Page 13 of Cage of Thorns and Blood

As we glide through the dark streets, silence fills the car. There's an urge riding me to fill it with small talk, but I don't let it win. If this is part of the game, part of the battle of wits that seems to be commencing between us, then I'm not going to be the first to crack.

Her scent fills the car, and it’s sophisticated in the same way that she is. Sensual too. It's nothing like the scent she used to wear when we would hook up as teenagers. Then she wore something fruity and fresh, whereas this is a heavily rich floral scent. I decide to ask the investigator digging into her life to find out what it is. In fact, I'm going to find out exactly what beauty products, shampoos and conditioners, and other feminine things she uses, so that I can stock my place with them.

She's staring out the window, watching the world go by. I idly flick a switch by the wheel and turn some music on. A song fills the car that has a slow beat and a man singing above it in a rich voice. He's singing about making someone get on their knees for him and beg.

He’s singing about how he'll make them worship him all night.

Renata's gaze cuts my way briefly, but then she goes back to looking at the outside world. She shifts again in her seat and crosses her legs the other way, denying me the glimpses of her stocking top in my peripheral vision.

It would be so easy to pull the car onto the side of the road, lean over, and gather her in my arms. I grip the steering wheel tighter, locking myself down. I didn't get where I am in the world today by being unable to control my urges. I did not build the business higher than either of our parents ever did by being someone who gives in to every little temptation. I've always been excellent at delaying my gratification.

In fact, from what I know about her, Renata will find this much harder than me. She's always been the kind of girl who wants something there and then. If her shopping habits are anything to go by, that hasn't changed. The amount of money she spends on bags and shoes could fund a small country. She seems to see something, want it, and just goes for it. She was that way when we were teenagers too. I think it comes from the fact that her parents seemed to spoil her rotten in so many ways, but then denied her the things she wanted the most.

I let my mind consider whether she's truly as spoiled as I've often believed. Yes, she's pampered. Renata lives a luxurious life, and she doesn't seem to do an awful lot of work for it. She married a very wealthy man, and unlike most women in our life, she was allowed to leave him when she’d had enough.

Still, I remember some of our conversations when we were teenagers, and I remember her telling me about one particular time when all she had wanted was a bike. Instead of giving Renata her wish for Christmas, her parents gave her a doll. To rub salt into the wound, Nico got a bike.

She's always had a rivalry with her brother which makes no sense to me. In our world, there's no competition between women and men. The two sexes are distinctly not the same in our family’s culture, each having specific roles and expectations. Yet, Renata doesn't seem to want to fit into the box she's been given. It makes her despise her brother in many ways. She's always tried to compete against him. Always wanted what he had. In fact, it makes my secondary motivation for this game I'm putting into motion much easier to achieve.

It wouldn’t take an awful lot, I don't think, to get Renata to turn against her family.

Oh, she plays her games, but I want her to help me destroy them, one day, when the time is right, and I think I can persuade her to do it.

I look at her again, and a memory from the past floats into my mind. We had taken the train to a small country station, and bought sandwiches and bottles of soda in the shop there and simply walked. We strolled until we found a nice field, and we laid down in the long grass as we ate our food and let the sun warm our faces. I simply held her in my arms as her soft hair tickled my neck, and we talked. She told me then that she had dreams and plans and things she wanted to do, but she would never be allowed to do them. Not as a woman in the Andretti family.

In some ways, it makes my heart hurt that someone so bright and beautiful was put into such a restrictive box. In others, I want to shake her and ask her what she expects from this life. Her destiny was forged the day she emerged into the world, kicking and screaming, the same way as mine was.

We are our genes and our history. You can’t change it. Why fight it?

I swallow and focus on the road and try to shake the feeling of melancholy this train of thought has given me. This plan isn't going to work if I get soft. Renata fucked me over, her family fucked mine over, and now it's time for me to exact my revenge. I can't let emotions and feelings from the past get in the way. I can't let any sense of sympathy for the she-devil sitting beside me hinder my plans either.

Use her, get what I want, and then decide what to do with her. That's the plan.

If she destroys her family for me, though, she'll have nowhere to go. She'll be twisting in the wind and vulnerable. Hell, her own family might even put a price on her head. I glance at her again. It’s far too pretty a head to end up in a bin bag in the Thames.

Keep her the voice whispers, dark and depraved deep in my soul.

I don't love the Renata beside me now because I don’t really know her, but I desire her. I enjoy her company because she's far too beautiful not to. She's also fairly quiet, unlike a lot of women. She doesn't fill the space with endless chatter.

Keep her.

I could. She’d be like a beautiful ornament in my home, but one I get to fuck every day. It wouldn't hurt to keep her around.

I blow out a breath and stop the train of crazy running through my head. Now is not the time to be making rash decisions about this. I push it out of my mind.

I turn off onto the road toward Windsor, and the track playing changes to something irritating. I flick the steering wheel button to change the track, and Renata makes a little sound in the back of her throat.

“I like that song,” she says.

I sigh but flick it back. I can bear a few minutes of this annoying trash if it pleases her. As the chorus begins, she moves a little in her seat as if she's dancing along to it. It makes me smile. And then she begins to sing.

Damn, Renata singing is my weakness. If she were my wife, I’d have a grand piano installed in the house, and make her play and sing for me every night. Can she play the piano? If not, I’d get her lessons.

She has a better voice than the woman on the stereo, that's for sure. It’s velvety and smoky, and it's one of the sexiest things I've ever heard.

I realize with a jolt of shock that I'm hard and aching, as if her voice has wrapped itself like silk around me and is caressing me. Christ, she could do one of those audios that people listen to and get off to.

“You could have been a singer,” I say to her truthfully.

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