Page 137 of The Beast Who Begged Me

Stuccio closes his eyes. “All that time I spent taking humiliations from your grandfather… I was owed. I was owed.”

“You waited for me there,” Caligula says. “With the man who’d just killed Louie. But I got away.”

Stuccio’s mouth thins. That, apparently, is the part he regrets. “There are records,” he says suddenly. “People know where I am. I’m under federal observation. Special Agent Monica Anderson—she’ll ask questions if I disappear. She’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Then I suggest you tell us what you’ve given her,” Caligula says. “While you’re still able to correct any misunderstandings. Who knows, Uncle Tony. I might live up to the family motto after all—mercy to the worthy.”

Stuccio starts spilling. Caligula makes notes as he names the people he’s discussed, the meetings he’s described, the scraps of Family business he’s been offering up to the Feds while keeping his own arrangements to himself.

When Caligula stops writing, Stuccio leans toward him. “I’ve cooperated. I’ve told you everything you wanted to know.”

“Almost everything,” Caligula says. “I’m starting to see a pattern, Uncle Tony. Tell me: when my father wanted to leave New York, did he come to you?”

Stuccio’s mouth opens, then closes. “Who told you about that?”

“What did he ask you to do?”

“He wanted money moved. Arrangements made without Lou finding out.” Stuccio swallows. “He’d just had you, and he’d got it into his head that he could take you away. Leave the Family. As though your grandfather would ever have permitted it.”

I watch his mouth, waiting for the next words.

“You told my grandfather,” Caligula says.

“Lou needed to know what his son was planning. I worked for your grandfather; he needed to know he could trust me.” Stuccio shifts against the ties.

Caligula’s hands curl into fists on the desk, but his voice remains even. “So when my father, your friend, asked you to help him get his son out of danger, all you saw was an opportunity.”

“I saw him setting me up to take the blame! He expected me to arrange everything and then stay here to answer to his father.” Stuccio gives a strained little laugh. “You know what your grandfather was like. I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself for your father’s whims.”

I’m on my feet before Caligula catches my wrist, above the bandage.

“Who did Lou send?” I ask.

Stuccio stares at me. “What?”

“To kill Vin Orsini. Who did he send?”

He’s scared by my intensity. “Cesar killed him,” he pants out. “But you know that already!”

Caligula’s fingers tighten around my wrist. “And that’s what you believed?”

“That’s what everyone said.” Stuccio presses back into the chair. “What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“Did Dad tell you who was going with him when he left New York?” Caligula asks.

“You.” Stuccio looks at him as though he’s being deliberately stupid. “He wanted to take you. That was the whole point.”

“Anyone else?”

“He didn’t mention anyone else.”

“Not my father?” I ask.

“What? No. Why on earth would he?”

I look at him, trying to find the lie. But he seems completely fucking lost. He knew Cesario was friends with Vin Orsini, but he never knew what they really were to each other. And because Stuccio thought nothing of betraying his own friends, when he heard that Cesario had killed my father, he believed it.

Just like I did.