Page 138 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“What did Nonno Lou say when you told him my father wanted to leave?” Caligula asks.

“He thanked me. Said he’d take care of it.”

“And how the hell do you think he did that?” I demand incredulously.

“I don’t know! He said he’d speak to Cesar. Afterward, he told me the matter was settled.” Stuccio looks between us again. “And Cesar stayed, didn’t he?”

My father was dead, and Cesario stayed. Stuccio had given Lou the warning he needed, then gone back to his fucking paperwork.

“Yes,” Caligula says. “He stayed. Did Dad ever find out you’d told Nonno Lou?”

The answer comes immediately. “Of course not. He would have blamed me for his father making him stay.”

I want to empty my fucking gun into this asshole. But he betrayed Caligula’s father, had the remnants of his family murdered, and tried to kill Caligula, too.

Whatever he owes me, he owes Caligula more.

I look down at the hand on my wrist, and make myself sit. Caligula waits until I’m back in the chair before letting go. Then he pushes his own chair back.

“Your father would never have treated me this way,” Stuccio says desperately. Caligula comes around the desk, and Stuccio follows him with his eyes. “Cal, please. He would have wanted you to⁠—”

“You don’t get to tell me what he would have wanted.” He stops beside me and holds out his hand.

I know what he wants. For a second, I want to tell him that I’ll do it, that he doesn’t have to, that there’s no reason for him to carry this when I’m right fucking here, and Tony Stuccio’s big mouth is the reason my father is dead.

But he knows all of that. He already made his decision before he turned to me. I draw my gun and give it to him. He takes it carefully, his fingers brushing my bandages, and looks back at Stuccio.

“The password!” Stuccio cries. “You still need me for the password.”

“Do I?”

“There’s another word! Separate from the ones in the ring. Without it, you can’t get to the money. And I know it!”

Caligula’s gaze shifts past me, toward the painting behind the desk. For a moment, he studies the brass plaque fixed to its frame. Then his attention returns to Stuccio.

“Think about what you’re doing,” Stuccio says. “Billions of dollars. Your grandfather’s fortune. You’d throw it away when I can help you recover it?”

Caligula raises the gun and shoots him in the side of the head before he can say another word.

The sound fills the study. Stuccio drops sideways in the chair, hanging at an angle, and the amount of blood streaming from him tells me there won’t be another bargain.

I get to my feet and step close to Caligula. “If he really knew that last word…”

He lets me take the gun. His eyes stay on the body while I put the gun away. And then he says, “I know the word, Dami.”

I stare at him. “You know it?”

“I think I’ve figured it out, yes. But even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed what he did.” He glances at the body. “He got what he deserved.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Still. You could’ve fucking warned me. I thought you’d just buried the answer with him.”

“Let’s see if I’m right.”

I follow him back around the desk. He opens the laptop, and I stand behind his shoulder while he returns to the wallet recovery he’s been working on. The final field is still empty.

“The Family motto,” he says, glancing back at the painting. “Clementia dignis, gladius indignis.” I look at the little brass plaque, inscribed with that Latin phrase, as Caligula translates it for me. “Mercy to the worthy, the sword to the unworthy.”

“So the final word is ‘mercy’?”