Page 71 of The Beast Who Begged Me

But cruelty for its own sake isn’t in me, either. There, at least, I’m not like my grandfather at all. Dami’s blood is precious to me, and it’s spilling out of him, all over the new carpet he was so anxious I would like.

So I’m trying to find a gentle way to tell a broken man that I can’t forgive him.

He’s already nodding. “I know you can’t,” he says to the floor. “I shouldn’t’ve asked. I’ll still serve you, anyway. For the rest of my life.”

I left his basement in pieces. I will never be the same as I once was, even if each piece is meticulously fitted back in place. None of it can ever be made right.

And yet…

I keep thinking about my grandmother’s dishes. Dami destroyed them; I told Rosa to throw them away. Instead, Sammy took all those splintered pieces and made them into art. Something beautiful.

I’ll never be the same. Neither, frankly, will Dami. But if I stop holding up the fragments that remain, comparing them unfavorably to what they used to be, then maybe I could have something else.

Something beautiful.

Not repaired, but remade.

I know the worst of him. But there’s a scar on his arm where he took a knife for me, too. The marble was replaced in the foyer because he couldn’t bear the thought of me walking across the place where my cousin died every day for the rest of my life.

He bought me. He built a windowless prison to keep me in. What he’s done to his hand doesn’t wipe any of that away, and I hate so much that he thought it might.

I won’t forgive the men who have made themselves my enemy. I plan to outlive them. To make sure they can never reach me again. And in some cases, to remove them from the world myself.

But Dami isn’t my enemy. He hasn’t been for a long time.

Somewhere between his basement and this bloodied floor, I fell in love with him. A terrible love, so dark and consuming that it frightens me. A love born out of obsession and rage and loss.

But love, nonetheless.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, hopeless now. “I know I can never make up for it. I know we can never…”

Keeping one hand over the blood-soaked shirt, I reach for his face. He flinches, but I keep hold of him and make him look at me. This enormous, brutal man who lived his whole life in service of a misplaced vengeance is kneeling before me with tears in his eyes.

“I forgive you.”

He just stares at me. He doesn’t believe me.

So I say it again. “Dami. I forgive you.”

“You can’t,” he mutters finally. “You shouldn’t. Not after everything I did to you.”

I smile. A difficult, painful smile. But a true smile. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe I can’t forgive what you did.” I don’t let him look away. “But I can forgive you.”

“I tried to kill you. I held you out over the stairs and I⁠—”

“I remember, Dami.” His face crumples, and I keep my hand against it. “You don’t have to remind me how bad it was.”

He shakes his head. “Then how can you⁠—”

“Because I know exactly what I’m forgiving you for. I’m not forgiving your actions. But I am choosing to forgive you.”

Something lights in his eyes, and I think it’s hope, but it dulls a moment later. “You don’t forgive your enemies.”

I hold his face a little tighter. “No. But Dami…you’re not my enemy.”

He goes very still under my hands. And then, in a voice I’ve never heard him use—small, painful, pleading—he says, “Tell me again.”

“You are not my enemy. I forgive you, Damiano Orsini.”