“The turkey,” she repeats. “Remove it.”
But the Clemenza pipes up. “Surely we’re going to celebrate Thanksgiving, Dami.”
The idea begins to appeal. Killing the hell out of this asshole and then sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal with the rest of the household. One last time gathered together before the Morellis come for me.
“Sure,” I say. “Cook the bird, Rosa. We can give the leftovers out, too. Share the wealth.”
“Share the wealth,” Caligula repeats with a smile. “You’re always so generous, Dami. I like that about you.” He pushes his plate away and turns back to Rosa. “That was delicious. Thank you.” It’s the first sincere thing I’ve heard him say since I saw him standing in that warehouse behind a Morelli shield. “Dami, we should talk. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Rosa pensively watches the Clemenza get up from the counter and take up his coat, slinging it casually over his arm before walking toward me.
“Get on with your work,” I tell her. And then I turn and lead the way back to the foyer.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” the Clemenza says. “For a little privacy.”
I wave a hand in anafter yougesture, and he goes ahead of me up the stairs. I watch him as we climb, his hand trailing along the banister, the set of his shoulders in a sweater that I bought for him.
The main staircase winds around a central void, all the way from the ground floor to the top, and the banister is wrought iron with a polished oak rail. On the fifth-floor landing, the Clemenza turns to look back at me, and his face is open in a way I haven’t seen before. Like he’s about to say something soft and sweet.
Something manipulative.
I grab him before he can get a word out. Two hands on the front of his sweater, hauling him up and back, slamming him onto the railing so he’s sitting on it with forty feet of nothing behind him. The coat falls away from his arm, flapping and floating like a large bird all the way to the bottom.
He’s not going to float. He’ll drop like a stone.
“You think those Morelli fucks can save you now?” I ask. “Let’s see if they’re fast enough to catch your fall.”
CHAPTER 8
CALIGULA
My head spinsas Damiano Orsini tips me backward into a void, and I grab onto his arms, clutching and scratching as a primitive terror takes hold. Far below me, the foyer yawns open like a mouth. I can see the edge of the fireplace where I warmed my hands when I came in, the geometric pattern of the tiles shrunk to the size of postage stamps.
“Wait!” I gasp. “If you kill me, the Morellis will come for you!”
He just pushes me further off-balance, his dark eyes empty of mercy. I see now where I messed up. I trusted too much in the hold I would have over him.
I trusted that he’d value keeping his own life over taking mine.
But the man glaring down at me as he dangles me into space is not a man who’s thinking about his own life anymore. I can’t save myself by appealing to his self-interest, because he has none left.
His only interest is in killing me.
If I can’t think of something he values more than killing me in the next split second, I’ll be falling to my death still wondering about it.
He’s loyal. Loyal to the death.
That’s his weakness.
“Rosa,” I gasp out. “Vito.Sammy.” For an instant, he pauses. “They’ll die, too.”
It’s not my imagination. He really has stopped. He’s listening.
“When Finch D’Amato pulled me aside in the warehouse,” I pant, “he told me to let you know your whole household would be forfeit if you hurt me. Not justyou.”
He’s thinking about it. But then he sneers. “Why tell you and not me?”
