Page 34 of Cage of Thorns and Blood

Chapter 10

Matteo

Sunday arrives, and I’ve set everything up the way I want it at the house. I’m going to bring Renata here, and I have tasked the staff with preparing a wonderful meal. She mentioned the other day that she likes to eat Tapas style, so that's what I'm going to do for her. We’ll have a pleasant afternoon, and then I will get called away on urgent business. I'll tell her to stay here as I'll only be away for an hour. I'm going to make sure none of my staff are around and that my study door is not only unlocked but left ajar.

On the desk will be papers that show our organization is in financial trouble. My hope is that Renata, being the curious person that she is, will sift through the paperwork and collect false information.

I imagine at some point her parents will ask her to report back on how things are going. Of course, I already have my spy, Angela, in their organization, who is feeding any information that she gets from them back to me.

I've set up a dummy corporation, and I want them to start buying shares in it, in the hope that they think they'll be avenging what my father and uncle tried to do to their business. Except the corporation has nothing to do with us, and it's nothing but a set of traps. It's a money sink. By the time they realize, they'll be far too deep. There's also nothing to link this corporation back to me in a paper trail. My plan, if that isn’t enough to sate my desire for revenge, is to get the tax department involved next, and at this point the Andretti family may find themselves under investigation. With the amount of money they need to wash, this will be disastrous for their bottom line.

At that point, business and revenge wise, I won't really need Renata anymore, but it will piss them off even further if I'm still seeing their daughter despite them realizing I have tricked them.

Plus, I want her in my life, and if her family hate her, where will she have to turn but to me? It’s a trap within a trap. A hornets nest that she’s going to step into if she shares that information.

Nico will absolutely loathe it, and I can't wait to see his face when he finds out it was a trick all along. I won’t take too long for me to persuade Renata that we can become a couple. Hell, she’d do it for shits and giggles. Anything to twist the knife the knife deeper in her family’s backs. At that point, I'll have all the power. The power to ensure an investigation of the Andretti family, or not, according to my whim. The power to dissolve the company and lose them millions. And ultimately, I will have the power over Renata. I’ll take back what she took from me when she slept with Duncan and left me with my insipid, plain wife-to-be and no nice, pretty distractions.

Clifford stalks into the dining room and stares in disdain at the carefully laid table. “Do we have a visit planned this afternoon from one of those beautiful home magazines that I wasn't informed of,” he says.

“Drop the sarcasm. Renata is coming over. I have things ready in the study to trick her and her family into thinking we are in financial trouble, and I'm hoping she'll take a look in there when I have to leave on urgent business.”

“Yes, urgent business.” He makes air quotes around the phrase. “What if she doesn't go looking? What if, she's actually a decent person these days? Perhaps she’ll sit in the living room with a glass of wine, leaving all your dirty little fake secrets where they belong.”

“I guess then it's a test, isn't it?” I leave my hands on the back of the chair and watch him as he walks around the table adjusting some of the cutlery. “If she doesn't go looking for my secrets, and my plan doesn't work, then that proves she's a better person than she used to be. If she does go looking through my secrets and gives them back to her family, then she's somebody I can't trust.”

“Yet you’ve baited the trap to get her to look,” he says. “Her family sent her into your arms for that exact reason, no? The fact she’s here at all means she is going to look.”

“Maybe, or perhaps she’s here because of my personal charm.”

He scoffs.

“If she doesn’t look, will you let her go back to her life because she’s a good person? She hasn’t betrayed you or played the game you set in motion, so you walk away? Leave her be?”

I don’t answer. He nods as if my silence is an answer in itself, which it is.

“All of this is completely crazy,” Clifford says. “There are easier ways to bring the Andretti family down. You’ve devised this ridiculous scheme as an excuse to get that woman back into your life.”

My hands have tightened on the back of the chair and are now gripping it as if I'm trying to throttle the wood itself. “If I wanted her back in my life, I'd simply take her.” I laugh, and it rings fake in my ears.

“No, you wouldn't, cousin. You know why? Because she's the one who got away, and she's the one who made a fool of you. Letting you admit that you want to try it all over again, would be far too much vulnerability. Instead, you've concocted this fucked up plan, so now you can pretend not only to me, but to yourself, that you're doing this for business reasons. Or for reasons of family honor. All of that is crap. You are doing this because you want her, and you’re too chicken shit to accept it.”

The back of the chair snaps off in my hand, and I stare at it in shock.

“Yeah, you're completely in control of this situation.” Clifford rolls his eyes. He strolls up to me and pats me on the shoulder.

“It's these chairs,” I say between gritted teeth. They are spindly pieces of shit.”

“Seventeenth century, spindly pieces of shit. And one of the few pieces of furniture you kept when your father left for Italy because you like them.” He points at the wood in my hands and shakes his head. “Is this what control looks like to you?”

I bare my teeth at him, just about managing to refrain from staking him with the wood. Clifford merely laughs and strolls out of the room.

He tosses a final piece of wisdom over his shoulder. “Going to cost a fortune to repair that chair, cuz.”

I look at the wood in my hand and wonder what the hell I'm going to do now? I can't exactly super glue it back into place when it's a rare, expensive piece of French renaissance furniture. I place the wood on the seat and go fetch a throw to place over the back of that chair. We don't need to use it today anyway; there are seven more to choose from.

Clifford got under my skin with what he was saying. Deep down, in a part of myself I don't want to acknowledge, I know he is right. Have I been acting rationally at all since I saw her again in that stupid bar, singing that song in her throaty voice? No.

There's no point dwelling on things like that because I'm already partway into this plan now. I spent ages getting Angela situated in the Andretti household. I've spent a fortune on having Renata tracked and spied on, and the same for the Andretti family. If I back out now, that's a lot of time and money wasted. Anyway, I'm curious as to whether she will go and look through that information or not. I'm even more curious as to whether she'll give it to her family.

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