Chapter 29
CALIGULA
I meet Dami in the kitchen the next morning after breakfast in bed.
Rosa is there as usual, cooking something delicious on the stove, and Vito is drinking coffee at the counter.
Sammy is nowhere to be seen. Dami barely glances my way and doesn’t echo Rosa’s good morning; he just tells Vito to bring one of the town cars around to the front.
Last night he told me I belong to him still. Then he slept in the guest room. This morning he can’t even look at me.
I have no idea what’s going on in that head of his. But then, I barely know what’s going on in mine.
“Maybe you should drive,” I suggest while we wait in the foyer. “It could be dangerous for Vito.”
“Vito can look after himself. Besides, I need my hands free,” he tells me briefly.
I have a flash of those hands pushing me down on a saggy sofa. Ripping my shirt open. Rubbing olive oil over my asshole—
I close my eyes. When I open them, Dami is watching me with an unreadable expression.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing. Car’s here. Let’s go.”
In the car, I try to think about Tiberius, but my thoughts keep evaporating like smoke. Every bump in the road sends a reminder through my body—not pain, not quite, but a deep tenderness that pulls my attention away from strategy and back to last night. Back to the sofa. Back to the oil.
And it gives me a secret thrill every time I feel that ache.
Vito turns onto a lush, beautiful block in Gramercy Park, driving further down toward the garden that gives this area its name.
Since Tiberius lives in this area, he’ll be one of the fortunate few to have a key to that private park.
That privilege doesn’t suggest someone scraping together cash for a few cut-rate assassins.
“When was the last time you saw this cousin of yours?” Damiano asks.
“I’ve never met him in person. Even at the auction, he was in the shadows.
But I’ve seen him in photos, years ago. And I do know a few things about him.
They say he’s very charming, very…” I search for the right word.
“Continental. I don’t know why he’s in New York again.
He grew up all over the place. Italy. Spain.
Monaco. New York for a while. But after Carmine Vicario’s death, he disappeared. ”
“Here we are,” is all Damiano replies. We’ve pulled up in front of a gorgeous townhouse overlooking the park.
It’s red brick with black shutters and a fanlight over the front door.
The park that gives the area its name sits opposite, enclosed by an iron fence, and through the bare tree branches I can make out a statue standing in its center.
I’m about to meet a blood relative. One who might want me dead just as much as the rest of this city seems to. But I can’t stop the desperate hope that he’ll prove friend rather than foe.
Because I’ve ruined any chance I might have had to be a part of Dami’s household of odds and ends.
“When we get in there, you stick close to me,” Damiano says, putting a hand on the back of my neck as though to make sure I’m paying attention to him. “If this guy was trying to buy you, maybe he’s been trying to kill you, too.”
“It does seem to be a common thread among those who want to own me,” I agree.
His fingers comb through the hairs at the nape of my neck. “And this time, if I tell you to run, you run in the opposite direction. You hear me?”
“I can’t promise anything, Dami. It was instinct.”
He shakes his head. “We’ll work on that.
And I’m out first,” he reminds me. “Always.” With that, he gets out of the car.
Whatever he sees must meet with his approval, because he comes around to open the door for me and pulls me out.
His hand stays on my arm as we head up the small walkway to the front door of the townhouse, and his head swivels this way and that.
Nothing is going to get past him this time.
But before we even reach the door, it opens.
“Please, come in,” says a silver-haired man with a rich Italian accent.
It’s the proxy bidder from the Obelisk auction.
Tiberius’s right-hand man. I recognize him at once.
And I can tell by the set of his shoulders, by the way he takes in not only me but Damiano behind me, that he’s a dangerous man, just like Dami.
The kind who has done violence and would do it again without hesitation.
If Tiberius Vicario wanted to send someone after me, he wouldn’t need to hire amateurs. He could just send this guy.
“My name is—” I begin, but he holds up a hand.
“We know who you are, Don Clemenza. We have been waiting for you.”
I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing—and ditto for his use of the as-yet-unearned title. But with a glance at Dami over my shoulder, I step across the threshold into the townhouse.
“I am Marcello,” the man says. “Please, follow me.”
He leads us deeper into the house, and from the first hallway I can tell this is not what I expected.
It’s not old-money traditional like the Park Avenue townhouse.
No heavy drapes, no dark wood paneling, no oil portraits of dead men glowering from gilded frames.
But it’s not the gaudy excess of the newly rich, either.
It’s alive. That’s the word that comes to me.
Everywhere I look, there’s color and personality.
The art on the walls is modern, chosen with a confident and eclectic eye—I spot what might be a Basquiat beside a Turkish textile that has no business working next to it, but does.
Walking past a sitting room, the bookshelves are full, and the books have been read.
Spines cracked, pages marked, a few lying open on the coffee table.
This home suggests someone curious, restless, and possessed of the kind of taste that cannot be bought, only cultivated.
Marcello takes us to a private sitting room at the back of the house, which has a view of the small private courtyard with an overhead sail of cream linen guarding it from views of other townhouses on the block.
We could be perfectly alone in New York City.
I can’t hear the traffic, can’t see anything but the beauty of the room and the garden outside.
The room is so full of color and texture—jewel-toned cushions, a Persian rug in deep reds and golds, heavy silk curtains—that it’s only when there’s a movement on the floral sofa, a silk kimono shifting, that I realize my cousin is already here among everything.
He’s sprawled out like a cat in a sunbeam, his black hair fanning across the cushions like a dark waterfall, eyes so green they remind me of Chinese jade.
Spread across the low table before him is an array of food: figs, prosciutto, nuts, fat olives, artisan bread…
and a small dish filled with golden oil that I have to look away from quickly.
What Marcello told us was true. They have been waiting for us.
Tiberius Vicario gathers himself and rises from the sofa in one fluid movement. He’s taller than I am, though not as tall as Damiano. Slim, elegant, very pale. When he smiles, his teeth are blindingly white. His green eyes travel over me with frank, unhurried interest before settling on my face.
“At last,” he says. “You really did take an awfully long time to find me, cousin.”