Page 68 of The Beast Who Begged Me

While we’re there, Caligula stops me and looks at the floor again, his gaze moving over the smooth stone.

“This isn’t the old floor,” he says.

“I had the marble torn out.”

“Why?”

Surely he knows why. “So you’ll never have to stand on the same stone where your cousin died. I couldn’t change what happened there. But I could change the floor.”

For a second, his composure almost breaks. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

He leads the way up the stairs and makes his way to his grandfather’s study. He stops in the doorway, takes in the repaired floors and walls. The great oak desk and the painting of the village behind it on the wall, the one that hides the new safe I had installed.

“I didn’t know about this one,” I say, and I almost sound nervous. “If you want to make the room your own⁠—”

“It’s fine for now,” he says, though there’s a note in his voice I don’t like. “The bedroom?” he goes on. “Which⁠—”

“Your old room,” I say quickly. “I thought—for now—but if you’d rather set up in a different one⁠—”

He brushes past me, walking more quickly down the hallway to check each bedroom, stopping at his own. The ivory and blue cover is on the bed, the one from the basement. He crosses to it and runs a hand across it. “I thought maybe the fire had…”

“I had it cleaned,” I say. “Got all the smoke out.” I want to put my arms around him, but something keeps me back. “I saved this for last,” I say, backtracking down the corridor. “Look.”

I push aside one of the paintings of his dead ancestors now hanging on the wall, to reveal a scanner. I press my fingerprint to it and the wall panel slides open. I wave a hand, and he enters it.

A safe room. Big enough for all of us, but closest to the rooms he’ll be most likely to use.

“It has independent power,” I tell him. “Its own oxygen supply. Comms. Water. A month of food. You’ll have full access. Well—once I program your prints in.”

He looks around. The room is clean and bright, almost comfortable: stocked shelves, a small bathroom, and a main bed plus some foldout bunks, currently locked up against the wall. There wasn’t much space in this part of the townhouse to fit a whole new room into it, but I was determined.

Caligula doesn’t say anything. He looks at the shelves, then his eyes settle on the bed.

“What do you think?” I ask.

He turns and walks back into the hall. “I think we should start unpacking,” he says. Evenly. Calmly. “That Morelli driver should be here with our bags by now.”

I don’t know what’s wrong. But I know I’ve fucked up somehow.

Again.

We spend the day unpacking, and I offer to show Caligula what work still needs to be done on the higher floors, but he says it can wait. By the time we sit down to dinner, the place at least smells familiar. Rosa and Vito went to the market, just as she insisted, to get the seafood for la Vigilia tonight. Rosa’s been cooking since noon, cod and scallops and sardines and God knows what else. There’s garlic braided by the window again, and she’s put up the little nativity scene on the windowsill, the one she always pulls out for Christmas.

The kitchen table is round, bigger than the old one, so we all fit around it easier. Rosa bustles around happily, slapping plate after plate in front of us.

Sammy’s talking about how fucking amazing Ricky Benedetti is—as usual—telling some story with both hands and most of his body. He’s got sauce on his chin and no idea. Vito catches my eye and shakes his head with a silent laugh.

Rosa wipes Sammy’s face with her napkin. “You’re an animal.”

He just laughs and goes on with his story.

This is what I wanted. This. My people gathered around a table, laughing, belonging here.

Caligula is perfect. He toasts Rosa, teases Sammy about Benedetti, sits through me complaining about all the fights I had with the renovation crew.

But he never once looks at me.

After dinner, Sammy wants to go back to his art room. He stops at the bottom of the stairs, looks back at the room, then at me. “Night, Dami.”