Page 89 of The Beast Who Broke Me
And that leaves me on the outside.
“The only thing I’m trying to do right now is stay alive,” Caligula says, and that doesn’t help, because haven’t Ibeenkeeping him alive? So why is he talking like?—
That thigh pressed up against mine gives a slow rub that I think is supposed to come across as reassuring.
I glance over at Marcello, who’s standing near the courtyard doors. He’s watching the doors, the windows, the courtyard.Alert. Professional. One hand resting casually near the opening of his jacket, where his gun must sit.
“Please,” Tiberius says, waving a hand at the food spread across the coffee table. “Enjoy. I had it prepared when I heard you were coming.”
“You heard we were coming?” Caligula asks. “From Tony Stuccio?”
“Oh, I have my little network.” Tiberius waves a hand. “The point is, you’re here now. And I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.”
Caligula pointedly doesn’t eat or drink. I grab a plate and pile it up with food, not that these tiny things are anywhere near enough to fill me up. But at least it gives my hands something to do.
I still wait until Tiberius picks out an olive, puts it in his mouth, and chews before I eat anything. Probably not poisoned.
“I’m glad we can get to know each other now,” Caligula replies. “Though we might have met earlier if I’d known you were at the Obelisk that night.”
He’s warming up. That was a good hit.
Tiberius smiles. “I thought perhaps it wasn’t the moment.”
“Wasn’t the moment? I was being sold at auction. If there was ever a moment for family to make themselves known?—”
“And what would you have had me do? Leap to my feet and declare our kinship to a room full of Bratva? That wouldn’t have gone down well.”
And so they go on. Ripostes flying, testing each other’s blades.
Caligula is good, and getting better. He feints, he redirects, he drops observations that seem casual but aren’t. He gets Tiberius to reveal that he’s been in New York for over a year. That he hadn’t seen Nonno Lou for at least a decade before his death. That he has no idea where the Clemenza ring is. That he has a membership at the Obelisk, though I’ve never seen him there. “We move in different circles of that hell, I expect,” Tiberius says to me in one of the only comments directed my way.
But the more I sit there, the more uneasy I feel. Tiberius is slippery. He won’t be pinned down to specifics.
I can’t read this fucker.
He’s too relaxed, too amused at Caligula’s predicament. And then there’s the way he treats me—not exactly beneath his consideration, but more like the interesting pet of a friend. From time to time, he refills my tea without being asked, or encourages me to pile up my plate again.
“Are you close to your mother?” Caligula asks.
“Oh, very close. She adores me, and I her.”
That hit lands, judging by the way Caligula’s mouth tightens.
I eat my food and watch the Vicario. He moves like a jellyfish, boneless, rearranging himself on that sofa with the lazy grace of a man who’s never had to move fast in his life. But that’s an act. I see it in the way his weight stays centered, the way he’s aware of me even while he’s smiling at Caligula.
This guy knows how to fight. He just doesn’t want me to know he knows.
I want to punch out all those perfect white teeth every time he grins. But something else is keeping me quiet and watchful. Thisis the first time in a while that Caligula has sounded like his old self. Quick and sharp and three moves ahead.
Maybe I shouldn’t be glad about that. But I am.
And still, I can’t help wondering how much of it isreal. Last night I wrecked him and then I abandoned him to sleep alone. I lay awake for hours, thinking: what the fuck have I done to him?
Now he’s making a Vicario spar and even sweat a little, and I…I don’t know.
I don’t know what’s genuine with the Clemenza and what’s not. He’s played me before. It would make sense that he’d find any way he can to control me again, especially after losing that oh-so-effective threat against my household.
Especially after the basement.
