Page 69 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Night.”

“Night, Cal,” he adds with a nod.

Caligula smiles. “Sleep well, Sammy.”

Rosa clears the plates, slapping away my hand when I try to help. Vito’s assistance, she accepts. They start cleaning up in the kitchen. Washing the dishes. I hear her saying something about attending Mass, but Vito shakes his head and makes a familiar sign with his hand. Too dangerous.

“Maybe next year,” she sighs.

Caligula looks at me for the first time. “Dami. We should talk.”

Our bedroom—or his bedroom, at least, since I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be sharing it tonight—is warm, the fire low in the grate, everything smelling of new wood and clean linen.

Caligula shuts the door. He stands by the fire, and when he speaks, it’s to the flames. “You’ve done it again.”

“Done what?”

“Made me a custom jail cell.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“There’s a prison just down the hall.”

I stare at him. “It’s a safe room. Because people are trying to kill you. It has its own power, its own air. It’s fireproof and bombproof⁠—”

“I know.” He says it gently, and the gentleness is worse than shouting. “You said all that. And we both know it’s really a cage.”

My stomach drops. Because it’s true. I’ve done this before, just like he says. A room built to exact measurements, with a bed, a shower, locks only I could open.

At least I was honest with myself about it last time. This time around, I never saw what I was doing. But now I see.

And he’s right. That’s the problem.

I reach for the only truth I have left, and it sounds hollow even to me. “Everything I do is to keep you safe.”

“I’m grateful, Dami. I really am. But let’s be honest: everything you do is to keep me.”

“That’s not true. That’s not fucking true—I signed this whole place over to you. Your name is on all the official documents. This house is yours. It’s not mine.”

This isn’t how I wanted to tell him. I wanted my gift to him to be a good thing. Free and easy. Generous.

Now it feels like another futile attempt to win his forgiveness.

His eyes close, and I hate it—he looks tired before he even answers, like we’ve run this so many times, he knows the ending already. I’ve given him walls and locks and money and every other thing I know how to hand a person, and I’m still standing here with nothing he wants.

“I don’t want to repeat this cycle anymore. You hurt me. So I hurt you. So you hurt me…” He shakes his head. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“Don’t.” It comes out rough. “Don’t ask me to leave you alone.”

He flinches. “I’m not sending you anywhere. I’m not asking you to go. I just think we need to⁠—”

“You’re releasing me.”

“I…” He stares at me helplessly. “We’ll never have an equal partnership. Can’t you see that? We’re always struggling with each other, each of us trying to get the upper hand.”

The upper hand.

An idea takes over before I can stop it. I tear the bandage off my hand. The wound underneath is clean, the black line of the “G” pulled only slightly out of shape by swollen red scar tissue.