Page 3 of The Beast Who Begged Me

CHAPTER 2

DAMIANO

Marcello drives like he does everything else: real fucking fast and with no wasted moves. But even though he runs two reds, I still bark, “Faster,” at him, because we’re close enough that the house is a beacon, dancing red and orange against the night.

Caligula is in there.

Caligula and Rosa and maybe Vito, too.

“Pull over,” I snap. We’re on FDR Drive, with no pockets and no shoulders, but he just hits the hazards and stops the car right on the road, ignoring the honks and flashing lights as cars swerve around us.

Marcello does what he’s told, which makes me see why his Vicario master likes him so much.

He follows me out of the car to boost me up the retaining wall into the strip of public park that lies above the road. From there, I hoist myself up the next wall, and scramble directly up to where my house is burning.

The heat is almost overpowering, but the smell hits worse. It smells like everything I’ve ever cared about has been thrown into Hell. Rosa’s kitchen. Sammy’s art. And somewhere under all that is the basement, the one I spent years building in secret, the reconstructed Clemenza townhouse, the antiques I bought…

And the chains, the collars, every sick and sinister part of a prison I crafted to break a man in. All of it burning.

And maybe him along with it.

I built that room to destroy Caligula, but it’s where he came to me in the middle of the night, of his own free will, to offer a ceasefire. If he dies in my monument to hating him, I will never forgive myself.

I’ll die, too.

After I murder whoever lit this fire.

The neighbors are all out on the sidewalk being useless: a guy in three-hundred-dollar pajamas filming it on his phone, a woman in a quilted robe clutching a cat. The heat has melted the snow into brown sludge in the street, and the fire department is getting the blaze under control.

There’s only one ambulance and a lot of cops. They’re going to have questions for me, but all I can think of is Caligula.

Across the street, apart from the gawkers, a BMW idles at the curb. The man in the driver’s seat is familiar to me, though it takes a moment to place him outside his lair.

Daniel King.

He’s watching my house burn with a smile on his face. When his eyes land on me, he keeps smiling, then pulls out, no hurry at all, and glides away. Behind his car, I see a Christmas wreath hanging on my neighbor’s door, glowing orange in the light of my burning house.

I push through the crowd, trying to find someone who knows what’s going on, but my attention is caught by my own hissed name: “Orsini!”

It’s Shuffles. He jerks his head at me from a quiet stretch of sidewalk, and I go to him, grab him by the shoulders. My thumb aches where I popped it getting loose from the zip tie, but I barely register it.

“Are they okay?” I demand.

“Two ambulances gone already,” he says. “One left when I was arriving. I saw Sammy getting into the other with whoever they were taking away—couldn’t see them. But Sammy looked okay.”

Sammy is okay? It’s a relief, a huge relief, but I’m still terrified. Two ambulances. Rosa and Caligula?

Then I see the car—or what used to be a car. It’s a burned-out shell on the sidewalk next to what used to be the front entrance. I stab a finger at it. “Vito. Was he in there?”

Shuffles shrugs. “Didn’t see him. But looks like.” He pats me with an awkward hand on my arm. “Sorry, Orsini. Sorry it happened.”

“Did you see anything else?” I’ve got no interest in condolences. But he just shakes his head. I let him go and scan the crowd again, trying to make sense of things. Figure out my next move.

“You, uh, you look like you had a bad night,” Shuffles says. He digs a rag out of his pocket and offers it. “It’s clean.”

I stare at it, not following, and then I catch my reflection in a parked car window nearby. I’m covered in Meatball’s blood and pieces of the men Marcello shot, and if I walk up to the cops like this, I’ll get arrested. And if I get arrested, I’m no help to anyone.

Least of all Caligula.