“Why don’t you buy expensive things? You make good money. Why don’t you have a mansion?”
He raises an eyebrow as if he can’t believe how easy my questions are, but this one I really want to know the answer to. “Because things mean nothing to me. I don’t need a large house to relax at night.”
“Then what do you spend your money on?”
He chuckles. “You don’t know how to keep to your own rules, do you? That’s a second question again. But if you must know, I spend it on Adela. I pay my employees more than fair to make sure they are loyal to me alone. And I use it to get my revenge.”
I swallow hard at the word revenge. I know he needs revenge the same as me. I don’t know what happened to him, but I won’t be asking him any questions about revenge today.
“Your turn.”
“What do you want in life? What’s your passion?”
“Jesus, you don’t ask easy questions do you?”
He shrugs. “This is the easiest question I will ask. It should be easy for anyone who knows themselves at all.”
I frown. “I don’t know myself. That’s my problem. I don’t have a passion because I’ve never been allowed to be anything but a Carini.”
“Do you like being a Carini?”
I smile smugly. “Now who isn’t playing by the rules?”
He doesn’t smile. He stares at me seriously waiting for me to answer. I guess it’s only fair.
“Yes. I love being a Carini. There was once a time I hated it, but I think being a Carini made me stronger. It made me strong enough to survive these last few weeks. Without it, I would have dissolved into nothing.”
He nods.
“My turn. Tell me about your first kiss.”
He chuckles. “You know how to ask the tough questions,” he says sarcastically.
I laugh and grab his hand. He lets me. This is normal. “First kiss was in the third grade on the playground with Luisa Pellegrini.”
I smile, loving his normal answer. But my smile falters as I see the look in his eyes. He’s about to ask me a question I won’t want to answer. He’s about to end the game. I can see it.
And then he smiles deviously. “Tell me who your favorite sexual partner was.”
I laugh, blushing brightly, hating him for making me answer his question he already knows the answer to.
“This smug ass who doesn’t deserve me, but managed to find all the buttons to my body within seconds because he secretly crept on me for weeks.”
“Hmm, he sounds pretty incredible. What’s his name?”
“You, you fucktard.”
His grin reaches his eyes. “Fucktard? That’s a new one.”
I try to pull my hand out of his, but he tightens his grip before kissing the back of my hand.
We continue on, asking silly questions back and forth, just trying to make each other laugh until we reach Rome.
Caspian gets us settled into our hotel room. The room is huge. He may not spend his money often, but he did tonight. I expect him to start talking to me about all the security he has installed before he leaves. I expect him to talk to me about the guards I’m sure he will have placed outside our door. Or the tracker he secretly placed inside my clothes when I was sleeping.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he kisses me on the lips and says, “Come with me to my meeting.”