Page 108 of The Beast Who Broke Me
The glow from the screen cuts hard lines across his face as I watch his thumbs move and think about what those hands have done to me. For me. Around my throat. Stroking my temple. Working me open.
He sends the message and puts the phone back on the nightstand.
We both look at the screen.
It stays dark.
Damiano exhales through his nose. I sit back down on the edge of the bed because my legs aren’t as trustworthy as they were a minute ago. Conti may be asleep. He may be occupied. He may be sitting somewhere with a drink, trying to decide whether answering Damiano Orsini’s text is a move he can afford to make.
Damiano looks toward the door. “Take the bed,” he says.
“Where are you going?”
I know before I ask. I know how his mind works, and there is only one place in this house where a man like Damiano Orsini would go to sit with what he’s done.
“Basement,” he says.
You don’t have to punish yourself for wanting me alive instead of dead.The words press against my teeth, but I clench them shut and don’t let them out. Because I’m still pissed at him.
He grabs his phone, then turns toward the door. “Lock it behind me,” he says, over his shoulder. A few weeks ago, that command would have sounded different. A man ordering his property to stay put. Now it sounds like protection, and I resent that too.
“Damiano.”
He stops.
“If Conti answers, wake me.”
“Yeah.”
He leaves, and I get up and lock the door behind him. I lie back down on his bed. It feels too big. It’s built for a man Damiano’s size, a man who sprawls, who fills every space he enters. I’ve slept beside him for enough nights now that my body knows where hisshouldbe, and it feels odd without him.
I turn onto my side, facing the door, and pull the covers up.
I survived the death of my father, of my Nonna, the collapse of my Family, the murder of my kin, living on the streets, Daniel King’s auction block, Damiano Orsini’s basement.
I can survive this.
CHAPTER 37
CALIGULA
The next morning,Damiano avoids everyone as much as possible, while I find myself gravitating toward the kitchen. Rosa works around me without comment, mixing flour and butter for something that subsequently requires a lot of pummeling and kneading.
Damiano appears once early on to get himself a coffee, but doesn’t speak to either of us. I can’t help watching him from the corner of my eye. If I wasn’t so angry, I might worry about him. Actually, even though I’m angry, I’m still worried about him. But not enough to reach out. Not yet.
What mercy did he ever show me, after all?
Mercy. I’ve never thought so much about that concept as I have until recently, since declaring its importance to my Loyalists. And as I watch Rosa’s hands rhythmically work the dough, I find myself thinking about something my father said to me shortly before he died. We were talking about the Family. About how important it is to live up to the name, but not lose who we are.
“Your grandfather is a prime example,” he’d said tiredly from his hospital bed. We were alone in that hospital room. He’d beendrifting in and out of consciousness for the last few days, and the medical staff kept telling me that it was going to be soon.
“You think he’s lost who he is?” I asked.
“No,” he murmured. “He has not lived up to our name.”
It puzzled me at the time. I only realized what he meant after his death, when I was looking at our Family motto, engraved into the brass plate around the painting of the medieval town where we originated:Clementia dignis, gladius indignis.
Mercy to the worthy, the sword to the unworthy.
