Chapter 20
DAMIANO
It’s like that for the next few nights. I try to stay away, telling myself every night that I’ll keep to the guest room, or even go to the basement.
But once that itch starts, I have to scratch it. I end up back in that bed with him every night, finding new ways to torture him, new ways to reduce him into a mewling mess just begging me to let him come.
And I never do.
It’s the only control Caligula Clemenza will allow me right now, and even the fury of knowing that doesn’t make me want to let go of it. I hate him. I want him. I take it all out on him, and he submits to it all.
Come Friday, the day we know where Tony Stuccio is going to be, he summons me to the bedroom in the early evening. I stop dead at the sight of him when I walk in.
He’s all dressed up like we’re going out to dinner.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask. “We’re going to work, not eat.”
“Why can’t we do both? Maison Lumière is a very fine restaurant. They have a steak au poivre that I bet you’ll enjoy.”
“We don’t have a reservation.”
He just smiles. “We won’t need one, Dami. Now, be a good guard dog and get dressed.”
I pull on one of the Lorenzo Benedetti shirts and a pair of dress pants I’ve worn once. The Clemenza looks me over with a critical eye but doesn’t say a word.
Vito drops us at the restaurant in the Flatiron District and I fully expect to be turned away at the door. But I should have known. The moment Caligula Clemenza walks in, the ma?tre d’ practically sprints across the floor.
“It is so good to see you again!” The French accent is thick with genuine delight. He probably sees a huge tip coming, courtesy of yours fucking truly.
“Your usual seat, of course,” he goes on.
This restaurant is the kind of place I’ve never been and was never meant to be. Candlelight everywhere, giving the place its name, crystal glasses catching the tiny flames, a hum of conversation so refined it sounds like music. The fucking silverware is heavier than my first gun.
“Same as you remember it?” I ask as we’re seated.
He looks around the room instead of at me, his eyes looking a little shiny. “My father and Nonna used to take me here sometimes,” he says at last. “I always got the crème caramel for dessert.”
“Yeah? Well maybe you wanna order dessert first, since we’ll have to bolt after we put the hard word on your uncle.”
That gets his attention back on me, cold and hard. “He’s not my uncle. He’s a traitor and a coward.”
I grin. “Can’t trust your blood. Can’t trust your friends, either. Sounds to me like you got no one left, golden boy.”
“That’s not true,” he says softly. “I have you, Dami.”
I’m so taken aback, I can’t think of a response, but the waiter arrives before it becomes obvious.
The steak is the only thing on the menu that looks decent, so I order that, while Caligula talks to him in French, fluid and easy.
And in the middle of ordering wine from the sommelier, he turns to me with that sugar-sweet voice and asks, “What do you think, Dami?”
I just shrug. “Whatever’s good.”
Because we’re not here to experience three Michelin stars. We’re here to get a lead, and this spoiled little prince can’t seem to focus on the prize.
I’m starting to feel exactly like I felt at the opera, that night I was ordered to take him there and show him off. Caligula Clemenza is in his element and I’m a pitbull someone put a bowtie on.
But there’s something different about him tonight.
He’s not performing, not like he was at the opera.
He’s just…relaxed. When the food comes out, I see what I missed in all the French, which is that he ordered the same thing as me.
And he eats that pepper steak with genuine pleasure.
I find myself watching his mouth instead of the room, and have to snap out of it. Remind myself why we’re here.
It’s close to nine when Tony Stuccio finally arrives. He’s seated across the restaurant with a woman I assume is not his wife, because she’s flirting hard, reaching over to stroke his hand now and then, smiling suggestively.
“How do you suggest we do this, Dami?” Caligula asks. “You’re the expert, after all.”
“He’s slogging down enough wine that he’ll need to piss eventually,” I say. “I’ll go check out the bathroom, make sure it’s private enough to do the job—if you can manage not to get assassinated in the next few minutes.”
“I’ll do my best,” he says acerbically.
The bathroom is down a long corridor, with a thick, heavy door that makes it practically soundproof. Perfect. On the way back, I get the attention of the waiter and give him some instructions.
Caligula is still waiting at the table, eyes on Tony Stuccio.
We sit there a while, trying not to watch our mark too obviously.
We don’t make small talk. I doubt there could be any such thing between us.
All Caligula does is snipe or strategize.
Words are his weapons, but he’s keeping them sheathed for now.
And then the server brings over a crème caramel for the Clemenza, telling him I ordered it for him. It’s almost comical how astonished Caligula looks.
But I can’t laugh, because he drops his eyes fast, trying to hide a sheen in them.
He picks up the spoon, slides it into the custard, and takes a mouthful.
And then he smiles, but it’s a painful smile.
“Try some,” he says, offering me the spoon.
I take it from him, uncomfortably aware that he thinks I’ve done something nice for him.
I just wanted to hurt him a little more. Twist the knife in his family’s absence.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself when I ordered it.
The sauce is a light gold, and it reminds me of the color of his eyes. I dig into it with his spoon, mostly just so I can taste something that’s been in his mouth. As much as I hate him, I still want him.
I wish I could figure that out.
“It’s good,” I say in surprise around my mouthful.
He grins. “Of course it’s good.”
But I put the spoon down and give an up-nod. “Our mark is moving.”
We give Stuccio a thirty-second start, and then we head after him. When we get into the bathroom, Stuccio’s at a urinal but doesn’t glance over.
I come up behind him and shove his head into the tiled wall.
Caligula stays at the door, which opens a few seconds after us, and he shoves it closed, saying “Cleaning,” briefly to the man who tried to enter.
Then he wedges his heel up against the door and stands against it so that no one else can come in.
Meanwhile, Stuccio is already stammering out threats and bluster, his dick dribbling all over his pants.
“Hello, Uncle Tony,” Caligula says. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“What do you want?” he gasps out.
“Information. That’s all. And as long as you give it to me, you won’t get hurt.”
“I don’t owe you or your Family any more favors,” Stuccio insists, as though it’ll make any difference.
“I’m not here for a favor. I’m collecting a debt.
My father was your friend. He trusted you with everything, but when I needed you the most, you turned your back on me.
” He says it all cold as ice, and then pauses to let it sink in.
“You’re not stupid enough to think that it wouldn’t come back to bite you, surely? ”
It doesn’t seem to matter that Caligula is halfway across the bathroom. Stuccio is still terrified of him. Even more terrified than he is of me, and I’m the one pressing his face harder and harder into the tile. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
“Where is my cousin Tiberius Vicario living these days?”
“I have no idea!”
“But you told my friend here that Tiberius was next in line after me. Surely you did your due diligence and found an address for him after someone started killing off my kin?”
“Why would I? You’re still alive,” he protests.
“Then I guess you’d better get looking,” Caligula says with a smile that should freeze the blood in Tony Stuccio’s veins. “Because I need that information—and you’re the man who’s going to get it for me.”
Oh, he’s Nonno Lou’s grandson, alright. This kid might be a twenty-one-year-old virgin who never got involved, never got his hands dirty, but if I don’t watch it…
He’s going to rise again.
“I’ll find him,” Stuccio promises, voice quivering. “I’ll find him for you.”
“See that you do,” Caligula says, as I pull Stuccio’s phone from his pocket and make him open it.
I call one of my burners so we have his number.
“Because if you don’t, Uncle Tony, or if you try to go to the Feds about this, we’ll have to pay you a visit again.
And as delightful as our conversations have been so far, I don’t think you want to see me a third time. ”
I pull Tony off the wall and shove him away. “Get out of here,” I growl at him.
“But wash your hands first, Uncle Tony,” Caligula adds. “Hygiene is so important.”
He watches Stuccio wash his shaking hands and dry them, and then warily approach the door.
“One week, Uncle Tony,” the Clemenza says politely, opening the door for him. “If I haven’t heard from you by then—” He breaks off and shakes his head sadly.
Stuccio practically sprints out the door.
“I hope he remembered to put his dick away before he went back out there,” Caligula says after he’s gone, a gleam in his eye.
He enjoys this. He might like having me do his dirty work for him, but he enjoys having power. Wielding it over others.
“Well, we have a crème caramel waiting for us out there,” he goes on cheerfully.
But I’m looking at him, standing there in his expensive suit, flush with the thrill of making a grown man shake.
And I think about how good he’d look on his knees right now, that poisonous mouth wrapped around my cock, those golden eyes looking up at me while I fucked his throat raw in this fancy bathroom.
I think about how he’d take it, too. How he’d open up and swallow me down and moan around my dick like the greedy little thing he is.
My cock is already half-hard at the thought.
“Get on your knees,” I tell him.
His eyes go wide, that pretty blush starting up in his cheeks. “Dami, someone will come in.”
“I said get on your knees.”
He does it. Drops right down on that polished tile floor without another word of protest, looking up at me with his lips already parted, and the sight of it hits me so hard I have to grab the edge of the sink.
Caligula Clemenza, on his knees in a public bathroom, waiting for me. For whatever I want to give him.
I could do it. He wants me to. I can see it in his face, in the way his eyes are warm gold as he waits for me to command him.
But something stops me. Maybe it’s the crème caramel, still sweet on my tongue. Maybe it’s the way he said I have you, Dami. Maybe it’s the memory of my hand on the back of his head last night, cradling him.
Whatever it is, I find myself hesitating.
I walk around him to the exit. “Stay there,” I tell him. “Wait until the next person comes through that door and sees you like this, on your knees on the bathroom floor. Then you can come back to the table.”
His mouth falls open. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“What if an assassin—”
“You trust me to keep you safe or not?” I stare at him until he drops his eyes. And then I walk out.
Back in the dining room, Stuccio and his date are gone. I pay the bill and have another spoonful of the crème caramel, and think about what I just did. Wonder why I didn’t take what was on offer.
And I don’t take my eyes off the corridor to that bathroom.
Five minutes later I see some ninety-year-old totter down it, and a few seconds later, the Clemenza reappears, composed as always. There’s a tight look around his eyes, though. Fury, maybe.
“Enjoy yourself?” I ask.
“Immensely,” he says, ice on every syllable.
I grin. He glares. And when he moves to sit, I see he’s hard in his pants.
I still haven’t let him come.
“Finish up,” I say, pushing the dessert over to him. He does, chasing the silky custard around the plate. And I watch him suck on the spoon with each mouthful.
That could have been me he was sucking on.
I text Vito to bring the car around, and in turning on my phone, I discover I’ve also got a missed call and a voice message from Seb Conti.
As soon as we get into the car, the Clemenza starts babbling about strategy, contingencies about how we might track this cousin of his down if Stuccio doesn’t deliver—but I’m not listening.
I’ve put in an earbud and I’m listening instead to Seb’s message.
He’s done some digging.
“The Morellis never threatened your people,” he says. “I sat down with Nick Fontana over a beer tonight, and…”
I let the message play and then I play it again, just to make sure I’m hearing it right.
I did. I heard it perfectly clear.
The Clemenza lied. Manipulated me. Like he always does.
I take the earbud out and glance over at him. He’s oblivious, still talking, going on about some broad in Italy we could call if Stuccio doesn’t pan out.
I remember every time he jerked that chain around my neck by invoking the names of my household. The demands he made.
The threats.
He notices at last, and asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Keep talking.”
And after a pause, he does. Because he doesn’t know the ground just opened up beneath him.
I watch the city slide past the window while he talks and strategizes and plans. The Clemenza is still under Morelli protection. But my people are safe. They were always safe, and as long as they’re protected, I don’t care what happens to me. I’ve been ready to die since I was thirteen.
I look back to the Clemenza, who’s quiet at last, those golden eyes thoughtful and shining in the city lights.
You should’ve stayed gone, golden boy, I tell him silently.
Because when we get home, I’ll take him back into that basement empire of his, and do what I should have done long ago.