Page 1 of The Beast Who Begged Me

CHAPTER 1

DAMIANO

There are worse places to be than zip-tied to a chair in a basement while a man I used to drink with carves the tattoo off my hand.

Cornered by the Bratva in a sealed-up townhouse while it’s lit on fire, for example. And I think that’s what’s happening right now to the people I love.

For the first time, I’m glad Sammy ran. He’s slightly safer on the streets than he would be in my house right now. But the rest of them…

I have a horrific vision of golden eyes looking out at me from the middle of an inferno.

I need to get out of here.

Whatever drug these motherfuckers stuck me with is still sludging through me, slowing me down like my blood’s been replaced by wet cement. My thoughts keep sliding away from me. There’s a fat arm wrapped around my neck, making it hard to breathe.

And Pete “Pep” Pardini, that jittery little Judas, kneels beside me with a knife, cutting carefully around the Giuliano “G” on my hand like he’s skinning a rabbit. The agony shrieks through my nerves and I can’t stop my roar of pain. But it helps, in a way. Dulls the drugs, clears my mind to a single purpose.

Caligula Clemenza.

The man I spent ten million dollars to own. The man I wasted time hating before I ever met him, just because of something his father did. The man I chained in my basement, and broke, and watched rise again out of the ashes…

Now he’s literally going to burn. If I don’t get out of here, there will be no rising again for him. Not this time.

Big Gee gave me five days to hand him to the Bratva. In response, I turned my house over to Caligula, every lock and every camera in it. I sat down with Seb Conti and told him, the Giuliano Underboss, the only friend I had, that to get the Clemenza, Big Gee would have to come through me. I invited the sad remnants of the Clemenza Family into my dining room, and I stayed outside as Caligula rallied his people. Proved himself in front of them all by killing that motherfucker who hurt Sammy…

And then Sammy disappeared.

When I went looking, Pardini was waiting with a story that made me follow him into an alley like a rookie because it was Sammy.

“Let’s pause here a minute,” Pardini says, having worked up a flap of my skin around the curved side of the “G.” “No point rushing it.”

Meatball lets me out of the headlock he had me in and asks if anyone has a cigarette.

“And in the meantime,” Pardini goes on, “maybe you could use a little support from an old friend, Orsini.” With a grin, he zip-ties a sandwich bag to my wrist.

The bag holds the last mortal remains of Sebastiano Conti: a piece of skin with a “G” tattooed on it. That skin came off a man the size of a truck, a man I never thought would go down before I did.

But I can’t think about Seb right now. There’s a live man who needs me, and who has a greater claim on me than the dead do.

Caligula would try to talk his way out of this. His weapons all live in his mouth. Which gives me an idea.

The men talk and laugh, and then Pardini is back, focused on my hand again, making a big production out of it like he’s an artist, like anyone will ever respect him no matter how many better men he skins. He hasn’t noticed what all my struggling has done to the tie on my other wrist. I’ve been working it against the edge of a chair arm while the drug made my face look slack and stupid.

The plastic doesn’t break. But it stretches. And finally, when I fold my thumb into my palm hard enough that something in it gives with a pop, the hand comes through.

The first thing Pardini knows about it is a fist to the jaw.

It’s not a solid punch. The power behind it is half what I’d like, but it does its job. He goes down hard, face first, and the noise he makes when he hits the floor suggests my punch, combined with the concrete floor, has knocked his jaw loose.

Meatball socks me before I get at the tie on my right wrist. My head snaps sideways and the room swims.

But now he’s close enough to grab. I fist my free hand in his shirt and yank him down to my mouth like I’m going to tell him a secret. Instead, I sink my teeth into the side of his stinking, stubbled neck.

He screams.

I bite down until my mouth floods. Then I rip my head sideways and tear out a chunk of him. I spit it in Paulie’s face, since he’s been creeping in on my other side. Paulie reels away, wiping the blood out of his eyes, scrabbling for the gun he keeps tucked in the back of his pants. Meatball is on his knees making a sound like a blocked drain, hands clamped at his fountaining neck. The blood is everywhere. All over me, the chair, the floor.

But I have only one clear thought.