Relief, I guess.
By the time I focus on his face, whatever expression he was wearing a second ago has smoothed into oblivion, and he’s just staring back at me.
But he’s here. He didn’t run.
He knows he needs me.
CHAPTER 34
DAMIANO
Vito puts his foot down,throwing us back in our seats as he pulls out into a quieter street with minimal traffic. Vito knows New York like the back of his hand, and he knows the best routes when you’re in a hurry. So when I turn to see the security guards appear at the mouth of the alley and rapidly become smaller as we drive away, I grin. “Too slow, motherfuckers.”
“What the hell did you do?” Caligula sounds horrified, staring at the shredded jacket wound around my arm, the horror growing as he takes in the rest of me.
I look down at myself. I’m covered in ash and goop. My brand-new shirt is splattered with gunk, there’s something yellow smeared down my pant leg, and I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding, judging by the wet warmth spreading down the middle of my back.
“It’ll wash out,” I tell him with a shrug and a grin.
He doesn’t return it. He looks pretty pale, actually. Maybe he’s not as strong yet as I thought he was. “You stink,” he says bluntly.
“That’s what happens when you land in a dumpster. It was that or cause a major fucking incident fighting my way back out. I seeyoumanaged to slither away quietly.”
He studies my face. “Please tell me the destruction of a Lorenzo Benedetti masterpiece was worth it.”
That dampens my spirits a little. “I got a name. But it didn’t mean much to me. Tiberius.”
“Tiberius?” he repeats, his brows knitting in confusion.
“That’s what he said. You got any Tiberius Clemenzas in your poisonous family tree?”
He shakes his head, frustrated—and then freezes. “No Tiberius Clemenzas,” he says slowly. “But I have a cousin on my mother’s side…Tiberius Vicario.”
“Vicario? Shit, I haven’t heard that name in years.”
Carmine Vicario used to run the whole eastern seaboard. He was the Boss of Bosses, the Big Kahuna, before he got himself scattered into pieces in that infamous Chicago bombing that took out a lot of the fat cats, including Jimmy Giuliano, Big Gee’s old man.
“What happened to his Family after he died?” the Clemenza asks, and the way he says it, I can tell he’s not asking about the guy’s progeny. “They were so powerful—or seemed that way.”
“Dead, fled, or assimilated. Just like you Clemenzas. That’s how it goes. One empire falls, another one rises, then falls, so another one?—”
“Yes. Thank you for the history lesson,” he says. “But what about Carmine Vicario’s sons?”
It’s hard to think when the pain in my back is getting worse with each hard turn Vito makes. “Dunno,” I grit out.
“There were three of them. All of them would have been in their sixties when their father died.”
“I remember the eldest wasn’t worth a good goddamn. Dumber than a box of rocks, and soft along with it.” A bit like Big Gee, truth be told, though Big Gee at least has a survival instinct, and he’s in the prime of life. “Where does this Tiberius fit in?”
“Tiberius is Carmine Vicario’s great-grandson, and my cousin through my mother’s sister.”
“They really had a thing for the Roman Empire, your mom and her sister, huh? Tiberius and Caligula.”
He gives a slight grimace. “Actually, that wasmygrandfather’s idea. Nonno Lou thought it would flatter Carmine Vicario, who had suggested my cousin’s name to my aunt. Tiberius is a few years older than I am. Anyway, that’s how I got stuck with Caligula.” He looks down, muttering, “It’s ridiculous. That’s why I usually go by ‘Cal.’”
“I like Caligula,” I offer. “Not a name you forget easy.”
“It brings with it certain…expectations,” he says ruefully, and then his eyes narrow. “You’re hurt.”