Page 53 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“I will step outside to take a cigarette,” Larissa says, following it up in Italian with something about how annoying the no-smoking-in-restaurants laws are in New York. She rises without a backward glance at Caligula.

The terrace is almost empty in the cold, the other diners sheltering close to the outdoor heaters. I check the stairs leading down from it at the other end, then follow Caligula to his mother. He motions me closer as she takes out her lighter.

“Are you sure you don’t prefer to speak in private?” Larissa asks, lighting her cigarette and blowing the smoke in my direction.

“Dami is my protector,” Caligula says, and all the warmth has bled out of his tone now. “And it’s important to me that he hears what you have to say.”

“Say? Say about what?” she asks. But she’s switched to English, with a glance at me that suggests she wants to make certain I hear every word.

“I’m sure you must’ve guessed by now. I want to ask you about my father.”

She sucks on her cigarette again. “I barely remember the man. We were not together for very long, Caligula. I returned to Italy before you were six months old.”

“Oh, believe me,” he says. “I’m very aware. But I want to know what you know about his involvement in the murder of Vincent Orsini. It happened soon after my birth, so I think you must have been in New York still.”

“I was never part of the business,” she says quickly.

“But you knew what it meant to marry into the Clemenza Family,” Caligula points out.

She stares at him for a long moment. “Whatever you are doing, it is a mistake. You and I are not close, but you are my son, and for that reason, I will give you the truth, although I don’t think you will enjoy it very much. Your father and I had an arranged marriage, and we both did our duty. You were the result of that duty. As soon as I had produced an heir, I arranged for my return to Italy. I had no desire to continue living a charade.”

“Was my father so terrible to you?” Caligula asks. “I can’t believe that. Everyone I’ve spoken to says how warm he was⁠—”

“Oh, don’t be so naive. How can you not understand? Given your own…circumstances?” She gives me a significant look, and a twist of the lips. “Your father had no desire for me, and we had little in common besides a sense of duty. And so once you had come into the world, I appealed to Carmine Vicario, who allowed me to go back to Italy.”

“You had to talk to the Capo dei Capi?” I can’t help breaking in. “Why not just tell Cesario you were leaving him?”

“I signed agreements before the marriage that were more advantageous to your father than to me—despite what I had been promised.”

“Advantageous?” Caligula echoes.

Oh, shit. Advantageous. Like the text that lured him to his grandfather’s townhouse, and the one that alerted me to the auction.

It’s weird, if nothing else, that she used that word. I look at her a little closer.

Wondering.

“Yes,” she’s saying. “Tony Stuccio, that irritating lawyer who was bothering me today for my whereabouts—he drew up the prenuptial agreement and practically threatened me into signing. And of course, your grandfather did not want me to go,” she tells Caligula. “But in the end, even he had to bend to the will of the Vicarios.”

“I see,” Caligula says.

Larissa gives a little sigh, as though Caligula is being very stubborn. She reaches out to touch his face, pinches his cheek a little. “Can you blame me? I did my duty, I gave your father a son, and then I went home, rather than grow old inside a lie.”

Caligula takes her hand from his face. “But you still haven’t told me the full truth. You’ve only hinted at it. Say it plainly, and break open that lie once and for all.”

She looks at me and flicks ash over the railing.

“Don’t worry about him,” he says. “He needs to know, too.”

She mutters something under her breath, inhales one last time on her cigarette before stubbing it out in a nearby plant pot. “Your father was in love with Vincent Orsini.”

My mouth falls open.

Caligula goes on quickly before I can say anything. “Did Vincent feel the same way about my father?”

“Yes. They were planning to make a life together. Your father told me himself.”

I scoff in disbelief. “My father adored my mother. He stayed by her bedside all through her illness.” I turn back to Larissa. “And just because Cesario didn’t have much time for you, lady, it doesn’t give you the right to piss all over my parents’ relationship.”