Page 103 of The Beast Who Broke Me
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “But you shouldn’t be going out on dates right now, anyway,” I add. Because it’s not about Sammy feeling good, it’s about keeping him alive.
Caligula gives me a look—an exasperated expression that I’m pretty sure meansshut the fuck up and let him have this—and Sammy’s face has fallen.
It’s his birthday, after all.
“Not right now,” I amend. “Once things settle down, you can see him.”
“But when will—” Sammy begins.
“Let’s have dinner,” Rosa says quickly, because I think she senses that this conversation is only going to end in tears and slamming doors—which admittedly is how conversations often end between Sammy and me. We follow her back down to the kitchen, and we all eat around the table, and Sammy won’t shut up about some artist he and the Benedetti kid both like, until he gets another text, and then he gets real quiet and real busy on his phone for the rest of the night.
After dinner, Rosa pulls out a cake worthy of some of the best bakeries in New York City. She adds some small wax candles, just ten of them, even though Sammy is a lot older than that, but she says each of them represents a wish that Sammy can make.
The whole thing seems pretty childish to me, but even if it is, everyone else seems to like it. And as Rosa dims the lights and the candles glow, I find myself looking at Caligula Clemenza. His eyes look even more golden than usual, and he’s watching Sammy with a fond smile.
Whatever else Caligula is—a liar, a Clemenza, a schemer, a survivor, the son of my father’s murderer—he’s kind when it counts. Kind without expecting anything in return.
Sammy leans over with a big grin and blows out all ten candles with one breath. I bet I know what his wish was.
Rosa flicks the lights on and starts cutting the cake, and the room fills up with warmth and chatter and the small, ordinary sounds of people being happy together. Vito eats two slices. Sammy accepts a third when Rosa pushes it on him. Even the Clemenza eats a piece, and Rosa gives him a look that might contain the faintest trace of approval.
I stand against the counter and watch them. My people. Under my roof. Safe, for now.
Then Caligula looks over at me and smiles, and I think: four days, now.
I have four days left to kill him.
CHAPTER 35
DAMIANO
After the cake,after Sammy goes to his room still grinning at his phone, after Rosa washes the dishes and Vito does his last sweep of the house, the Clemenza and I end up where we always end up. In my bedroom. On my bed.
And the whole city locked out.
“Did you know that Ricky guy was going to be here?” I ask, sitting on the edge to take off my shoes.
“No.” Caligula is sitting cross-legged against the headboard. “But isn’t it nice that he was? Sammy seemed to like him.”
“Sammy doesn’t need a broken heart on top of everything else.”
“Sammy is twenty-seven, Dami.” Caligula looks at me with that patient expression he gets when he thinks I’m being particularly dumb. “You can keep him physically safe. You can lock down the house and check the cameras and screen every person who walks through the door. But you can’t protect him from heartbreak. Nobody can.”
I want to argue, even though I know he’s right. I’ve been trying to protect people from everything my whole life. And today—Sammy’s reaction to some stupid suit—showed me I’ve been getting it wrong.
Gettingallof it wrong.
“He looked happy,” Caligula goes on. “Don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
I lean back against the headboard with him and stare at the opposite wall. Happy. When was the last time Sammy was happy? When was the last time anyone in this house was happy?
The Clemenza shifts beside me, pulling his legs up, wrapping his arms around his knees. He looks small like that. Young.
Heisyoung. Twenty-one. Five—no, six years younger than Sammy, and I’ve never thought of Caligula as fragile, not the way Sammy is. I’ve thought of him as a threat, a target, a prize. I’ve thought of him as a Clemenza, which in my head has always meant something dangerous and evil.
But he’s twenty-one years old. He turned twenty-one on the streets, running for his life, watching his family get picked off one by one, and then I bought him at auction and put a collar on him and?—
