Page 4 of The Beast Who Begged Me

I wet the rag in the dirty snow and scrub my face down. Shuffles gives me a once-over. “‘Bout as good as it’ll get.”

Nothing to be done about the black eye or my bruised jaw. I hand the rag back with a nod and cross toward the trucks, where a firefighter stands a little apart, calling for another engine on his radio.

“How many survivors?” I demand.

He ignores me.

“Hey—” I snarl, but I’ve already drawn the wrong kind of attention. One of the plainclothes attendees breaks off from the uniforms and heads my way. A woman. Blonde-haired, cold-faced.

“Damiano Orsini?”

Ah, shit. I know her. Special Agent Monica Anderson, working with the FBI’s organized crime task force, and permanently parked on the Giulianos’ collective ass.

She’ll want answers. But I want answers, too. “Yeah, that’s me.” She starts to introduce herself and I talk over her. “How many survivors?”

“You’re the owner of this property?”

“Yeah, I’m the fucking owner. How many survivors?”

She gives a cold smile. “I’ll have to ask you to come into the Bureau for questioning, sir.”

I’m about to tell her where she can shove her questions when a voice cuts in, bright and charming. “Oh, come on, Monica, look at the man. He’s exhausted, he’s in shock, and he’s hardly likely to have burned down his own house. So my client politely declines. You want him later, we’ll set something up like civilized people.”

“Your client?” Anderson and I say together.

Carlo Bianchi gives us both the wide, smarmy grin I bet he was born wearing. “My client,” he says firmly. “So you get back to doing…well, whatever it is you do, Monica, and we’ll be in touch. Okay?”

Anderson looks him up and down like she’s inclined to bring him in along with me, and I hold my temper for another few seconds, because blowing up in front of her won’t get me to Caligula any faster.

“We’ll be in touch,” she tells Bianchi at last. She turns her back and stalks off.

I grab Bianchi by the arm. “You better tell me right now who came out of that house alive, or⁠—”

The grin is already gone. Underneath it he’s all business, and that scares me more than anything. “Shut up and come with me.” He starts pulling me down the block toward a silver Mercedes I recognize. “Your people are at the hospital.”

Something is in my throat, sitting there like a stone. “All of them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Caligula—” I turn back toward the smoking ruin, but he grabs my arm.

“If he’s still in there, he’s dead,” Bianchi says. He doesn’t even flinch when I round on him. “I’m just telling you the facts, Mr. Orsini. You need to get to the hospital now. It’s your only move. Okay?”

When we reach the car there’s a big shape slumped down in the back seat: Nick Fontana, Morelli Underboss, looking grimly out at me.

“Caligula?” is the first thing I ask as I drop in beside him and Bianchi gets in the front and takes the wheel.

“Don’t know who they pulled out,” he says gruffly as Bianchi pulls out from the curb. “We only just got here ourselves. But we’ll get you to the hospital.”

“Why are you even here?”

He eyes my face, the blood-soaked bandage on my hand. “Shit’s going down with the Giulianos tonight, so I got sent around to check on you. Looks like they got to you first.”

All I can think about is Caligula. I’m worried he’s back there in that burning building still, waiting for me, but I’m equally worried he’s at the hospital, and I’m not there with him. “I’ll fucking kill everyone involved in this,” I say under my breath.

Fontana gives me an incredulous look. “How about you quit worrying about vengeance and worry about the Clemenza kid instead? The one you kept telling me was safe with you?” I hear the contempt in his voice.

He’s right. That’s what hurts most of all, worse than my hand, worse than anything. “I failed him,” I mutter.