Chapter 31
CALIGULA
Everything happens so fast, I don’t have the time to respond—or the liberty. Damiano’s hand on my shoulder is forceful as a boulder, keeping me in my seat, so all I can do is watch my cousin get covered in tea and food while Marcello springs like a jaguar to stand in front of Dami’s gun.
For a moment, no one speaks, and Dami and Marcello seem to be in a frozen standoff, Dami’s gun pointed at Marcello’s chest, Marcello mirroring his stance…
Except that Marcello’s gun isn’t pointed at Dami.
It’s pointed at me.
“Drop it,” Damiano spits.
“I’m afraid he won’t listen to anyone but me,” Tiberius says, sitting up with a sigh.
“This kimono is from the eighteenth century, Mr. Orsini. I hope you treat your own possessions with more care.” He looks at me and smiles, even as he wrings tea from his sleeve.
“You want to train your attack dog a little better, cousin.”
“I like that he has a mind of his own. I’m not threatened by other people’s autonomy.”
Tiberius just laughs. “You might regret that one day.”
Damiano pulls his lips back from his teeth in that feral snarl he gets sometimes. I’ve noticed it only a few times—at the Obelisk, on the steps of the townhouse—but only now does the connection click into place.
He makes that face when someone threatens me.
“Tell your man to get his gun off Don Clemenza,” Dami says, “or your outfit is gonna get stained beyond repair.”
“Marcello,” Tiberius says mildly, “stand down.”
Immediately, the silver-haired Marcello lowers his gun and moves aside.
“You got a problem with me, you come at me,” Dami snarls at him. “For future fucking reference.”
“Why bother, when my cousin makes such a useful bargaining chip?” Tiberius says. “Now, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to point your own gun elsewhere?”
Because Dami is still aiming at him, and he doesn’t move. Not until I reach up and touch the hand still gripping my shoulder. Only then does he finally lower the weapon, although the look on his face suggests he’d still like to kill my cousin.
“Well, you have your answer,” I say. “What would I do if your plan was to murder me and assimilate my people into the remnants of yours? I’d try to prevent it.”
Tiberius strips off the stained kimono altogether, revealing a bare torso and boxer briefs underneath. He’s toned, slim but defined, and I can’t help glancing at Damiano to see if he’s…
Well. Looking.
He’s not. He’s watching Marcello.
“As you say, I have my answer,” Tiberius agrees.
He flicks aside a prosciutto-wrapped fig and sits again, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hair sweeping over his shoulder, and fixes his eyes on me.
“I just wondered, cousin. Because if you’re finished with your toys, I’ll be very happy to take your hand-me-downs. ”
“I’m still playing,” I tell him. “You’ll have to amuse yourself some other way.”
At that, he gives a wide grin. “Easily done. There are so many distractions in New York. That’s why I came back,” he adds, glancing at Dami. “I was bored.”
Damiano turns his furious eyes on Tiberius, and I can tell whatever he’s about to say is not going to help. So I wriggle out from under his hand and stand. “I hope we’ve brought some fun into your morning,” I say. “But we should be going.”
“Yes,” Tiberius says, standing as well. “I imagine you have a lot to do. I’ll see you out. Marcello, darling, stay there.”
Marcello doesn’t even move as we leave the room, except for his eyes, which follow Dami. He doesn’t seem angry or agitated.
Just watchful.
“It’s been lovely to meet you,” Tiberius says as he opens the door for us. “Do call on me again when you can.”
“I’ll be sure to keep in touch.”
He smiles. “Really, cousin, you should be thanking me.” His green eyes slide between us, and that knowing smile returns. “Hasn’t this man been the best thing for you?”
I don’t know what he sees. I don’t know how he sees it. But I keep my face neutral. “I suppose he’s better than the Bratva.”
“There we are,” Tiberius says. “Now you understand my thinking. The Bratva are a problem. A problem for all of us.”
“If they’re so bad, why are you a member of the Obelisk?”
“Well, someone has to keep an eye on them,” he says, still with that Cheshire cat grin.
“It really has been a pleasure, Cal,” he says, reaching out to take my hand in both of his.
His skin is warm, and he doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all.
He turns to Dami. “Keep up the good work, Mr. Orsini,” he says cheerfully, and offers his hand.
Damiano doesn’t take it. “No? There’s no reason we can’t be friends.
Perhaps next time we meet, I can persuade you. ”
He steps backward across the threshold and closes the door. The last impression I have of him is the sight of those green eyes, retreating into the dark interior.
I turn to Dami, who is watching the street, hand still on his gun. “I’m not sure what to make of him,” I say.
“There’s nothing to make of him. He’s just another asshole looking for a throne. Come on.” He jerks his head and we head back toward the car.
“Do you think so?” I ask as we walk. “He didn’t strike me as someone particularly interested in responsibility. And I’m not sure how good his man Marcello really is.”
“He’s very fucking good,” Dami says, almost unwillingly.
I scoff. “You think? You were the danger in that room, so why did he hold his gun on me?”
“Stop yapping and get in the goddamn car before someone else takes a run at you,” Damiano growls.
But I stop dead on the sidewalk and stare at him, as everything suddenly makes sense. It’s like my brain finally started working again.
Marcello held his gun on me because he knew that threatening me was the fastest way to neutralize Damiano Orsini.
“Dami,” I start breathlessly. “You…”
He grabs me by the arm and starts dragging me. “Whatever fool thing you’re about to say, you can say in the car.” He hustles me in and climbs in behind me.
“You really are protecting me,” I say, as Vito takes off.
“I told you—”
“Yes, you told me you would. And you have. But I—I’ve never thanked you,” I tell him. “So…thank you.”
“What in the fuck for? If you think I want you alive for any other reason than to—” He stares at me for a second before turning away. “I’ll drop you home, and then I need to go to this meeting. I need to put out some feelers.”
“Feelers? For what?”
“Didn’t you listen to a damn word that slimy cousin of yours said? Something is going on with the Bratva. Something I don’t know about. Something I need to know.”
“I should have followed up on that,” I agree. I did my best to keep up with Tiberius, but I’m still not at full capacity.
But Dami snorts. “No point. That smug little asshole likes his secrets. He wasn’t going to spill this one. He just wanted to see what happened when he poked the bear.”
“Well, he learned,” I say with a small laugh. “Maybe he won’t be so fast to poke my bear next time.”
He gives an unwilling smirk. “Maybe.”
The city changes around us as we head north, Gramercy’s quiet brownstones giving way to the bustle of Midtown. And when I’m sure Dami is looking out his own window, I look at his hands.
They’re resting on his thighs, and on the back of his hand, the tattoo: a “G,” inked deep into the skin. Giuliano.
I belong to him.
But he belongs to them.
“I’m gonna drop you home,” he says, turning back to me, and I hope he didn’t see me looking. “But you keep to the bedroom. Stay away from Rosa and Sammy.”
But thinking about Sammy brings up another question I’ve been thinking about. “Dami, why didn’t you tell me how badly Sammy was hurt by my Family?”
“Because I’m not gonna let any of you Clemenzas gloat over it,” he mutters. “You fucked him up good, though. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Of course not,” I protest, appalled. “Dami, I…I don’t want to be like Nonno Lou. I don’t want to be the kind of Boss who—”
“Oh, yeah,” he says sarcastically. “I forgot you turned pale at the sight of blood.” He’s needling me.
And he keeps going. “Thing is, I remember exactly how calm you were after I killed that Bratva fucker. But after I saved your life again at the townhouse, you puked your guts up. So what’s a performance, and what’s real? ”
He’s not wrong. After he killed Grisha, I was totally calm. “It just seemed…unnecessarily violent,” I say weakly. “What you did at the townhouse.”
But he doesn’t seem to hear me. He’s in full flight. “So how am I supposed to believe a damn thing you say? You beg me to fuck you and then you sneak out and leave me in the middle of the night!”
Leave him? “I—”
“If you were smart, you would’ve stayed gone,” he mutters, and turns back to the window.
There’s no point continuing this line of conversation. I can’t help dropping my gaze to the “G” tattoo on his hand again.
He belongs to them. I need to remember that.
Back at the house, Dami walks me to the front door. For one second, in the hallway, he pauses. His hand is on my arm, the one with the “G,” and I can’t help looking down at it again.
He follows my gaze, takes a breath, as though he’s about to say something. Then his phone buzzes, and the moment dissolves. “I gotta get to this meeting,” he says. “I’ll lock this place down again from outside.” He heads out the door without looking over his shoulder.
Rosa is in the kitchen; I can hear the faint clatter of pans, and something smells…extraordinary. Something chocolate.
I should go upstairs. Dami told me to stay in his room, and after everything, the least I can do is follow one instruction. But the smell pulls at me, and I find myself drifting down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Rosa is at the stove, presiding over a complicated arrangement of pots, baking tins, and mixing bowls. One bowl holds something dark and rich—it looks like a cake batter. On the stovetop, a sweet sauce simmers, thick and glossy and red.
The kitchen is warm from the oven. “Wow,” I say from the doorway. “Is that for dessert?”
“It’s for Sammy,” she says. “Black Forest cake. His favorite.”
“So I probably won’t be getting a taste?”
The small smile on my face dies when she turns to me with a serious expression. “It’s his birthday tomorrow,” she says. “He’s been very unhappy recently. I thought this might help.”
“Oh.” I lean against the doorframe. “He’ll love it, Rosa. It smells incredible.”
“Food can only do so much.” She turns back to stirring the sauce with the kind of focused attention that suggests the conversation is over.
“Can I help?” I ask, and I don’t know why. Dami told me to stay away. And Rosa certainly doesn’t owe me warmth or welcome, not after I so shamelessly used her as collateral against Dami.
But I’m standing in this kitchen that smells like chocolate and cherries and someone’s birthday, and I want to be useful. Just for an hour, I want to be part of something that isn’t strategy or survival or war.
Or whatever the hell is going on between Dami and me.
She gives me a long look. “You can take the stones out of those cherries,” she says at last, pointing to a bowl of dark fruit on the counter. “Wash your hands first.”
I wash my hands and accept the gadget she offers. She shows me how to use it, and I start work on the cherries. The juice stains my fingers, and I think about Dami’s blood-stained hands, the hands that he used to protect me at the townhouse.
Instinctively. Instantly.
The same hands he used to pull me close on a broken sofa.
The hands that are marked with a “G.”
Rosa works beside me in silence, but it’s a comfortable silence, the kind that doesn’t need filling.
“Rosa,” I ask after a while. “Does Dami know it’s Sammy’s birthday?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her hands keep moving, smoothing the batter into a cake tin. “I don’t know,” she says. “Lunch,” she adds suddenly. “What do you want?”
“Whatever’s easiest.” I’ve finished the cherries, and now there’s nothing more for me to do. The cake has gone into the oven and Rosa’s cleaning up. “I’ll take it upstairs.”
She nods. She understands the boundaries, even if I keep testing them.
I wash my hands again, and the red stains fade but don’t disappear.
Then I take the grilled sandwich Rosa makes me—ham, provolone, peppers, and a drizzle of olive oil that makes my stomach clench for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger—and I carry it up all those flights of stairs to Dami’s room.
Dami’s room.
Which is somehow also my room now.
I eat my sandwich sitting on the edge of the bed, and I let thoughts go in and out of my head as they will. I think about Tiberius and Marcello. I think about the smirk on Dami’s face when I called him “my bear.” I think about the “G” tattooed on the back of his hand.
And I wonder if I should remind Dami about Sammy’s birthday. I think it would mean a lot to Sammy for Dami to tell him happy birthday and give him a gift.
I feel guilty about what my Family did to Sammy. That’s for sure. And nothing I do—nothing—will make up for what those men who share my name did to him.
But I also know Sammy wants one thing and one thing only from Damiano: his attention.
I know because it’s what I crave myself. Even the worst of his attention, I still ache for it.
I guess Damiano was right. I’m a needy little bitch.
I look at my stained fingers as I eat. The cherry juice is still visible in the creases of my skin, the lines of my knuckles.
Some things don’t wash off.