Chapter 43
CALIGULA
My dearest Cesario,
You must forgive me for the many terrible things I said to you about the murder of Vincent Orsini. I was shocked that my own son could be so cold-hearted as to kill his closest friend.
I should have realized long before now that you would never undertake such a betrayal.
I know now that you were forced to take the blame for something you did not do. And I understand why.
I understand everything.
You must take Caligula and leave. Go to Italy. Go anywhere. I will find a way to get money to you.
Please know that I will love you always, you and Caligula.
Forgive me for not seeing the truth earlier. Forgive me for not having better protected you.
Your loving mother,
Amelia Clemenza
The letter is written in Italian, in Nonna Mellie’s elegant hand. It’s short, but I still have to read it twice, because I don’t take it in completely the first time.
The third time I reread the letter, my hands are shaking so hard the paper rattles, and I have to press it flat against the floor to keep the words still.
You were forced to take the blame for something you did not do.
My dad didn’t kill Vincent Orsini. But he carried the blame like a stone around his neck for the rest of his life.
Damiano put a collar on me for a murder my father didn’t commit.
He chained me in this basement. He put a goddamn cage on my cock. He wrapped his hand around my throat and considered snapping my neck as a mercy, and all of it—every bruise, every fear, every night I lay in the dark wondering if I’d ever see light again—all of it was for nothing.
My father was innocent.
What could possibly have made my father take the blame for the murder of a friend?
Something stopped him from telling the truth.
My grandmother found out what it was but couldn’t bring herself to write it down, even in a letter hidden inside a secret drawer that she never ended up giving to my father.
Whatever that reason was, it died with them.
I want to scream. I want to find Damiano Orsini and shove this letter in his face and say, Look. Look at what you did to me. Look at what you built your hatred on. A lie. A fucking lie, and I paid for it with my body and my freedom and my—
But the fury, as real as it is, keeps colliding with something else.
A thirteen-year-old hiding behind a dumpster after his world ended. Everything that boy became—Enforcer, killer, the man who bought a Clemenza at auction to avenge a murdered father—all of it grew from the same poisoned root.
He was a victim of this lie, too.
I fold the letter along its original creases and slide it into my pocket. I don’t know what to do with this, and I’m too angry to think clearly right now, my head fogging up like it was after Damiano Orsini left me down here in the dark for three days.
I’m starting to feel claustrophobic. I head over to the mini-fridge to grab a bottle of water, because my throat is parched. But when I pass close to the dumbwaiter, I freeze.
I can smell smoke.
Not the warm, woody scent of the fireplace in the foyer. This is chemical and acrid, and when I pull up the cover of the dumbwaiter, I have to jerk back, coughing, my hand over my mouth.
The house is on fire.
For one second, I don’t move. Then the survival instinct kicks in.
I turn and bolt for the elevator, my feet slapping on the concrete, and slam my hand on the button—but there’s nothing. I hit it again and again, but it’s totally dead. The panel doesn’t light up, there’s no hum of the mechanisms engaging.
The power is out. The elevator runs on the house’s main electrical system, and if the fire has reached the electrical panel, the circuit is dead.
I claw at the doors with my fingers. Sealed. I’d need a crowbar, a pry bar, something metal with leverage.
I’m starting to panic, and I can’t panic. If I panic, I’ll die.
I force myself to think. This basement has no windows. No stairs. Dami designed it as a prison, and a prison it is. That elevator is the only way in or out, and if I can’t get it open—
The dumbwaiter.
The same shaft that is currently funneling smoke down to me is the only other way out of this place.
I run back over to it, and along with the smoke, I can feel air moving, a slight breeze on my skin, which means if I can get the cabinet out, I might be able to somehow get up the shaft and into the kitchen.
Which is, apparently, on fire. And the smoke will get worse the higher I get in the shaft.
But I have no other options. The only thing I have on my side at the moment is that the cabinet inside the dumbwaiter is made from wood, not metal, so it’s not heating up.
It was probably part of the original house.
I grab a bedpost finial I loosened earlier from my father’s bed, which has a long, thick metal screw at the base, and start bashing away at the dumbwaiter, trying to break through the cabinet.
The wood is soft, thank God. Pine or poplar, not oak.
The first blow cracks the panel. The second opens a hole.
I wrench sideways, tearing the cabinet apart piece by piece, pulling the splintered wood out with my hands.
A sharp piece catches my palm and opens a gash that bleeds freely, but I barely feel it.
Behind the shattered cabinet, I can see the pulley system set into the wooden walls on either side, the tracks that guided the cabinet up and down. And at the very top of the shaft, an orange glow.
I’m going to be climbing into a blaze.
I strip off my shirt and damp it down, then wrap it around my nose and mouth. It helps a little with the smoke.
Then I climb into the shaft.
It’s narrow, but I’m still skinny enough to fit. I brace my feet against one wall and my back against the other and start to shuffle upward, inch by inch.
My hands are slick. Sweat from the heat and blood from the gash on my palm. They keep slipping, but each time I catch myself and keep climbing. After a few feet, I make the mistake of looking down. The basement is already far enough below that a fall would break something important.
I stop looking down.
Above me, the smoke thickens. My eyes are streaming, and each breath through the shirt is a struggle, but not having it at all would be worse. And getting louder with every foot I climb is a sound I’ve never heard before. A low, continuous roar. Hungry. Unceasing.
The fire.
I reach up blindly and hit the lip of the upper opening. The edge is hot—not burning, but close—and I grip it and haul myself up and over with everything I have. I tumble out of the shaft and onto the kitchen floor.
The heat is staggering. I stay low, pressing my body against the tiles, which are hot but not searing.
Above me, the smoke is a black river flowing across the ceiling and cascading down the walls.
The kitchen is lit in hellish orange. Rosa’s copper pots are still hanging from the rack.
The espresso machine is on the counter. The cookie tray from the meeting is exactly where she left it.
All of it burning.
I crawl toward the garage exit. It’s the only direction without visible flame. Each breath is shallower than the last. The smoke is winning. My lungs are filling with it, heavy and hot, and my coughing is so violent it slows me down.
Then the smoke shifts. A gust of clean air comes from somewhere—a window breaking, or a door giving way—and for a few seconds, the air in front of me clears.
I see a figure.
My heart leaps so hard it hurts, because for one wild, desperate second I think it’s Dami. I think he came back. I think he saw the fire and he came for me, the way he always comes for me, the way he chose me over his Family and his oaths and his misguided vengeance…
It’s not Dami.
It’s Sammy.
He’s staring at me from several feet away, and as we look at each other, one of the cabinets falls off the wall, engulfed in flames, and I have to pull back from the exploding embers.
Can he even see me? I raise a hand and wave at him frantically. He takes a step forward. I reach out, unable to speak, on my hands and knees. He looks at my outstretched hand.
He takes a step back.
And another. And another.
There’s a crashing sound, and smoke fills the space where he was standing. The floor rushes up to meet my face, and in my last moment of consciousness, I understand. As far as Sammy’s concerned, I’m the enemy.
Mercy to the worthy, the sword to the unworthy.
I’m a Clemenza, and not even Damiano Orsini at his worst could carve that out of me. My grandfather’s sins are my only inheritance, and my name is a death sentence.
Always has been.
Next:
The Beast Who Begged Me