I should’ve remembered it the whole time he was mine: Clemenzas are never vulnerable. They’re never helpless. They’re twisted, evilsnakes. And Caligula Clemenza is the very worst of them.
I stop in the foyer after getting home, struck by the darkness and the silence. He was right here. For weeks, he wasright here, and he belonged to me. Ihadhim.
And now I don’t.
I need to keep a cool head. Because the Clemenza will be. Ice fucking cold, strategic, unemotional. He’s already three steps ahead of me. That arrogant little prince with the golden eyes and the sharp cheekbones and sharper tongue, making me feel like the dumb muscle even though he was the one with a cage on his cock?—
I need to calm down. I need tothink.
He wasn’t in any of the subway stations I checked, and he wasn’t huddled up in any doorways. When the sun comes up, I’ll reach out to the wider Giuliano street network, see what they might know. But right now I head upstairs to the viewing room in my bedroom, and I do what I should have done before.
I sit down in front of the monitors again and I play the video of Caligula Clemenza leaving me, but this time I let it runpastthe point where he disappears offscreen instead of obsessively replaying.
And I see what I missed.
After he leaves the frame, the street is empty. Thirty seconds of nothing go by. Then the white van parked opposite my house turns on its lights, pulls out, and turns the corner, heading in the same direction as the Clemenza.
I scrub back, try to get a plate, but it’s covered up. There are no markings on the van at all, the kind of vehicle commonly chosen for a murder run. I’ve traveled in more than one myself. Plain white, no windows in the back, easy to hose out once the job is done.
But even if this van followed him, even if whoever is in there grabbed him, I’ve still got fuck-all information, because I can’t see into it. Have no idea who might be in there. The Bratva? The Clemenza Loyalists? Or the person who’s been hunting down Clemenzas for sport, killing them off one by one?
Whoever it was, Caligula Clemenza ismine. I paid ten million dollars for him. More importantly, he owes me for the debt his father carved into my life when I was thirteen years old. He does not get to walk out of my house and disappear into somebody else’s van before I’m done with him.
I will find that snake and break its back. And then I’ll kill whoever thought they could take my vengeance from me. Whoever is in that van has no idea what’s headed their way.
Nobodyputs their hands on what’s mine.
CHAPTER 2
CALIGULA
…told you we didn’t want the kid drugged…
…just a little insurance policy, safer than slugging him…
Swimming back up into consciousness takes a long time and a lot of effort.
There was a van.
A white van.
…a conversation about this…not going to be much fun for you, Scaglietti.
I’m not in a vehicle now, though.
…said it yourself a thousand times, man, you can’t trust the Gees and Cees!
He’s whiny,that guy, whoever he is. I don’t like him.
“And once upon a time, we both ran with them,” says the first voice. Definitelynotwhiny. Dangerous.
Whiny seems to realize that, because he doesn’t reply. And then I get a real shock, because the next person to speak is a woman. “He’s coming round.”
There’s a silence, but I can feel stares even through this black bag that’s over my head. I try to play possum, but it’s too late. They know I’m awake.
So I concentrate on what information I can gather. The bag over my head smells like sweat. Someone else’s sweat, which is somehow worse. I’m sitting up in a chair. It’s metal. My hands are duct-taped to the arms of it. My feet are free, but when I give an experimental rock, the chair doesn’t move.
It’s bolted to the floor.
