Chapter 30
DAMIANO
Watching the Clemenza and the Vicario standing there like two bookends from different sets is messing with my head.
They don’t look anything like each other, but somehow, they’re the same.
They have the same posture, the same glow, the same look that growing up rich gives to people.
But where Caligula Clemenza is warm bronze and gold, his cousin Tiberius is made up of cold contrasts.
His hair is so black it’s almost blue, his eyes bright green, his skin like porcelain.
The emerald kimono with gold accents he wears should be laughable, but in the context of the rest of the room, he belongs.
And I don’t think he’s playing a part. Some rich folks like to pretend they’re eccentric. Unique. Fake being interesting because there’s nothing there of interest at all.
This guy is unapologetically himself. Like Caligula. Or like Caligula used to be, anyway. Before I…
Before I got my hands on him.
Because that’s the thing I keep circling back to, even though I’d rather chew glass than think about it. The Clemenza I’m seeing emerge under his cousin’s scrutiny—that sharp, cool, untouchable version—it’s a performance. The armor has been pulled back on, but it’s sitting different.
Like the ruined shirt he pulled around himself after the safe house last night.
Before the basement, that arrogance was structural. It was him. Now it’s something he’s putting on and taking off, and I should know, because I’m the one who stripped it from him in the first place.
I’m the one who made him doubt himself.
“Please,” Tiberius says, gesturing to the loveseat opposite his sofa. “Sit. Be comfortable.” His voice has a strange quality—high, cold, but musical. His accent is carefully transatlantic American, in a way that makes me think he adopted it later in life.
Caligula sits on the loveseat. I sit next to him, feeling like some giant bear sitting down to take tea with Goldilocks and Snow White. The seat’s low and small, so I’m jammed up against Caligula, my thigh pressed along the full length of his.
Tiberius picks up the teapot and pours out three cups of hot tea. The teacups are such dainty little fuckers that I can’t even get a full finger through the handle, and it rattles in the saucer when I pick it up.
Caligula takes his cup and saucer with ease. No rattling. His eyes stay on Tiberius.
Something about the heat of his leg against mine keeps pulling at my attention. Last night, that thigh was dripping with oil and my spunk…
I don’t want to think about that here. Not in front of this green-eyed cat who’s watching everything.
“Thank you for receiving us,” Caligula says, and I imagine the metallic ring of a fencing blade being drawn.
And I worry. His opponent here is no washed-up gangster. Caligula might have been able to fool the Clemenzas, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to go toe-to-toe with this asshole.
Tiberius gives a sly smile. “I always welcome the opportunity to catch up with family, Caligula.”
“Cal,” he replies. “Family and friends—they call me Cal.”
“Cal,” Tiberius says thoughtfully. “But why try to make yourself so small and helpless as a Cal, when you could be razing empires as a Caligula? Unless it’s on purpose, of course. Are you trying to seem less threatening, Cal?”
Caligula doesn’t fire back instantly. He takes a sip of his tea to give himself time to think.
Watching him face an equal on this particular battlefield unsettles me. Not because this guy is a threat. Because he’s a mirror. He’s everything the Clemenza is—brilliant, beautiful, born to this…
And that leaves me on the outside.
“The only thing I’m trying to do right now is stay alive,” Caligula says, and that doesn’t help, because haven’t I been keeping him alive? So why is he talking like—
That thigh pressed up against mine gives a slow rub that I think is supposed to come across as reassuring.
I glance over at Marcello, who’s standing near the courtyard doors. He’s watching the doors, the windows, the courtyard. Alert. Professional. One hand resting casually near the opening of his jacket, where his gun must sit.
“Please,” Tiberius says, waving a hand at the food spread across the coffee table. “Enjoy. I had it prepared when I heard you were coming.”
“You heard we were coming?” Caligula asks. “From Tony Stuccio?”
“Oh, I have my little network.” Tiberius waves a hand. “The point is, you’re here now. And I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.”
Caligula pointedly doesn’t eat or drink. I grab a plate and pile it up with food, not that these tiny things are anywhere near enough to fill me up. But at least it gives my hands something to do.
I still wait until Tiberius picks out an olive, puts it in his mouth, and chews before I eat anything. Probably not poisoned.
“I’m glad we can get to know each other now,” Caligula replies. “Though we might have met earlier if I’d known you were at the Obelisk that night.”
He’s warming up. That was a good hit.
Tiberius smiles. “I thought perhaps it wasn’t the moment.”
“Wasn’t the moment? I was being sold at auction. If there was ever a moment for family to make themselves known—”
“And what would you have had me do? Leap to my feet and declare our kinship to a room full of Bratva? That wouldn’t have gone down well.”
And so they go on. Ripostes flying, testing each other’s blades.
Caligula is good, and getting better. He feints, he redirects, he drops observations that seem casual but aren’t.
He gets Tiberius to reveal that he’s been in New York for over a year.
That he hadn’t seen Nonno Lou for at least a decade before his death.
That he has no idea where the Clemenza ring is.
That he has a membership at the Obelisk, though I’ve never seen him there.
“We move in different circles of that hell, I expect,” Tiberius says to me in one of the only comments directed my way.
But the more I sit there, the more uneasy I feel. Tiberius is slippery. He won’t be pinned down to specifics.
I can’t read this fucker.
He’s too relaxed, too amused at Caligula’s predicament. And then there’s the way he treats me—not exactly beneath his consideration, but more like the interesting pet of a friend. From time to time, he refills my tea without being asked, or encourages me to pile up my plate again.
“Are you close to your mother?” Caligula asks.
“Oh, very close. She adores me, and I her.”
That hit lands, judging by the way Caligula’s mouth tightens.
I eat my food and watch the Vicario. He moves like a jellyfish, boneless, rearranging himself on that sofa with the lazy grace of a man who’s never had to move fast in his life.
But that’s an act. I see it in the way his weight stays centered, the way he’s aware of me even while he’s smiling at Caligula.
This guy knows how to fight. He just doesn’t want me to know he knows.
I want to punch out all those perfect white teeth every time he grins. But something else is keeping me quiet and watchful. This is the first time in a while that Caligula has sounded like his old self. Quick and sharp and three moves ahead.
Maybe I shouldn’t be glad about that. But I am.
And still, I can’t help wondering how much of it is real. Last night I wrecked him and then I abandoned him to sleep alone. I lay awake for hours, thinking: what the fuck have I done to him?
Now he’s making a Vicario spar and even sweat a little, and I…I don’t know.
I don’t know what’s genuine with the Clemenza and what’s not. He’s played me before. It would make sense that he’d find any way he can to control me again, especially after losing that oh-so-effective threat against my household.
Especially after the basement.
Caligula gets down to business at last, bringing the conversation back around. “Why were you bidding on me that night at the Obelisk?”
“It seemed like you needed a friend. I’m afraid I can’t help myself; I’m drawn to the underdog.”
“Is that what you were doing? Being a friend? If Dami here hadn’t turned up and made such an outrageous bid, would you have bought me?”
Tiberius looks between us with an expression of amusement. “It must be comforting to have such dedicated protection.” A glance at me, quick and amused. “Mr. Orsini seems very…attentive.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demand. Caligula gives me that thigh-rub again, but it doesn’t calm me down any.
Tiberius leans forward and drops his voice as though we might be overheard.
“My intention wasn’t to buy you, cousin.
My intention was to give that man next to you some time to make it to the auction.
I was surprised not to see him there when it began—but I suspected that was by design.
So I figured I’d throw a wrench in the Bratva’s works, and make sure Mr. Orsini had his chance. ”
The Clemenza doesn’t give an immediate reply. “What do you mean?” he asks at last, and the caution in his voice makes me put down my plate and shift in my seat so I have better access to my gun if I need it.
Marcello sees me doing it, and his eyes fix on me, though he doesn’t move another muscle.
“I thought you would’ve realized by now.” The green eyes turn to me. “I’m the one who texted you that night, Mr. Orsini.”
“What?” Caligula and I say at the same time.
“I wanted you away from the Bratva, Cal,” Tiberius goes on, looking back at his cousin. “I could see that whoever got their hands on you from the Obelisk, they wouldn’t have your best interests at heart.”
“But you thought I did?” I snort. It seems like such a bullshit story. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that all of New York seems to know I want the Clemenzas dead. Including this one.”
“And yet,” Tiberius says, “you were still the least-bad option. I knew Daniel King would never allow my bid to stand. Even if I won the auction, he would’ve been more inclined to slit my cousin’s throat in the middle of that stage before letting him leave with me.”
“If King wanted Caligula for the Bratva that bad, what made you think he’d give him up to me?”
Tiberius gives me a curious look. “Oh,” he says in surprise. “Don’t you know?”
“Don’t I know what?”
My voice is getting louder, and now the Clemenza isn’t just pressing at me with his leg, he’s stamping down on my foot. Marcello’s hand rests on the grip of his gun.
But I can’t calm down. There’s something about the suggestion that this silk-wrapped, self-satisfied fucker was able to read me without even knowing me that infuriates me. I’ve never even met him, but he’s been pulling my strings.
It’s humiliating.
Because if he could see that, what can he see now? What’s he reading on my face right now? Does he know what I’ve done—in the basement, in the safehouse? Does he know how much it’s eating me up, and how much I don’t understand why that is?
At least I can finally read him, see Tiberius Vicario as he truly is: just as devious as any Clemenza, just as cunning as his great-grandfather, Carmine Vicario, who ran the entire East Coast before his end.
“Well, I don’t like getting involved in all those Family politics,” Tiberius says airily. “I’ve been a terrible gossip today—but that’s how it is with friends. Right, Cal? We always say a little more than we mean to.”
I’m not ready to let it go so easy, and I’m tired of all the games these two are playing. “Look, what the hell are you doing back in New York?” I ask. “You got the same plans as this one?” I thumb at Caligula. “You want to resurrect your dead Family? Or are you secretly trying to kill your cousin?”
Tiberius raises his eyebrows. “Why would I want to do that, when I can just wait out my dear cousin—and then claim the lot? Both the Clemenzas and the Vicarios will answer to me once he’s dead.”
Caligula has gone very still beside me, those golden eyes fixed on his cousin. “Is that what you want?” he asks coldly.
“Hmm.” Tiberius lounges back across the sofa like a Roman emperor, propped on one elbow, his kimono falling open to reveal a collarbone. “Let’s say it is. What would you do about it?”
It’s the way he says it that gets me. So fucking condescending, and his pink lips curling up in a smile.
I grip the edge of the coffee table and flip it.
Tea and china and figs and prosciutto go flying toward the Vicario. I’m on my feet before the table hits the ground, one hand on Caligula’s shoulder pressing down hard to keep him right where he is.
With my other hand, I pull out my gun.