Caligula is staring at me.
“What?” I ask, feeling defensive for some reason.
“You’re reasonably intelligent when you try to be,” he sniffs. “The Bratva,” he goes on. “Would they go against D’Amato?”
I think it over. “Maybe. If they thought they could keep it quiet.”
“I told King I wanted to be anonymous,” he says thoughtfully. “But he didn’t honor that. Did they announce I was going to be…you know?”
“Selling your ass? Not that I heard. Those auctions happen on the regular.”
“Then how didyouknow I was going to be at the Obelisk? Did you follow me there, too? You turned up right on cue.”
I weigh up whether to tell him, since it’ll change his mind pretty fast about me beingreasonably intelligent, as he put it. But I don’t give a fuck what the Clemenza thinks about me, and I have a suspicion we both fell for the same play. “I got a text. Told me to show up fast, said it would be advantageous in relation to my, uh. Well, it mentioned the Clemenzas.”
The light in his eyes sharpens. “That was the word they used? ‘Advantageous’?” I nod. “Louie’s text to me used that word, too. I was impressed at the time that he even knew what it meant. But afterward, I realized it must have been whoever was trying to lure me there.”
“To kill you, too?” I guess.
“Seems like.” He pauses. “Or maybe to frame me.Youthought I could be the one behind it all.”
Not really. He has the smarts to do it, maybe even the stomach. But getting the jump on all his cousins and uncles, that would’ve been a big ask. Besides, what did he gain from all those deaths? Nothing. He still had to sell himself at the Obelisk.
And then there was the way he was running that night, running for his life from someone looking to do him harm.
No. Caligula Clemenza isn’t behind all this. It’s someone else.
He’s already moved on. “But why did they contact you?” he murmurs aloud, though he’s really talking to himself.
“I knew it was a trap,” I say. “That text to show up at the Obelisk. But I was willing to take a risk if it meant…” I shrug.
But he’s not going to let me shrug it off. “Exactly what did my father do to yours, Dami? Tell me. If I’m going to suffer for it, I’d like to know it was at least earned.”
Part of me wants to hold it back. Why give the Clemenza what amounts to ammunition? And I don’t like to think about that day more than I have to.
But what he’s asked for is fair. If he’s going to suffer—which I’ll make sure he does, once he’s healthy again, and I’ve taken out whoever’s trying to steal my vendetta from me—then the Clemenza should understand why.
“I was thirteen. At home. Heard a crash. Ran into the kitchen, and your dad was standing there over mine. He’d cut my father’s throat…” I have to pause, squeeze my hands into fists so I don’t grab the son of that man and shake him until his teeth rattle.
Caligula looks way too much like his dad. He’s regarding me with those amber eyes, somber and quiet. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says at last.
“But not sorry for what he did?” I snarl.
“If my father really did kill yours?—”
“What the hell do you mean,ifhe really did?”
“—then he must have had a reason for it.”
“I don’t give a good goddamnwhatreason he had. He was invited in, came in all smiling and happy?—”
“What do you mean?”
I spread my hands. “Your dad and mine. They were friends. Good friends. Right up until…”
His brows, a darker color than his hair, are pulling together. “They were friends? Then how come I never heard the Orsinis mentioned?”
“Because your father was a conniving snake who planned to turn on my dad as soon as he got the order, that’s why!” The need for vengeance is bubbling just below the surface, that always-present anger at the injustice of the whole world.