I crouch to look more closely at the shards and, with lightheaded nausea, recognize them. It’s Nonna Mellie’s china. The special set she kept for celebrations. I’d know that hand-painted pattern anywhere—the pale blue flowers with gold rims, the delicate scrollwork she told me was done by an artist in our home village.
I pick up a piece the size of a half-dollar. There’s half a blue flower on it, the gold rim still intact.
I’m a little unsteady getting to my feet, and only after a few moments do I realize I’m not alone. I turn quickly to see Rosa in the doorway, her hands crumpling and smoothing her apron over and over.
“It was an accident,” she says in a low voice. “He told me to leave it, so I…” She comes forward nervously.
“I’ll clear it,” I say abruptly. I don’t want Damiano blaming her for disobeying. But the sharpness in my voice makes Rosa flinch, and I hear myself—hear the command in it, the snap—and it sounds too much like someone else. “Perhaps you could clear away the food,” I go on, with an effort to sound calmer. “And I’ll take care of this.”
Most of the pieces are beyond retrieval. They’re either too tiny or too sharp to pick up, or they’re literally dust. But I manage to get together a small amount of coin-sized pieces. I don’t even know why I’m gathering them; it’s beyond salvageable. But I can’t bear to throw away Nonna Mellie’s best china without at least trying.
I know exactly what happened. Or at least, I can guess. Not knowing what happened during the night, Rosa laid out the Clemenza china this morning in a gesture of goodwill toward me. And when Dami saw it, he destroyed it.
Knowing that, I’m surprised anything of it survived at all.
I’m surprisedIsurvived. He wanted to smash me into the ground this morning, just like the china. The only reason I’m kneeling here instead of lying broken on the foyer floor is because I used the people he loves as a shield.
Rosa brings me a Ziploc bag to put the pieces in. “If we’re eating in here tomorrow,” she says, still sounding nervous, “I should make sure to vacuum.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate with cooking the whole meal?” I give a humorless laugh. “Probably the wrong metaphor. But you know what I mean.”
She puts a hand on my arm and says, “It’s good for him to have you here. Despite everything, I think it is good.”
It will be good once I have him under control again. And to do that, I’ll need to face up to my own fears. I can’t show an ounce of weakness.
I hand the bag full of broken china pieces to her. “Trash this,” I tell her. “It’s beyond saving.”
CHAPTER 9
DAMIANO
I stayin the same guest room I slept in when I was trying to avoid the Clemenza before, back when keeping a distance from him was my choice and not his order.
It’s past midnight. The house is silent. And just three doors down, Caligula Clemenza is sleeping in my bed, and I’m lying here in the dark staring at the ceiling trying to figure out when exactly I lost control of my own goddamn life.
I could kick the door in. It’s my house, my bedroom, my bed. The lock wouldn’t hold for two seconds against my shoulder, and he knows it. The lock isn’t a barrier. It’s adare.
He’s daring me to break it down, because he knows that the second I do, he picks up that phone and calls Finch D’Amato, and my household pays the price.
Or so he says.
The thing is, a Mob Boss who wants to threaten you isn’t usually so subtle about it.
But D’Amato is so bussy-whipped that he’d do anything his husband wanted him to do. And for some fucking reason, Finchhas taken an interest in the Clemenza. It makes sense the threat would come from him. Gives the Morelli Don some plausible deniability, too.
So I just lie here, and I think about what I’d do to that snake if I could.
But after a while, the thoughts split in two directions, and I can’t control either one. Down one track, I’ve got my hands around his throat, and I’m finishing what I started on the railing. Down the other, I’ve got my hands somewhere else entirely, and he’s making that sound he made thefirsttime, when I drove into him in one stroke.
Both versions end with me losing everything.
I roll over and punch the pillow into a different shape and think about the day I can take out my fury on his body instead of a sack of duck feathers.
I leave early the next day, but the smell of roasting turkey is already filling the house. I drive myself instead of calling for Vito. At least I can release some frustrations at work. This morning it’s a restaurant owner who’s three months behind on his protection payments. I hold him up against his own kitchen wall and explain what will happen to his kneecaps if he’s not current by the end of the day. He cries. Gives me a check on the spot.
Clean. Simple. The way my life used to be before the Clemenza snake slithered into it.
I need to figure out how to get Rosa, Vito, and Sammy somewhere safe before I kill Caligula. I could ask Seb to protect them, but he’d ask questions I’m in no mood to answer.
