Page 32 of The Beast Who Begged Me

I didn’t bother wondering what he would do. He’d never be in this situation in the first place. He would never have let vengeance and lust twist him into what I’ve become. I don’t think there’s a way back. And I get no answer from Seb, either.

It should’ve been me, not him. I’m no loss; Seb would have looked after my people just as well as I can. But losing Seb means the Giuliano Family itself is lost, too.

When I came out of the giant pantry where that freezer lives, I sat down at the table and waited. Rosa came in, then Vito, who always gravitates to Rosa, and then Luca D’Amato appeared, which gave me a chance to talk to him.

But when Caligula wandered in, I just couldn’t face him.

So I ran, because I’m a coward.

The Morellis have loaned me one of their cars, and Vito’s driving me so I can focus on the work. I’ve got three stops planned today, and I run them through my head, figure out the order of operations, what could go wrong, what I need at each site. So I don’t have to worry about anything except checking off tasks.

So I don’t have to think about Caligula and what I’ve done to him.

If I do, I’ll open this door and roll out into traffic. There’s nothing I’d rather do than end myself. But I can’t. I’m under orders not to.

I can never make up for what I’ve done, not in a million years, so there’s no point thinking about it anyway. There’s only one thing I can do. And that’s everything in my goddamn power to make sure Caligula Clemenza stays safe and gets his heart’s desire.

I take out my phone and call Strike Ferraro. “Tell Mike Giordano and his kid to meet me in Astoria at two at this address. Bring a cleaning van.”

“I’ll come, too,” he says eagerly. “And you tell Don Clemenza he can count on me.”

Hell, there’s no reason to put the old man off.

The battle will be over by the time they get there anyway.

First stop is Turtle Bay, where the ruined house looks much worse in daylight. The fire has blackened it outside as well as in. The snow is gray slush, tainted with ashes. The cold has dulled the smell, but that wet, charred stink still makes me want to cover my nose.

I don’t. I stand there and let it sting the insides of my nostrils, my lungs, as I think about Caligula Clemenza making a slow, terrifying crawl up a tiny shaft into an inferno.

I did that to him. The Bratva might have lit the match, but it’s still on me.

The reno crew is waiting like I told them: six guys and a foreman named Dave Brennan who knows better than to offer sympathies. These are the same guys I employed for the original restoration work. There’s a uniformed cop posted at the police tape, a bored kid pulling the world’s most boring detail, and he perks up when I get out of the car, probably because it’s the most interesting thing to have happened during his shift.

“Structure looks shot on three and above,” Brennan says. “Ground floor’s okay because the basement held solid. Did its job.”

Yeah. The basement did its job.

I pull off the tape in full view of the cop, and we go in through the side door, into what used to be the kitchen. The range is a sorry, charred lump. The table where Rosa fed us all has been reduced to ash and iron bolts. But as I look around, I see one old pot escaped, Rosa’s favorite—the one she would not let me replace, no matter how many times I offered something better.

I pick it up. The handles are sound, and under the soot, it’s salvageable.

“That going to storage, Mr. Orsini?” Brennan asks.

“No. This one comes with me.” I hand it to Vito. He frowns sadly as he looks it over.

In Sammy’s room, a lot of his junk collection survived. “Take out all of that. Salvage whatever you can,” I tell Brennan. I look up at the wall, where Sammy’s creepy fucking art piece still stands, the one with the guy holding himself, shaking. “And that,” I say grudgingly. I never liked it. But the fire spared it, so I will, too.

To get into the basement, I have to climb down through the elevator shaft on a ladder they provide. Only Brennan has gone down there so far on my orders, and he accompanies me now.

The collection is intact. Everything reeks of smoke, and a few things are water-damaged from the cure to the fire, but the flames themselves stayed out.

“Pretty good shape,” is Brennan’s opinion.

“All of this comes out,” I tell him, pointing at the Clemenza furniture. “Get it cleaned, restored, crated. Full inventory to me.”

As Brennan starts making a list, I check the small steel box in one of the storage cabinets in Caligula’s “bedroom” area. Inside it are the plug from the Obelisk, the cock cage, and its little key, all preserved.

I look at them for a moment, then shut the lid. I’ll take them with me now and decide what to do with them later.