His hands curl into fists now. Not at me, I think. At himself. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
“Liar.”
His eyes snap to mine.
There he is. The beast under the guilt. The man who does not like being accused, even when he has earned every word of it.
But he still says nothing in his own defense.
I stand, because I am not having this conversation from his bed like some trembling captive waiting for a verdict. I have been hunted, bought, chained, humiliated, fucked, and lied to. I have been broken down and reassembled into something I don’t entirely recognize.
But I am still a Clemenza.
I smile. “Were you going to do it while you wereinsideme?”
“No.” Damiano looks like I’ve struck him across the face. That, at least, I believe.
But belief is not forgiveness. Something dreadful opens between us. A pit with every terrible thing he has done to me at the bottom of it, and every terrible thing I wanted from him in there, too.
“After, then? When I fell asleep in your arms last night? Or this morning, perhaps, before I woke?” The anger is cracking my voice now, and I swallow hard, forcing the tremor down.
He just takes it. Every word. He lets me carve him open because thereisno answer that will make any of it better, and for one nauseating second, I want to cross the three feet between us and press my face into his chest and breathe him in and pretend none of this is happening.
That urge is worse than the anger. It means the damage is already done.
That’s the part I can’t forgive. Not the murder he planned, but the fact that I still want him. The fact that even now, knowing he lay beside me thinking about how to kill me gently, some ruined and craven part of me still aches for his hands.
“Did you tell yourself it was mercy? My grandfather used to say the same thing before he put a bullet in someone who’d outlived their usefulness.”
His eyes are dark and pained. “Please stop,” he says at last.
“Did you think I’d give you a fucking cookie for deciding not to murder me?” For one mad second, I think I might laugh. Not because anything about this is funny, but because it’s unbearable.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” he says tiredly, and my urge to laugh, along with the urge to needle him, die out together. “Look, none of this should come as a surprise to you. Just…that I decided not to.”
He knowsexactlywhy I’m so angry. He just doesn’t want to take responsibility for it. My gaze drops to his hand. The black “G” tattooed into his skin. A mark I have hated since the first time I saw it, and hated more as time went by. A brand of loyalty. Of belonging. Of everything that made him my enemy.
But for the first time, the tattoo doesn’t look like power. It looks like a bullseye.
“The Giulianos will kill you,” I say, “if you don’t give me to King.”
Damiano’s face does not change. Which means he’s already thought about it. Already accepted it. He’s standing there with the flat certainty of a man who has written himself off.
“That tattoo won’t protect you,” I continue. “Refusing to obey will cost you your life. Daniel King said as much at the Obelisk. He was right.”
“I know.”
“You know,” I repeat. “You know, and your plan was—what? To stand there looking tragic until they put a bullet in your head?”
His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. “Hadn’t got that far.”
“Clearly. Because it means Rosa and Sammy and Vito are all in the firing line, too.”
The almost-smile vanishes. “I could talk to Seb,” he says after a moment. “See if he’s managed to cool Big Gee down. He’s always been able to do it before.”
Cool Big Gee down. As though the Giuliano Boss is a temperamental stove. “Yes,” I say. “Talk to him. You should.”
He takes his phone from the nightstand. The movement is so ordinary, it almost hurts. This enormous man, half-dressed in the low light, typing a message into his phone like any other man in any other bedroom.
