Page 84 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“I’d say it means there’s a twenty-fifth word.” Dami rubs his jaw. “An extra passphrase. The twenty-four words are the key, but you can add your own password as another layer of security. Looks like Nonno Lou left himself a reminder.”

“Without bothering to write down the fucking password.”

“Wouldn’t be much point putting both in the same place.” Dami taps the print. “Someone steals the ring, they’d still need whatever he kept in his head.”

“And that head has been long since cremated.” I sit back, looking at the two dozen words spread across my grandfather’s desk.

“Maybe someone else knows the word. Maybe you do.”

I shrug, although the prospect does cheer me up a little. For now, I study the photographs until I can close my eyes and see the words in order. Then I cover them with another sheet of paper and say them quietly, checking every few words against the prints.

Dami waits beside the desk while I do it again and again until I have them memorized.

The fire has burned low in the grate. I take the photographs over and feed them into it one at a time, watching the glossy paper blister and curl. I repeat the words as the gold blackens, each section of the ring disappearing into flame until there’s nothing left to read.

When I turn back, Dami is holding the real thing. “Could put it somewhere safe,” he hedges. “Make you a less tempting target.”

But he opens his hand when I reach for it.

“I am the Don of the Clemenza Family.” I slide it onto my finger, settling its now-familiar weight against my skin. “I’m not hiding my ring just because someone wants to steal it.”

“They’re not getting past me,” Dami says heavily. “Never again.”

I look down at our hands. He’s thinking about the next man who might come at me with a weapon, but I’m thinking about who might send them.

Someone who knew Nonno Lou’s secrets. Who had every opportunity to learn what he kept and where he kept it. A member of the Clemenza Family?

Or someone who shares my blood?

Because my mother comes to mind. My mother, and her use of the word “advantageous.”

Or it could be Tiberius Vicario, or Marcello, who also used that word in their text to Dami. Nonno Lou might have bragged to Carmine Vicario about the ring. Carmine might have passed the information on before his death.

I turn the ring with my thumb and watch the snake devouring itself, again and again.

The endless cycle.

CHAPTER 27

CALIGULA

Finch called me on the burner phone to invite all of us—even Rosa and Vito—to spend New Year’s Eve at Kismet. Half the Morellis were going, even Aidan O’Leary, he said, who had never stayed up past ten, to Finch’s knowledge. I declined for Dami and me, since I could already hear what he’d say if I made him go.

After considerable pleading, Dami allowed Sammy and Ricky to go, on the condition they kept a Morelli guard close by at all times.

Rosa and Vito went to bed early.

So did Dami and I, with the fireworks outside doing their best to compete with the ones we made together.

Sammy and Ricky rolled home just before breakfast with glitter in their hair and a Morelli named Bobby Tramonto herding them like a sheepdog. Tramonto accepted some coffee from Rosa and then headed back out.

And twenty minutes after that, Victor Gallo arrives on my doorstep, bringing me a list of four names.

I turn the paper over, although it’s thin enough that I already know there’s nothing on the back. He watches me from the other side of my grandfather’s desk, his knee bouncing up and down.

“Four,” I say, laying the sheet flat on the desk. “You made it sound as though there were considerably more.”

“I mean…” He glances at Dami, who is standing to the side. “Getting them to dream is one thing. Getting them to agree to anything’s another.”