Page 48 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“And then you run like hell,” he snaps. “Because it’s the only fucking advantage you got.”

He’s right. But even then, it might not save me. “You caught me,” I say, looking up from under my lashes at him. “At the safe house that night, when you broke down the door…I ran, but you caught me.”

His fingers trail down my face, and I suck in a breath, wondering if finally⁠—

But he just grabs my throat. “You wanted to be caught,” he tells me. “That’s the only reason I caught you.” He presses me back against the wall, and I let him, my heart thudding like a drum. “Let’s try this position,” he says, soft and warm as melted caramel.

“Okay,” I gasp out.

“Break my grip.”

Maybe this is his idea of foreplay. He’s not even holding me all that tightly. But when I tug at his wrist, his hand doesn’t move. It might as well be an iron band pinning me against the wall.

“Like this,” he says. He takes both my hands and places them over his, where it circles my throat. “You don’t have the strength to outmuscle anyone, so quit pulling. Trap the hand instead.”

I close my hands over his. His skin is warm.

“Chin down,” he goes on. I tuck my chin down as ordered. He takes my hip with his free hand, and I have to fight a moan. “Now twist your whole body into me, hard.”

I twist. Nothing happens.

“You’re still pulling.” He resets our position. “You can’t fight your way out, Caligula. I’ll always be able to overpower you. Find the weak point and fight that.”

I don’t want to fight him, though. I like standing here with his hand around my throat and my back to the wall. It’s that flow of power between us again, seesawing back and forth. He’s up. I’m down.

“Come on,” he says. “Try.”

On the third try, I finally get it. I trap his hand, drop my chin as instructed to protect my windpipe, and wrench sideways. His grip gives, his thumb peeling away beneath my hands, and suddenly I’m free.

I stumble away, gasping. I feel like I’ve lost something rather than gained.

“Good,” he says. “Remember, every grip has a weak point.”

I look at him. “Even yours?”

Something flits across his face and he turns away. “Especially mine. And now we’re done for the day.”

“I don’t believe we are,” I say at once, but he’s already walking away.

“I got things to do,” he says over his shoulder. “I’ll be back later.”

“Dami, come here,” I tell him.

He keeps walking.

I wish I knew where he was going. Especially because I’m going stir-crazy locked up in this damn Morelli mansion.

Later that day, I get my wish, for better or worse. Dami arrives back late in the afternoon and finds me in the library, where I’ve been alternating between reading, dozing, and thinking.

“You not dressed?” he says when he sees me still in sweats. “You wanna make yourself presentable, Don Clemenza. You gotta talk to Ferraro about the ceremony. He won’t talk to me.”

“Is that where you’ve been all day?” I ask suspiciously.

“Take a fucking shower and meet me downstairs,” is all he says, and then he disappears.

Vito drives us out to Queens, and I get the first look at my newest “acquisition” in the form of a barbershop. It’s not much to look at, narrow and wedged between a bodega and a shoe store, with faded lettering on the windows.

The seats inside are broken, covered in cracked leather. No one has had a haircut here in a very long time. But the real action is in the back room, where I find, as promised, Strike Ferraro and another couple of Clemenza men who were at the meeting at Dami’s house. They go wide-eyed when they see me, or maybe it’s because Dami is hovering behind my right shoulder like some overshadowing demon.