Page 12 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Couple of hours, maybe.”

I push the button to let me sit up in bed, and Dami hurries over to arrange the pillows as the bed rises. It’s a little strange to have him fussing over me in full view of Sammy, but I’m not going to complain.

“Sammy wanted a word,” Dami says in my ear as he shifts pillows. “If you’re up to it. If you’re not⁠—”

“I’m fine,” I say at once. Because I want a word with Sammy, too.

Dami studies my face, and whatever he finds there must satisfy him, because he gives Sammy a nod. “Five minutes. Then he eats.”

Sammy doesn’t move from the doorway until Dami is gone. Then he comes over to the bed, studying the floor. He’s wearing a borrowed pair of sweats, and I wonder if Riccardo Benedetti provided them.

“Are you alright?” I ask him. He looks younger without his usual black-and-metal armor.

“Isn’t that my question?” He glances up at me. “Damiano said you’re doing okay, but I wanted to see for myself.” His eyes travel over me. “Looks like you are.”

“Thank you,” I say. “You saved my life.”

He says nothing. Just looks away.

“Sammy.” He looks back at me, slowly, grudgingly. “You still don’t like me much, do you?”

He doesn’t even blink. “No.”

“Then why…” I trail off.

But he understands me. “Maybe you’ve had it just as rough as me, in some ways. And when I saw you in the fire…”

He pauses, and the memory lives in his eyes and my mind. Smoke and heat. The splintering crash of a ceiling beam falling down.

“What made you pull me out?”

He looks away from me, out the window at the wall of the next building over. “It’s not like I was standing there thinking, oh, that poor Clemenza, I should help him,” he says at last. “I wasn’t. I was thinking about a thing Damiano told me once. When I got mad that you were still…” He shakes his head. “He said love and hate have nothing to do with family.”

I catch my laugh of surprise before it escapes. Because I’m the one who told Dami that. When he kept asking why I was so determined to avenge a grandfather I hated. Hate and love have nothing to do with Family, I’d said.

I guess it sank in.

“And I thought, well. You’re not family,” Sammy says, shrugging. “But Damiano is. And he…” He takes a deep breath. “He wouldn’t have left you there. And if something happened to you, it would be like a part of him died, too. I didn’t want to see that.”

I don’t know what to say. So I stay silent.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says. “But you’re still a Clemenza.”

“I can’t change that,” I agree. “If it helps at all, Scaglietti—the guy who hurt you? The one you saw?”

He reels back as though I’ve slapped him, eyes wide.

“He’s dead,” I continue quickly. “I made sure of it.”

I watch him shatter. The disbelief, the pain, and then the aftermath. Sammy’s shoulders slump, and a long shudder runs through him. “You…?”

“I did it myself. I know it doesn’t fix anything. But I wanted you to know that he’s dead and gone.”

He straightens up. “Okay,” he says after another moment. “Well. I better go see if Damiano’s figured out where we’re staying.”

He turns to leave just as Dami walks back in with a tray, and sidesteps him without a word to exit the room.

Dami sets the tray down on the roller-table and swings it over my lap. There’s soup and toast and a small Jell-O cup with whipped cream, and right now it seems as appetizing as anything Maison Lumière could serve up. “Everything okay with Sammy?” Damiano asks.