Page 136 of The Beast Who Begged Me

There’s resentment in the last few words. Caligula hears it too. “So when he died, you went looking for it. You deserved your fair share.”

“That’s right!” It bursts out of him before he realizes what he’s admitting to.

“When you couldn’t find it, you went through the people who might have inherited it.”

Stuccio looks past him at the window. I recognize the moment. He’s run out of ways to make this sound like something other than what it is.

We might finally get the truth out of him.

I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees, and wait until he looks at me. “What did you tell those men you hired to do your dirty work?” I ask. “Like the one you sent to the opera—whose crazy idea was that? That fool wandered into a room full of made men, after Luca D’Amato had forbidden anyone to touch a Clemenza.”

“You think any of those men knew that?” The answer comes too quickly, irritated by my apparent stupidity. Stuccio catches himself, but he’s already said it.

Caligula’s eyes meet mine. We wondered who would dare go against Luca D’Amato. The answer was a bunch of fuckers without a clue.

“But why use them?” I ask. “Why not find someone who could actually get the job done?”

“Who could I have used?” His voice rises. “I couldn’t ask anyone connected to the Families. It would have been reported before I finished the conversation.”

“So you found people who didn’t know what they were getting into,” Caligula says. “Paid them enough that they didn’t ask.”

“I paid for an outcome. I wanted the ring. I didn’t dictate every action they took. If they were a little too forceful about it, that’s not my fault.”

I start to get up. Caligula puts his hand on my forearm, and I stop, although it takes a fucking effort. Stuccio watches the little movement, his breathing getting louder.

I sit back. Caligula’s hand stays there for another second before he withdraws it, leaving me with the warmth of his fingers through my sleeve.

“You were paying people on the street to tell you where Caligula was, too,” I say.

He shakes his head ruefully. “Half of them told me whatever they thought I wanted to hear.”

I found Caligula through people who knew me, trusted me. Stuccio went shopping for him through a car window and got bullshit for his trouble.

“After the auction, I bet King told you where I’d gone,” Caligula says. “And of course, word got around that I’d returned here after the fire—to my grandfather’s townhouse. But you’d already had men inside this house, pulling up floors and breaking open walls.”

“I thought you might have hidden it here. You or another Clemenza.”

“And eventually you discovered that I’d retrieved it after all.” Caligula waits until Stuccio looks at him. “I came to your office. I was right there, Uncle Tony. Asking for help. For money. You could have told me about the ring then. And we could be having a very different conversation now.”

“Oh, you would have thanked me, would you? Paid me a fair fee for the knowledge?” Stuccio gives a bitter laugh. “You forget. I know what you people are like.”

“Louie Clemenza,” Caligula says. “My cousin. How did you manage to kill him that night?”

The fight’s gone out of Stuccio now. He answers flatly. “He came to me for help. Like you did. He wanted to leave the country. I said I could get him out, but I wanted the ring in exchange.”

“You told him to bring the ring here that night.”

I break in. “And you had one of those hired assholes here with you. Right?”

Stuccio doesn’t reply.

Louie Clemenza was no fool. But I picture him walking into this house, on the run and relieved to have found a lifeline. He knew Stuccio. He’d sat across desks from him, listened to his advice, watched him shake his father’s hand, his grandfather’s. Why would he have expected a gunman waiting out of sight?

“But he didn’t have the ring when he turned up,” Caligula says. “When you ambushed him. Correct?”

“He told me you had it. He said you’d taken it. So I…”

“You ordered your henchman to kill him, and then you took Louie’s phone and you wrote to me. Lured me there.”