Page 34 of The Beast Who Broke Me
“Fine,” I say flatly. “Now let me go.” He does, but he still watches me warily as though I might suddenly bolt from the room. “If you care about Sammy, you’ll give him some time. Besides, I need you.”
“You need me?” he echoes scornfully. “Splattering all over my windows wasn’t enough?”
I’m not going to let him make me blush again. “You served your purpose well enough. But now I need information. I want to know about the Clemenza Loyalists.”
He really does hate me. I can see how much he’d love to pull my head clean off my body right now. But he sits when I point him to a chair, and I pour him out some more coffee.
“Now,” I begin. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about my Loyalists. Who they are. Where they are. And how to find them.”
It’s a brief conversation.
And the more he talks, the more my heart sinks.
They’re a small group, and they lack any power at all. Steven “Strike” Ferraro, their purported leader, was friendly with my father back in the day, but I know he was badly injured on a job and has a permanent limp and loss of motion in one arm. Big Mike Giordano and his son Mike Junior are also members, but Junior isn’t a made man. The others I don’t know. And to hear Dami talk about them, they’re not the toughened crew I’d secretly hoped for.
But they are loyal to the Clemenza name, and that’s something money can’t buy. I’ll have to work with what I’ve got.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“They get together at a bar once a month to talk about old times and get drunk,” Damiano says with a sneer. “So if you were picturing some fiery group of gangsters just waiting to do your bidding, you’re outta luck.”
“You will take me to Strike’s house this morning, unannounced. No need to advertise where we are at any given time.”
“It’s pointless,” he mutters. “They’re not gonna know anything, and they’re all fucking useless.”
“If that’s the case, why were you so anxious to keep me away from them?”
He leans forward fast, intimidating, but I don’t blink. “Because I know the crazy things that golden tongue of yours can make people do,” he snarls. “And I know you’ll find a way to take advantage of them.”
“If they’re useful, then yes, I will.” I push away from the table. “Find Strike’s address. I’m going to shower and dress. Wait forme downstairs in an hour—and ask Vito to bring the car around to meet us.”
I can see how much my orders enrage him, but he has to swallow down what he’d like to say.
“And clean that up, would you?” I toss over my shoulder, waving at the window I just messed up. “Rosa has enough to do.”
I’d be completely mortified if Rosa came in and saw that. It’s bad enough knowing Sammy was watching. But I’m walking quickly enough out of the room that I don’t think Damiano saw my heated cheeks.
I take a shower that’s colder than I’d like, just to shock some sense back into my body.
It’s not working. I still feel him. The phantom grip of his arm around my chest. The wall of him behind me. The way my own voice sounded, cracked open and begging.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes.
What iswrongwith me?
I made my peace with wanting men years ago, even in defiance of everything my grandfather believed. I compromised by staying chaste. What I’m worried about isn’t that, it’s…
It’s my response tooneman. The one man in the world who has every reason to kill me. When he squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe, I got harder. When he pinned me to the desk last night, I moaned. When he left me in the dark in chains, my body remembered his mouth even while my brain screamed in fear.
Perhaps my grandfather saw this weakness in me, the part that will bend, yield, open up to an enemy’s brutality and beg for more.
Run away and cry, Nonno Lou sneers in my memory.
This response to Damiano Orsini’s touch is a problem. Ineedhim sexually interested; it’s one of the few leashes strong enough to hold a beast like him. But every time I pull that particular chain, it wraps tighter around my own throat, too.
I need to make sure my desire doesn’t become a new collar for myself.
I turn the water cold and stay under it as long as I can stand it.
