Page 64 of The Beast Who Begged Me

So I don’t.

Instead, I drag him clear, my fist locked so tight in his coat that my stitched-up hand feels like it’s coming apart.

A gun goes off. Then another, almost on top of it, and Caligula jerks against me, trying to go back to the fray.

“Alive!” he shouts. “I need him alive!”

But the guy is already dead. The Clemenzas crowd around him, blocking my view.

“Fuck,” Caligula spits, trying to break my grip exactly the way I taught him myself. I have to slide an arm around his middle and bodily lift him instead. “Dami, wait⁠—”

I haul him across the road toward the car. “Ferraro!” I bark, and he turns. “Call me when it’s done.”

He nods. He knows what I mean: deal with it. The body, the cops, all of it.

Vito has the back door open, one hand inside his jacket, and he moves aside as I shove Caligula in and climb in after him. “Drive,” I tell Vito, as soon as he’s back in the driver’s seat. He pulls away hard enough to throw us back, and I put my good arm around Caligula to keep him safe.

I bend over him. “Let me see your hand.”

“Dami, I need to⁠—”

“Your fucking hand, Caligula.”

He holds it out. I grab his wrist and turn it over, checking his palm, his fingers, those fragile bones carrying around that big ring. I put my hand against the side of his neck, turning his face toward the light. “Did he get you anywhere?”

“No. But I need to⁠—”

“You need to get the hell out of here.”

The door guards at the mansion are on high alert when we arrive back—no lazy side-eye tonight, just hard faces and the door slammed as soon as we’re inside. I called ahead to make sure they would be waiting for us. The mechanical lock drives home and Caligula jumps at the noise.

I practically carry him up the stairs, ignoring his protest that he can climb them alone.

Again. It happened again. And there are so many people who want him dead now that it shouldn’t have come as a surprise—but this wasn’t the Bratva, and it wasn’t the Giulianos.

No. I’d bet my life that this was the one working in the shadows. The one who tore his grandfather’s townhouse apart, wall by wall.

He went for Caligula’s throat first. But he changed his aim when he saw the ring. And it fits the M.O. of whoever’s doing this. They weren’t professionals. Just gutter trash looking to make a quick buck.

Caligula knew it, too. That’s why he wanted him alive. Alive to question. But his men were too quick on the trigger, too eager to impress their new Don.

I can’t blame them. In fact, my only regret is that I didn’t get to do it myself.

When we get to the bedroom, I lock the door, and then my hands are on him. All over him. I’m shaking. He’s not. He stands there patiently as I squeeze, stroke, lift his limbs and check them over.

“I’m okay,” he says when I start going over the same territory. “Dami, I’m okay.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m fucking not.”

I lift his hand, the one with the ring, and press my mouth to it—to the knuckles, just below the ouroboros—and hold it there, eyes closed.

I’ve hurt him. Tortured him, even. What right do I have to worry about him now?

“I’m okay,” he says, for the third time, and pulls his hand free.

I let him.

And then he bounces up on his toes and plants his mouth on mine—a sudden, hard kiss.