4. Matteo
She thinksshe has me dangling on her hook, except I’m the one who just caught myself a pretty little fish.
I must admit, however, that Renata is much more tempting up close like this than even I had envisaged. And I”ve envisaged being with her a lot. One might say that she”s been on my mind consistently for months now. I’m the sort of man that once I become focused on something, there”s a risk my attention could turn to obsession.
Looking at Renata sitting there, licking those glossy full lips, I can feel the obsession stir deep within me as surely as my cock is stirring in my pants. She”s utterly delicious. Tastier than the veal sitting on my plate and just as tender. I want to bite into her skin and leave teeth marks as I kiss and suck and lick every inch of her. I want her under me, above me, and bent over my desk as she screams my name. Not tonight, though. Now that I have my little fish dangling, I need to truly ensure that I trap her.
If I take her too quickly, I won”t be able to make her fall. I don”t merely want her body; I want her heart too. She tore mine out when she slept with my best friend, and I owe her a debt of pain for that.
Never mind the fact that her family have been nothing but a thorn in the side of ours for generations. Time and time again we Mancinis tried to rise above and take the high road, but the Andrettis always went low. They came at us repeatedly. They damaged our businesses, our interests, and even took the lives of some of our most cherished family members. We owe them pain and blood, and it might be unfair that the delectable morsel sitting in front of me is the one to bear the brunt of that, but nobody ever said that life was fair.
She plays with the napkin as she lifts her fork and pokes gingerly at the chicken on her plate. Does she think it”s going to come alive and run squawking around the restaurant? Maybe she has eating issues, but looking at her figure, I doubt that very much. She’s far too curvaceous and glowing with health for that.
“Are you going to eat that, or simply play with it?” I laugh at the glare she throws my way.
“It”s not as if you”re tearing into your veal with relish, is it, sir?” she asks.
The sir is said with a snarky, sarcastic tone, but now my dick is ragingly hard. Before I”m done with her, Renata will be calling me sir while she’s on her knees and begging me, begging me, to give her what she needs.
I”ve spent years worshipping women, learning what makes them tick, and what they like. They intrigue me and interest me. One might say they”re almost like a different species because I”ll be damned if I can understand them. They certainly amuse me. They”re pretty, and bright, and rather interesting when we get right down to it. A lot of them seem to have had extremely inept men in their beds too, if the way they react to me is anything to go by.
Not that I”m conceited. I can”t take all the credit for my skills in that department, because it was all taught to me by a much older woman. After I married, and after Renata tore my heart out and stomped all over it in her high heeled boots, metaphorically speaking of course, I took a lover. Or, rather, I should say, a woman took me as her lover. She was forty-five, and I was in my early twenties. She was beautiful, intelligent, and fiercely independent. Most of all, she was the most carnal creature I have ever met. It was a dangerous affair because she was married to a man who at that time was one of the deadliest enforcers employed by our family. No loyalty to my father would have kept me from a painful death if he”d ever discovered my betrayal or hers. However, he never found out. We spent many an afternoon in her bedroom as she showed me all the ways to please a woman.
I was a very willing student, and she was a very talented teacher. One of the main things that she taught me was that all women are different. She had said to me once that the idea that women don”t like sex is nothing more than a myth. The problem is men think women are as simple as the male of the species. They aren”t, she had told me. “We might be complicated creatures, Matteo,” she had whispered in my ear one day. But she”d assured me, “If you take the time to learn what makes a woman respond to you, then you can show her heaven. And show a woman heaven, and she will give you everything.”
Now, I intend to learn Renata. What she likes, what she craves, needs, and desires. Then I will give it to her, and in doing so, I’ll make her an addict. I’ll be her drug, and like any addict, she’ll do whatever it takes to get her supply.
What it will take is giving me her heart and ruining her family for me. I’ll fucking trash their business and leave her asshole brother, Nico, broken and destroyed. Then, I’ll either toss Renata away, or maybe, if I’m still as obsessed with her by then, I might keep her.
You know you’re going to keep her, asshole, my inner voice chides. You’re never letting her go once you get her again; you can fool other people, but you can’t fool yourself.
She lifts those incredible blue eyes to regard me, and for a crazy moment, I get the feeling she can read my thoughts. That she can see deep into my soul. Renata is that fucking gorgeous, and her eyes are so striking and startling in her tan face, with her dark brows and lashes framing them, that I bet she’d have been burned at the stake as a witch in an earlier time period.
You’re going to keep her, that voice whispers deep inside me. Clifford and Vlad are right—you don’t go to all this effort to simply discard someone.
Ignoring my internal monologue, I ask her about her recent trip, and she tells me all about it. She seems overly impressed with this Carol woman, and I don’t like that. If she looks up to anyone, I don’t want it to be some over the hill socialite who is fucking half the gigolos in France.
We finish our food, and when the waitress asks if I would like to look at the dessert menu, I decline with a shake of my head and a murmured, no thank you. I look at Renata to see if she would like to peruse the dessert menu, but she also shakes her head. She surprises me when she asks for an espresso instead.
“Isn”t it rather late in the evening to be loading up on caffeine?” I raise one brow as I study her.
“I always end a meal with coffee.” She smiles at me. “Maybe it”s my Italian heritage.”
“Are you trying to say I”m not a proper Italian because I don”t end my meals with coffee?” I chuckle softly.
“Of course not; no one would suggest that.” She laughs. “I guess I”m just a coffee addict is all.”
She”ll be an addict of something else soon if I get my way. When the waitress returns to the table, I pass my card to her immediately before Renata can try to pay.
The waitress takes the payment, and I add a thirty percent tip on top. The service here is always excellent. It”s discreet, but also on the ball. The staff work hard, and I know how difficult working in the restaurant sector can be. Among some of the legitimate businesses that my family own, and wash money through, there is a chain of mid-end restaurants. When I was a teenager, my father decided that it would be good for me to work in one of them.
He rotated me around the business from the bottom to the top so I could get a holistic view of how one entire contained business worked. I”d started in the kitchen as a pot washer. It was hot, hard, dirty work. I still enjoyed it more, though, than my short stint on the food side of things. How anyone can want to be a chef and get through the training is beyond me. Father had to move me on quickly, because despite only being a teenager, I would have literally murdered the chef if he’d screamed at me one more time.
My time spent fetching and carrying wine for the patrons was much better than being in the hot kitchen, until the day I accidentally spilled some wine all over a woman”s white dress. She”d made such a scene, and my face had been burning hot from the embarrassment as everyone watched me.
The other staff all treated me with a cool deference, but I could tell most of them disliked me simply due to the fact of me being the owner”s son. After that, I moved into the office and saw how the profits were added up at the end of the night, receipts stored, along with cash, and the banking transactions all accounted for. It was a good grounding in just how many people it took to run one restaurant.
After my few months there, Father took me to one side in his study and gave me a long talk. He pointed out to me that we ran a multi-million-pound empire. He asked me how I imagined we could run such a huge amount of business with so few people. When I told him, truthfully, that I didn”t know, he replied with a slick smile, “Fear, son. It’s fear.”
No one within our organization dared to step out of line. No one dared to skim from the top, or do anything remotely harmful toward the organization because anyone who did would meet a terrible end. Furthermore, depending on exactly what their transgressions were, their friends, family, and other people within their lives could be in danger too. There is a code within our world that the ruling families do not go after one another on a personal level. That doesn”t mean that lowly street people can”t find their entire kin wiped out if they try to fuck us over.
Of course, the Mancini and Andretti clans never really got the script when it came to not involving family members within feuds. I”m sure that if I talk to Renata about it, which is not going to happen, she would say that my family is to blame and her stories would probably be the inverse of mine. She’d believe it was us who struck first, and my family who did the most damage. Her family blames ours. My family blames hers. It”s always the way. Who knows what is actual history and what is nothing but familiar lore?
Me personally, I don”t care who did what to who in the far past. I only care that in recent years, the Andrettis have been a thorn in our side, and ever since they stopped my father and uncle from buying their shares up on the board, and threatened Bianca, they have been on my shit list. Renata has been on that list since we were teenagers. No one has ever done to me what she did. She didn”t even give me a chance to explain. I realize my hands are balled into fists on the table, and I make a conscious effort to relax myself, shaking my shoulders out.
Renata is digging around in her handbag, then she takes some money out and offers it to me. I glare at her.
“You”re going to offend me if you”re trying to pay for that meal,” I say.
“I”m only paying my share.”
“I don”t let women pay when they”re out with me.”
“Let?” She raises one perfect brow, arched beautifully in disdain, like a movie star in a black and white film.
“Yes, let. You have a problem with that?”
“Seems a little arrogant and controlling, but if you would like to pay for the meal, then I shall kindly accept and say thank you.” She gives a small smile. “I was raised to be a good, polite Italian girl, you see.”
There’s so much sarcasm loaded into her words it makes me smile. I”d really like to unpack some of the simmering resentment she seems to have for her life and the world around her. I don”t understand why someone who has been given everything she could ever want seems to be so angry.
Renata is spoiled rotten by her family. Or, at least, it seems that way to me looking in from the outside. She got married, and when she decided that she didn”t want to stay married, they let her divorce. There aren’t many families in our life who would do such a thing.
Most women have to stay in their marriages whether they”re happy or not. Renata walked away a very wealthy woman, or so my investigator believes. It seems her family doesn’t know about all of that as it was kept quite secret. If the rumors are to be true, she took herself a few lovers along the way until I put a stop to that by scaring them all off. I know for a fact that she causes hassle with Nico”s men by flirting with them because she”s banned from going into some of their clubs. According to my guy spying on her, she taunts his enforcers with her sexuality.
When I finally take her into my bed, there will be none of that anymore. If she thinks I’ll tolerate her even looking flirtatiously at another man, she has a surprise coming her way.
“Shall we?” I stand and walk smoothly around to her side of the table, ready to pull her chair out as she gets up. She gathers her clutch and jacket from the back of the chair and shrugs it on. Once she”s standing by me, I grab my jacket and fold it over my arm, while my other arm I hold bent at the elbow for her to take. She glances at it for a moment, and I think she may reject the offer, but then she slips her arm through the crook of my elbow, and we walk out of the restaurant together.
Heads turn our way, and I catch the eye of a few of the guys trying to take a look at Renata’s ass. I glare at them, and they drop their gaze. The words of an old song about how hard it is to be in love with a beautiful woman pop into my head. It’s not hard if you’re man enough to face down any fucker who thinks he has a right to what is yours.
My car has been brought around to the front by the valet, and I turn to her. “Did you drive here?” I ask, even though I know she didn’t.
“No, I took a cab,” she says.
I nod as if this is news to me. It pisses me off the way she runs around all alone. Doesn”t her family worry about her safety? There is no way that we’d let the Mancini women run around town in cabs. It isn”t safe. Any one of us in our world can become a target, and letting high value females wander around without security seems crazy to me.
“Where”s your security detail?” I ask her, unable to keep quiet on the topic.
She laughs at that and shakes her head. “I don”t have one, Matteo. I don”t need one, apparently. To be fair, I”m not involved in the family business in any way. I”m not married to anyone involved in the business. My previous husband was a legitimate businessman and had some royal connections; even then, no one ever threatened me in any way, shape, or form.”
He was minor, extremely minor, European royalty from what I read.
She glances at the car, back to me, then licks her lips and waits … expectantly. I think she”s waiting for the invite to come back to mine. That”s not going to happen. I know full well that if I invite her back to my place, she”ll either say no, or she”ll come and then reject me once we are getting hot and heavy.
She believes that I think tonight is a coincidence. She thinks she’s the puppeteer, but I’m the one holding the strings. There will be nothing for her to reject because I”m not going to make a move on her tonight. She”s going to be the one who”s laid in bed later, wondering why nothing further happened, not me. I know her game, and I know what she”s about. She thinks that she can play hard to get and that will make me want her more.
What Renata doesn”t understand is that nothing could make me want her more because I already crave her more than any other woman. I don”t think anything could make me want her less either.
What Renata doesn”t understand is that she”s mine one way or another anyhow. I”ve decided I want her, and I always get what I want.
What Renata doesn’t understand is that there is only one person in charge here, and it isn’t her. I will decide the game rules, when the game starts, and how it ends.
I could take her to bed tonight, and if she tried to refuse, I could knock those walls down in minutes. I don’t intend to.
It will be fun to drag this out some. I like the idea of building some tension between us, and I love the idea of her going to bed tonight confused and wondering what the hell happened.
“Would you like a ride?” I ask.
“Where?” she replies.
I look at her as if I think she”s stupid. She”s an incredibly bright woman, an ambitious woman, and as beautiful as she is, that makes her a threatening woman to a lot of men. Not to me. It makes her even more attractive. Still, I like to mess people about a little, so I play my games.
“Home, of course.” I shrug, controlling my smile at the flicker of confusion and disappointment that crosses her features. “You can take a cab if you”d like. Or, I can give you a ride.”
The valet hands me the keys, and I palm him a twenty pound bill.
“Would you like a ride, or are you taking a cab?” I don”t press the issue because I”m not going to insist she rides home with me. If she takes a cab, I”ll simply follow her and make sure she gets home safely.
Starting tomorrow, there won”t only be my private investigator following Renata. I”m going to always have two security detail on her. I”ll tell them to hang far back and not let her see them, because I”m sure she”ll have an issue with it. The fact that her family doesn”t have her surrounded by security has my teeth grinding.
“I”ll take the offer of a ride, if you”re sure that”s okay?” She smiles at me, uncertainty coating her features.
“Of course.” I hold the door open for her and close it after she”s climbed in, then jog around to the driver”s side. As I get in and fasten my seat belt, I glance at her briefly.
“Where to?” I ask, as if I don’t fucking know.
Of course, I know exactly where I”m taking her. She lives in an apartment not too far from her parents’ mansion, but it’s in town, not a quiet little market village. I believe she”s renting the place, because she does own a home, but it”s in the country. She also seems to spend a lot of time up in Scotland at the house Nico now lives in with his bride.
That was something I never saw coming. Nico was supposed to marry some aristocrat’s forty-year-old daughter to appease the board. Instead, he went and fell in love, and married the young twenty-something daughter, or rather stepdaughter, of the woman he was initially meant to be engaged to.
From everything that I hear, he”s genuinely in love with her too. That”s good for me because it”s a weakness. It makes him vulnerable. The moment a man loves something, cherishes something, and can”t live without something, you have a weapon to use against him. Not that I have any plans on doing anything to harm a hair on pretty little Cindy Andretti’s head, but it”s good to know that I could if needed.
“I”ve rented an apartment for the moment,” Renata says. “It”s a bit of a way out, which is why I don”t mind getting a cab.”
“How far out?” I ask, as if I don”t know.
“I”m renting a place in Windsor,” she says.
“That”s fine,” I reply. “You know I’m now living in the family home. It’s not too far from Windsor to leafy Surrey.”
She”s been there before, of course.
The last time, which is etched in my memory, was at my birthday party, when she busted up the service restroom in a fit of uncontrollable rage. A sharp but brief twinge of something that may be guilt pinches at my chest, but I brush it aside. I”m not the one in the wrong when it comes to that time in our past. Yes, I might have had the DeLuca girls falling over me, and Renata may have seen things that upset her. All she had to do, though, was talk to me. Just a conversation, and I could have explained everything. Instead, she slept with my best friend.
Worse, she let it be known that she’d fucked him. She made a fool of me, and no one has done that before or since.
She shifts in the seat beside me and crosses her legs. I can”t help but glance at the top of the lacy stockings now exposed as it caresses her silky thigh.
God, she”s delicious. Who wears stockings these days? There”s something so old school about Renata, and I like it. She has full glossy hair that reminds me of a movie star from the golden era of cinema. Her features are striking, but her makeup is classic and toned down compared to what a lot of younger women wear these days. Her nails are short and neat and polished a dark red. Her skin glows, and I bet she gets regular treatments and massages. When she’s in my bed, I’ll pay for her to get her body oiled weekly, so she stays soft and supple. For a moment, my mind goes to the gutter as I imagine walking in on her massage and ordering the masseur to leave as I use that oil for other things.
Getting my revenge sure is going to be enjoyable.