Chapter 8
CALIGULA
My head spins as Damiano Orsini tips me backward into a void, and I grab onto his arms, clutching and scratching as a primitive terror takes hold.
Far below me, the foyer yawns open like a mouth.
I can see the edge of the fireplace where I warmed my hands when I came in, the geometric pattern of the tiles shrunk to the size of postage stamps.
“Wait!” I gasp. “If you kill me, the Morellis will come for you!”
He just pushes me further off-balance, his dark eyes empty of mercy. I see now where I messed up. I trusted too much in the hold I would have over him.
I trusted that he’d value keeping his own life over taking mine.
But the man glaring down at me as he dangles me into space is not a man who’s thinking about his own life anymore. I can’t save myself by appealing to his self-interest, because he has none left.
His only interest is in killing me.
If I can’t think of something he values more than killing me in the next split second, I’ll be falling to my death still wondering about it.
He’s loyal. Loyal to the death.
That’s his weakness.
“Rosa,” I gasp out. “Vito. Sammy.” For an instant, he pauses. “They’ll die, too.”
It’s not my imagination. He really has stopped. He’s listening.
“When Finch D’Amato pulled me aside in the warehouse,” I pant, “he told me to let you know your whole household would be forfeit if you hurt me. Not just you.”
He’s thinking about it. But then he sneers. “Why tell you and not me?”
He leans forward and I find myself at the most precarious angle yet. “Because he wanted to give me an ace up my sleeve,” I yelp, wrapping up the lie in a truth. “If I needed it.”
Damiano Orsini has always called me a liar. Why shouldn’t I lie now to save my own skin? I don’t think for a second that the Morellis would ever go after his household, but he does. That’s all that matters.
Uncertainty makes him pause again. And then I’m lifted, turned, and slammed against the opposite wall, practically hyperventilating with relief—until a thick hand wraps around my throat.
Not squeezing. Just holding. His palm is hot against my windpipe, his fingers curling around the sides of my neck, and my body reacts because the last time his hand was here, he was inside me, and he held my throat just like this while he whispered filth into my ear, and my hips bucked as he—
“If you ever,” Damiano roars right into my face, “send the Morellis after them—”
“I won’t,” I croak out, grabbing at his wrist. Somewhere in me there’s a signal firing that shouldn’t be firing, a dark and forbidden desire.
He throws me aside, tosses me across the landing, so that I land in a heap on the floor. I drag myself a few feet down the corridor, watching Damiano carefully, making sure I get well away from those stairs.
Damiano is pacing back and forth, so much fury in him that he can’t stand still. I get to my feet, rubbing my throat.
I knew there’d be a reckoning when we got back to his house. But I underestimated how much I’d stripped from him. Didn’t realize he wouldn’t care about his own life, as long as he could take mine.
That was almost a catastrophic error.
It irks me that Finch D’Amato was right. I did need an extra bargaining chip. And I’m just lucky I found the right one before this particular tiger, whose tail I’m tugging on, bit my head off.
Finch was right about something else, too: I still need to learn some tricks. This is another lesson I won’t forget. Push a man too far, and he won’t care what happens to him. If he has no other anchors to this life, if he believes he’s lost everything, you have no power over him.
Dami has very few people he gives a shit about. But his loyalty to them runs deeper than his hatred of me.
Nausea rises again at the cold recognition of what I just did.
What came naturally to me. I used his loyalty as a weapon.
Pointed it at innocent people like a loaded gun.
Exactly what my grandfather did a thousand times over—used human beings as shields, as leverage, as expendable pieces on a board.
Nonno Lou never hesitated to threaten someone’s family to get what he wanted.
I always told myself I was different from him.
“Why did you come back here?” Damiano demands, stopping mid-pace.
I’m leaning up against the wall, my knees still trembling from such a close brush with death. “I didn’t get far before the Morellis grabbed me. So whether I like it or not, Dami, you’re my only chance.”
“I will kill you,” he says quietly. “I will find a way to keep Rosa and Vito and Sammy safe, and then I will kill you.”
“Fine. But in the meantime, you still need to keep me safe.” I straighten my clothes and deliver the reality check. “Finch D’Amato expects daily texts from me. And your own Boss saw me kiss you. He thinks your heart got in the way of things.”
He scoffs. “What heart?”
“You need me alive for now, Dami. But more than that, you need me happy. Because if I tell Finch D’Amato anything other than how wonderfully you’re treating me…well, you know what will happen to your people.”
There it is again. My grandfather’s voice coming out of my mouth, so easily.
He lunges toward me, and I slide back against the wall, wary. But I need him to understand. Understand and accept. “Things are going to change around here,” I announce. “You will do what I tell you. And in return, I won’t destroy your household.”
He stalks over, grabs me by the shoulders, and slams me back against the wall, a reminder of how much weaker I am.
Physically, anyway.
If I’m going to get this creature under control, I can’t show fear. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, Dami.” I look up at him from beneath my lashes and slide a hand up his chest. “You want to hurt me. But that’s not the only thing you want, is it?”
He hasn’t moved. Hasn’t slapped my hand away. So I run my other hand up his chest as well, where I feel his heart beating as fast as mine. His pupils dilate even as I watch them. And as much as I hate it, I feel it too: that sick pull between us, the spark that neither one of us can control.
He shoves me back into the wall again, but not with his hands—with his hips. He’s pressed up against my crotch, and I’m rising up on my tiptoes, pinned there where he wants me.
I’m getting hard.
No. Not getting. I’ve been hard through this whole exchange, just wasn’t aware enough to register it. From the moment he grabbed me and pushed me over the banister, I’ve been hard for him.
There’s something terribly wrong with me. There must be, to find such things exciting.
But he’s hard, too.
And as he begins grinding into me, slow and deliberate, all those thoughts die away in the feel of it.
I feel every thick inch of him dragging against me through the layers of our clothing.
He braces one forearm against the wall beside my head, his breath hot against my temple, and uses the other hand to grip my hip hard enough to bruise, keeping me exactly where he wants me while he rolls into me in a familiar rhythm.
I grip his shoulders and hold on. He shifts his angle and my breath falters.
“Look at me,” he growls, and I do, but that’s worse, because his eyes are black and furious. “I hate you. I hate you, do you hear me?”
“Hate me harder,” I gasp out.
He does, grinding into me, pinning me tight against the wall, and I wrap one leg around the back of his thigh to pull him closer.
His hand slides from my hip around to the small of my back, and for one unguarded second, his forehead drops against mine.
We’re breathing together, mouths almost touching, rolling in a slow and relentless dance while the heat builds between us like a fever.
I’m right on the edge.
Then he grabs my face. “Open your fucking mouth.”
It falls open, obedient and hopeful. Maybe he wants me to—
He spits straight into my mouth, then slaps his hand over my lips until I swallow it down, looking up into his ravenous eyes.
And then he shoves me to the floor again, glaring at me while I think about the fact that two hours ago I was calling myself the Clemenza Boss and spitting at Luca D’Amato’s feet.
“Look at you,” he scoffs. “You’d sell your own damn soul if you thought it’d be to your advantage.”
“I told you before, Dami,” I pant out, still hard even now. “I’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Right down to sucking your dick.”
“And using innocent people as a shield. You’re exactly like your grandfather. A snake, through and through.”
There’s so much disgust in his face, and he echoes my own thoughts so neatly, that it makes my conscience twinge again. Because of course I wouldn’t offer up Rosa or Vito or Sammy as collateral for me. They’ve done nothing wrong. They are, as Damiano says, innocents.
But I’ve done nothing wrong, either, except to get born into the wrong Family. And the big difference between Nonno Lou and me is that my threats are empty.
“You can’t blame a snake for doing what comes naturally,” I hear myself say.
But snakes shed their skins. They become something new, and the old skin is left behind, transparent and hollow, a ghost of what they were.
Will I shed my grandfather’s skin? Or am I growing into it?
“I’m going to take a shower in your rooms,” I go on, getting to my feet.
“And then I’m going to take a nap. While I’m here, you will sleep elsewhere.
And I don’t want to see you until tomorrow, when all of us will gather for Thanksgiving dinner in the formal dining room.
Tell Rosa to set things up there, would you? Five places.”
“Tell her yourself,” he snaps, and stalks off.
I let him go. No point yanking too hard on that choke chain just yet. He’ll learn. I’ll make sure of it.
Even if I don’t entirely like what I’m becoming in the process.
I lock the bedroom door, even though it wouldn’t keep out a determined Damiano Orsini.
Then I strip and stand under the shower for a long time, letting the water run as hot as I can stand it.
The tiles are cool against my back when I lean against them, and my mind goes right where I don’t want it to go: the last time I was in this shower.
Dami’s hands bracing against these tiles.
The sound he made when he pushed inside me.
Yesterday afternoon. It was only yesterday. Before the cold slap of reality reminded me that I can’t trust anyone, least of all the man who bought me at auction. Whatever was growing between us, he uprooted it himself.
I fall into bed naked and exhausted. The covers smell like him, and I wish that scent wasn’t so comforting.
I drift off and sleep for several hours, and when I wake, I’m looking at the bio-locked door on the other side of the room.
The surveillance room, I assume. Where he watched me, hour after hour, while I was chained in the basement below.
I’ll have to get Dami to show me what’s in there.
I want to see how he sees me, because understanding his obsession is the only way to control it.
But first, Damiano Orsini needs another lesson.
I dress in clothes he bought for me and wander into the dining room to make my plans for tomorrow. But when I get there, I stop in the doorway.
The floor is covered with shattered china, and a congealed breakfast buffet sits on the credenza, the eggs crusted over and the coffee a cold black mirror in its pot.
What in the world…
I crouch to look more closely at the shards and, with lightheaded nausea, recognize them.
It’s Nonna Mellie’s china. The special set she kept for celebrations.
I’d know that hand-painted pattern anywhere—the pale blue flowers with gold rims, the delicate scrollwork she told me was done by an artist in our home village.
I pick up a piece the size of a half-dollar. There’s half a blue flower on it, the gold rim still intact.
I’m a little unsteady getting to my feet, and only after a few moments do I realize I’m not alone. I turn quickly to see Rosa in the doorway, her hands crumpling and smoothing her apron over and over.
“It was an accident,” she says in a low voice. “He told me to leave it, so I…” She comes forward nervously.
“I’ll clear it,” I say abruptly. I don’t want Damiano blaming her for disobeying.
But the sharpness in my voice makes Rosa flinch, and I hear myself—hear the command in it, the snap—and it sounds too much like someone else.
“Perhaps you could clear away the food,” I go on, with an effort to sound calmer. “And I’ll take care of this.”
Most of the pieces are beyond retrieval.
They’re either too tiny or too sharp to pick up, or they’re literally dust. But I manage to get together a small amount of coin-sized pieces.
I don’t even know why I’m gathering them; it’s beyond salvageable.
But I can’t bear to throw away Nonna Mellie’s best china without at least trying.
I know exactly what happened. Or at least, I can guess. Not knowing what happened during the night, Rosa laid out the Clemenza china this morning in a gesture of goodwill toward me. And when Dami saw it, he destroyed it.
Knowing that, I’m surprised anything of it survived at all.
I’m surprised I survived. He wanted to smash me into the ground this morning, just like the china. The only reason I’m kneeling here instead of lying broken on the foyer floor is because I used the people he loves as a shield.
Rosa brings me a Ziploc bag to put the pieces in. “If we’re eating in here tomorrow,” she says, still sounding nervous, “I should make sure to vacuum.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate with cooking the whole meal?” I give a humorless laugh. “Probably the wrong metaphor. But you know what I mean.”
She puts a hand on my arm and says, “It’s good for him to have you here. Despite everything, I think it is good.”
It will be good once I have him under control again. And to do that, I’ll need to face up to my own fears. I can’t show an ounce of weakness.
I hand the bag full of broken china pieces to her. “Trash this,” I tell her. “It’s beyond saving.”