Page 5 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Then step up,” Fontana says flatly. “If he’s alive, he doesn’t need your bullshit right now. He needs your best.”

My best? I’ve offered Caligula nothing but my worst since the first moment I saw him. I’ve been failing him this whole time.

The rest of the drive passes in silence, while I think about what I might have lost.

“Thanks for the ride,” is all I say as Bianchi pulls up at the emergency entrance, and I’m out before the car stops rolling.

The ER is crowded: a drunk humming to himself, a kid with a dish towel tied tight around his head, a triage nurse at the desk with the kind of calm that’s infuriating to me right now. Someone’s draped tinsel over the nurses’ station, like that’s supposed to make this place any less miserable. But at least she doesn’t reach for the security button right away when she glances up at me and does a double take.

“Clemenza,” I say. “You got anyone under the name Clemenza?”

She types. “No one under that name.”

For a second the floor drops out from under me. Then my brain catches up. He’s smart. Smarter than me. He wouldn’t give his own name, if he could give it at all. But if Sammy was with him… “Try Maitland.”

She types. Stops. “We had a Maitland tonight, yes. He was discharged.”

Fuck my life.

She’s starting to eye me more closely. “Sir, you look like you might need some medical attention yourself.”

I’m already wheeling away from the desk at the idea of being slowed down. I’ll search this place one room at a time if I have to. I’ll start with the burn unit and work my way down to the morgue, and God help the Bratva if that’s where I find him.

Because I never told him.

I had him in my house, my hands, and my bed for a precious handful of time, and I refused to think it, let alone say it. Now I might have to say it for the first time through a white sheet.

But I stop dead when I catch sight of a familiar figure at the coffee machine in the corner, jabbing the button tiredly.

“Vito!” I holler, and half the ER jumps.

He turns. His eyebrows go up. Then he’s moving, waving me with one hand, hustling down a corridor. He glances back once to make sure I’m following and jerks his head, an unmistakable command.

Hurry.

CHAPTER 3

CALIGULA

I become aware in pieces.

The slide of cool linen against my skin.

The scent of antiseptic, and under it, cafeteria food.

A tight band across my legs, weighted down more heavily on one side.

Something on my face…

When I lift my hand to brush it away, there’s a tug at my arm, and I open my eyes, confused. Stare at the thing taped to my inner elbow.

I’m hooked up to an IV. And the thing on my face is tubing, hissing oxygen into my nose.

A hospital. I’m in a hospital.

On a small sofa against the wall, Rosa is curled up under a blanket, a pillow beneath her cheek. She’s asleep. Vito snores gently in an armchair next to her. And slouched low in a corner chair, legs sprawled out, jacket pulled up around his ears as he, too, sleeps, is Sammy.

Sammy…