Page 118 of The Beast Who Bought Me
I kiss him back, just as soft and sweet as he sounded. And partway through, I realize how screwed I really am.
Because I can’t hurt him anymore. I can’t even imagine it now. All those dark fantasies I used to have, they make my belly twist in disgust.
But that means I’ll fail my father. He’ll never be avenged.
So what does that make me?
“I should clean up,” Caligula says.
“Yeah,” I say vaguely. “Yeah, sure.”
While he’s in the bathroom, I wipe myself down with an old t-shirt, unwilling to get rid of his scent completely. But by the time he makes it back to bed, my mind has gone down too many rabbit holes to count.
“What’s wrong, Dami?” he asks, sliding back into my arms. “You look worried.”
I lie without thinking. I can’t tell him what was going through my head, not before I figure my own shit out. “Ah, just everything. The Bratva. The guy hunting you. Your cousin. Whether they’re the same, or?—”
“Oh, Dami,” he sighs, turning over in bed and pulling me close to big-spoon him. “We can worry about all that tomorrow. Right now, we should get some sleep.”
He’s right. Having him here in my arms, warm and willing, is theonlyfucking thing that matters right now. I reach back to turn off the light, and then snuggle my nose into the back of his neck and breathe him in.
Tomorrow. We can figure everything out tomorrow.
But when I wake, I’m alone in the bed again. I give a rueful grin, wondering at myself. He must be in the bathroom. I’ve gone pretty hard on his ass—literally—the last forty-eight hours. But when I listen, it’s quiet in there. I get out of bed, wincing a little at the ache in my back, and knock softly on the door. “Hey. You okay?”
No response.
I open the door. It’s not locked, and swings open to show an empty bathroom. Slightly alarmed now, I check the walk-in closet, and that’s where something catches my eye.
The clothes. All those clothes I bought him, they’re in a heap on the floor under where they used to be hanging in the closet, as though someone was looking through them quickly, discarding fast what they didn’t need.
The coat is gone. The Tom Ford herringbone that he came with. And some of those sweaters the Benedettis sent, slim enough to wear under a coat. And the brown boots, and the jeans…
And other shit has gone, too. I don’t know what—clothes aren’t something I notice much—but there are more hangers than there are clothes dumped on the floor.
I pull on my robe and go straight downstairs. It’s too early for even Rosa to be up, so the kitchen is dark and quiet. He’s not there. But he has to be in the house. Security is still active.
Hehasto be in the house.
Right?
I head straight back to my bedroom and slam my finger down on the biometric reader that opens up the door to the viewing room. I haven’t been in here for days, not since I let Caligula Clemenza out of the basement last time.
And now I see I should have put him right back down there as soon as he was healthy enough. Because when I scrub back through the footage of the last few hours, my bedroom door opens, and a slim figure emerges with a stuffed backpack.
He’s wearing the long coat, jeans, and the brown boots. I switch cameras to watch him head down to the kitchen, where he methodically goes through the cupboards, grabbing protein bars and trail mix packets and a whole box of granola to throw into his bag.
He exits the kitchen and I pick him up again in the garage. He goes straight to the keypad and enters the code. The metal barricade rattles up, and the Clemenza hits stop when it’s only a foot or so open. He shrugs off the backpack, throws it under, and rolls out after it. The door shudders down again, locking us all inside.
I have cameras on the outside of the house, too. But after Caligula Clemenza crosses the street diagonally and jogs off down the road, I lose sight of him.
I stare at the camera for another few seconds as I process what I’ve just seen. And then I raise my fist high over the desk and slam it down hard enough to shake the screens on the wall.
He played me.
He fuckingplayedme.
I should have killed him when I had the chance. I should have chained him to the wall in that basement and flayed the skin from his body an inch at a time over three hundred and sixty-five days. I should have—should have?—
