind me, then hit the code for the security shutter to slam down again.
I turn to look at the Clemenza. He’s standing in front of the fireplace, holding his hands out to it, the light from the flames catching the line of his jaw and turning his hair to dark gold.
For a second, I just look at him. In my house, in my foyer, warming himself at my fire. Acting like he belongs here.
I’m about to move toward him, but there are footsteps in the side hallway. A moment later, Rosa appears, and stops dead at the sight of Caligula Clemenza once more in the house.
She glances at me before letting out a quick flood of Italian and hurrying forward. “Where have you been all morning?” she scolds him. “You need to eat! You missed breakfast.”
Before I can stop her, she’s hustling him back down the corridor toward the kitchen.
I follow, tamping down the anger. He’s wriggled his way into her favor somehow, in the way of all Clemenza snakes. In the kitchen, he shrugs off his coat and she makes him sit at the counter, where she fixes him an espresso, and gets together a bagel for him like she made for Shuffles.
He wolfs it down, and I hope he’s enjoying his last meal.
That damn turkey is still sitting on the countertop in its ice container. “I thought I told you to get rid of that,” I say.
Rosa doesn’t even look at me as she says, “Sammy will take it out later.”
The Clemenza looks at the turkey in between bites. “Why would you want to get rid of it, Dami?” he asks.
I don’t reply.
He finally turns on his barstool to face me. “I think Thanksgiving dinner is a great idea. Don’t you?”
And then, with the worst timing possible, Sammy comes wandering in and pulls up hard at the sight of the Clemenza sitting there once more.
Rosa bustles over to him before he can open his mouth. “Take that bird to the local food bank,” she says.
“Huh?”
“The turkey,” she repeats. “Remove it.”
But the Clemenza pipes up. “Surely we’re going to celebrate Thanksgiving, Dami.”
The idea begins to appeal. Killing the hell out of this asshole and then sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal with the rest of the household. One last time gathered together before the Morellis come for me.
“Sure,” I say. “Cook the bird, Rosa. We can give the leftovers out, too. Share the wealth.”
“Share the wealth,” Caligula repeats with a smile.
“You’re always so generous, Dami. I like that about you.
” He pushes his plate away and turns back to Rosa.
“That was delicious. Thank you.” It’s the first sincere thing I’ve heard him say since I saw him standing in that warehouse behind a Morelli shield.
“Dami, we should talk. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Rosa pensively watches the Clemenza get up from the counter and take up his coat, slinging it casually over his arm before walking toward me.
“Get on with your work,” I tell her. And then I turn and lead the way back to the foyer.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” the Clemenza says. “For a little privacy.”
I wave a hand in an after you gesture, and he goes ahead of me up the stairs. I watch him as we climb, his hand trailing along the banister, the set of his shoulders in a sweater that I bought for him.
The main staircase winds around a central void, all the way from the ground floor to the top, and the banister is wrought iron with a polished oak rail.
On the fifth-floor landing, the Clemenza turns to look back at me, and his face is open in a way I haven’t seen before.
Like he’s about to say something soft and sweet.
Something manipulative.
I grab him before he can get a word out. Two hands on the front of his sweater, hauling him up and back, slamming him onto the railing so he’s sitting on it with forty feet of nothing behind him. The coat falls away from his arm, flapping and floating like a large bird all the way to the bottom.
He’s not going to float. He’ll drop like a stone.
“You think those Morelli fucks can save you now?” I ask. “Let’s see if they’re fast enough to catch your fall.”