Page 67 of The Beast Who Begged Me

I renovated this kitchen with her in mind. I didn’t have to touch much. It still has the dark cabinets, the wide glass doors onto a garden courtyard—and on the range sits her old pot.

She stops so short I nearly walk into her. “Oh, Madonna.” Her voice cracks, and both hands go over her mouth. And then she turns and presses her face into my chest. “You crazy man. You crazy, stupid man.”

I wrap my arms around her. “Come on, don’t cry. It’s not that bad, is it?”

She pulls back, slaps my chest, and wipes her cheeks. “Of course not! It’s beautiful. Just…beautiful. And thank God—now I can do the fish for tonight. Vito! We’re going to the market!”

“Calm down, woman,” I laugh. “Let him see around the place first. Plenty of time for the markets.”

Vito’s garage holds a huge workbench, places for all his tools, two brand-new motorcycles and three town cars for him to take care of. He takes off his cap and stands like he’s in a church, looking around. He knocks on the bench, testing it, and looks at me. He nods.

When people hear about Vito cutting his tongue out, the reactions range from horror to admiration. But the thing about Vito is, he never talked all that much anyway before he did it. A nod from him is like a whole speech.

I nod back.

We backtrack to the kitchen, where Caligula is still with Rosa, nodding and smiling as she points things out to him, as though it’s all new to him. He’s taking pleasure in her pleasure.

But then he goes still. He’s looking past Rosa, at the wall behind the kitchen table, where I hung the final touch myself this morning. It’s one of Sammy’s pieces, a collage of broken china, blue and gold, fitted together so the fractured edges ripple out from the center like water after you drop a stone in it.

“Those are my grandmother’s plates,” Caligula says.

“Yeah.”

And I’m the asshole who broke them. I swept them off the table and smashed them into smithereens, and when I saw what Sammy had made with the pieces, it took me a while to get over myself enough to ask him if I could hang it. I found it when I was going through his things that made it through the fire, setting up his space upstairs.

“Looks good there,” Sammy says, which from him is a ringing endorsement.

Caligula crosses the kitchen and reaches up to trace one gilded rim. He turns back to Sammy, bewildered. “But where did you find the pieces?”

“They were in a Ziploc bag, sitting there in the trash when I was taking it out one day. Seemed like a waste.”

“It’s incredible, Sammy,” Caligula says quietly. “You have such a gift.”

Sammy goes red and glances around, trying to find a distraction. He points at the stairs that come down into the kitchen. “What’s up there?”

“Your rooms,” I tell him.

“Rooms, plural?” he snorts.

“Rooms, plural.”

He gives me a suspicious look, like there has to be a catch, then takes the steps two at a time. I go up behind him at a more leisurely pace. This whole section is pretty self-contained. Since Sammy seems determined to have the Benedetti grandson over constantly, I figured he needed his own space. And it’s not just a bedroom and a lounge up here; I repurposed one of the sitting rooms, made it into something that will see more use.

Sammy’s art room runs the whole north corner, tall windows pouring light over the worktables—storage, a deep sink, drying racks, and on one wall the weird fucking artwork he made a while ago, the one that always gave me the creeps to look at it, because it looks like someone shivering.

He stands in the middle of it all and stares. “Jesus Christ.”

“Saved what I could from the old place,” I say, gesturing at his organized art supplies. I got one of those influencer types who puts shit in rainbow formation to shelve and stack all the junk he’s collected over the years. “Even though it all looked like trash to me.”

He turns and throws his arms around me. Two seconds. Three at most. Then he jerks back and goes to the window to look out of it, hiding his face. “Guess I’m still stuck with you guys, huh?” he throws over his shoulder, followed by a sniffle.

“Looks like.”

Caligula slides up close to me. “Nice work,” he murmurs. I look down at him. He’s smiling—real, wide, unguarded.

And I’ve still got the best card in my hand, the one I’ve been saving. “Come with me.”

We leave Sammy exploring his new spaces, and we head back to the foyer so we can reach the main stairs.