Chapter 42
DAMIANO
I’ve tracked Sammy a couple of blocks, according to the intel I get from my eyes and ears around the place.
But this is starting to feel like the time Caligula got taken off the street, because after a certain point, no one saw Sammy, no one heard him, and no one has anything more to tell, no matter how many fifty-dollar bills I slide into hands.
I’m not calm enough to do this right. Half my mind is on Caligula back at home. I can’t stop thinking about him, the different sides of him that all seem to belong to the one man. And I’m tired of pretending. Tired of lying to myself, tired of—
“Orsini!”
I jerk around and see Pep Pardini, Sebastiano Conti’s friend, jogging down the street toward me. “Seb’s looking for you,” he puffs when he reaches me. “Problem with Big Gee.”
Shit. This is all I fucking need. I’m being pulled in three directions at once and can’t move fast enough in any of them.
“Pep, I need an hour or so,” I say, torn. “Tell Seb I’m looking for Sammy, but I’ll come as soon as I can after I—”
“It’s about Sammy,” he says quickly. “Big Gee got him.”
I grab him by the shoulders. “What the fuck? Why?”
“Come on,” Pep says, pulling me back the way he came. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
I run down the street with him until he takes a hard turn into an alley.
“Hold up,” I say, slowing down. “Why are we going this way?”
“Shortcut. Seb’s waiting at a diner down this way. Come on.”
My relief at hearing someone knows something about Sammy got in the way of my sense. Because now I can see Pep is jittery as hell, living up to his nickname as he bounces up and down on his toes, eyes darting around.
“Tell me why Big Gee would want to grab Sammy,” I say.
“I guess he heard Sammy was talking shit about him, thought he was in on Seb’s plan to take Big Gee down.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I growl.
Pep stops bouncing. He grins. Shrugs. “Who the hell is Sammy, man?”
But I’ve already heard the quick footsteps coming up behind me, so I duck when a baseball bat comes swinging at me, and it glances off my shoulder.
I get a shield up automatically, catch the second swing on my forearm, and throw a punch that connects with someone’s jaw hard enough to send him sprawling.
It’s Meatball. He gets to his feet, shaking his head, but he’s not the only one here.
Paulie and Big Gee’s other bodyguard, the one whose name I never learned, are charging down toward me.
Behind them are four more at the mouth of the alleyway, one of them cracking his knuckles like a complete motherfucker.
I don’t have time to think.
I put Paulie on the ground with a knee to the gut and break Meatball’s nose with an elbow.
A two-by-four catches me across the back and I stagger.
I grab the guy who swung it and throw him head-first into the wall, but someone gets me in the kidneys when my back’s turned.
I swivel and drop him with a right cross.
But I’m losing ground. They’re pressing in from both sides, pushing me back against the wall so Pep Pardini can dart in and jab me in the arm with a fucking syringe. I throw them off, but my next punch doesn’t connect, and then my legs give out.
I crash to my knees, and the last thing I think before the dark swallows me is, Who’s going to protect Caligula now?
There’s blood in my mouth. My head is splitting.
One eye is swollen shut, the other barely cracking open.
My wrists are bound, zip-tied to the chair arms so tight my fingers are numb. I get one eye open and see nothing but concrete and fluorescent light. A basement somewhere. Could be any of a dozen places the Giulianos use for this kind of work.
I know this kind of room. I’ve worked in rooms like this. So I know what’s coming.
“Wake up, Sunshine,” says Pardini, standing in front of me with his arms crossed. Behind him are Paulie and Meatball and five others, all of them taped up or holding ice packs to their jaws.
At least I made them bleed for it.
“So the only way you assholes could take me,” I croak out, “was with eight on one and a needle. You must be real proud of yourselves.”
Pardini hits me. Open-handed, almost casual. “Big Gee sends his regards.”
“Tell Big Gee he can shove his regards up his ass.”
That earns me Paulie, who steps up and drives a fist into my ribs. Something cracks. The pain is white, and I ride it out the way I’ve ridden out pain my whole life: I let it pass through me while I think about something else.
I think about Caligula’s golden eyes.
And I think about the safe house, when he told me how well he’d been taking care of himself. I never gave him enough credit. Maybe he’ll be okay without me.
Maybe he’ll be just fine.
I take another fist to the face and turn to spit out blood, run my tongue around my teeth. I was hoping to find one last taste of Caligula, one last atom of our kiss in the bedroom, but there’s nothing in my mouth but copper.
“It’s still Saturday night,” I point out, even though I know it won’t make a difference. “Big Gee’s jumping the gun.”
“You wanna know why this is happening?” Pardini asks, circling the chair.
“Because we already know you’re a traitor.
You chose a fucking Clemenza over your Family.
” He leans in. “And I know all about it, because Conti spilled everything. Thought I was on his side, thought I’d help him push Big Gee out.
Stupid fuck didn’t realize I’ve been feeding everything he said back to Big Gee. ”
Does Seb know his trusted friend has been working against him? Everything he planned must be compromised. Every move he made to rein in his brother, undone before it started.
“I hope Seb makes it real fuckin’ painful when he ends you,” I tell him.
Pardini grins and reaches into his jacket, pulling out a plastic bag. He holds it up in front of my face.
Inside is a piece of skin. Maybe an inch square, ragged at the edges where it was cut. And in the center, black ink on olive flesh: the letter “G.”
I know that tattoo almost as well as my own. The faint white line through the bottom of the letter where Seb caught his hand on a barbed-wire fence one night. The slight blowout on the left side where the needle went too deep.
“Conti’s been taken care of already,” Pardini says, tucking the bag back into his jacket. “Now it’s your turn.”
The sound that comes out of me isn’t a scream. It’s something from before language, from the part of me that is still the kid who was pulled out of the worst years of his life by Sebastiano Conti.
And Pardini just smiles. “He was actually proud of you, can you believe that? Proud of you for going against your vows. But I guess we shouldn’t expect any better from a couple of goddamn queers.”
The others laugh. But I’ve heard it all before.
I chose Caligula. I chose him and I’d do it again.
Seb died because he chose honor over obedience. The path I could never walk with him because I was too busy trying to punish a man for his father’s sins, break the man I…
I can’t finish that thought. Not here. Not now.
“I already bagged one trophy,” Pardini says. “Time for another.” He pulls out a knife and grabs my wrist and twists my hand so the “G” tattoo faces up. The zip tie cuts deeper. I can’t feel my fingers anymore, but I can feel the blade when he sets it against my skin.
And I hear myself laughing.
Caligula hated that tattoo. Every time he looked at it, his mouth would twist. And now it’s coming off, but he’ll never know—because this body of mine is gonna get cut up and put in separate drums somewhere, which will all get filled with concrete and thrown in the river.
I know, because I’ve done it myself.
So Caligula will never know that the one thing that still connected me to the Giulianos is gone. I wish I could tell him. I wish he could know.
I wish I’d done a lot of fucking things different in my life, starting all the way back when I was thirteen.
“What the fuck’s so funny?” Pardini demands.
But I can’t speak anymore. Can’t find the words or the will. So the only thing that comes out of my mouth is, “Caligula.”
“Listen to that—this motherfucker’s still thinking about his fuck toy,” Pardini says, looking around at the rest of the group.
They’re all laughing again. And so is he.
“Don’t worry, rat,” he says, picking up the knife again.
“The Russians are taking care of him. In fact, I bet they’re around there right now, taking care of business. ”
“Won’t get in,” I slur out.
“Oh, they don’t want to get into that fortress of yours,” he says, winking at me as though we’re sharing a joke. “In fact, they’re gonna make sure that everyone in that house stays put.”
It takes me a moment to understand what he means, but when I do, I’m filled with horror.
I need to get out of here.
I roll my head back on my shoulders like I’m about to pass out again, and when Pardini leans in to start cutting on me again, I headbutt him hard in the nose.
It gushes blood like he’s taken a shot to the face, and he moves away, swearing. But I’m still stuck in the damn chair; it’s welded fast to the floor. Meatball grabs me in a headlock from behind.
No one’s laughing anymore.
Pardini picks up the knife again, wiping the blood still running from his nose, and tells me, “You know, we could’ve made this easy on you. But you had to go and do that, Orsini. So now you get the full treatment. And you tell Seb Conti hello from me when you get to hell, eh?”
He approaches me with the knife again, and the fucker choking me is doing it hard enough that I could black out if I helped it along. Spare myself some of the misery.
But I don’t want to.
I deserve this, after everything I’ve done.
I haven’t prayed since I was thirteen years old, but I find myself doing it now anyway. Not to God. God never listened to me—and hell, I can’t blame him.
No, I pray to the one person I actually believe in.
Get out of that house, Caligula. Get out of that house.
Get out.