Page 45 of King of Justice

You don’t think that maybe—just maybe—there’s something wrong with her and not you?

Commitment phobia. A second life in crime. A secret boyfriend.

“Or maybe she’s a spy,” my friend Hendrick chuckled as we caught up over the phone. Now I was sitting in my study with a cup of hot ginger tea.

“Do you think she works for Carnie?” I humored his joke.

“Nah, Carnie would use a drone much like himself. Sounds more like a Schwab operation.”

“How is he, by the way?”

“About to announce his engagement to Maria Lucado.”

“Oh.”

“I know. She got him!”

“C’mon, she’s doing alright on her own.”

“And when did a second house in the Hamptons sound like a bad idea?”

“You need to stop doing that.”

“What—What am I doing?”

“Dubbing every woman a gold-digger, because she’s marrying up.”

“Isn’t that the very definition?”

“By that logic, people should say the same thing about Floyd.”

“We’re not married.”

“You’ve been together three years. He moved into your apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street after six months. And two years later, you paid for a house in Montauk in both your names.”

“You can be a real asshole, you know that?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“And you know that Schwab uses his money to lure in the pussy.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “You’re hopeless. We still on for lunch next week?”

“Yes, but my newest client is taking one of yours to court… so how about my place?”

“I can do that.”

The call ended, and with it, many of my questions from before. They were all replaced with one giant statement: Sophie doesn’t want to be called a gold-digger. It felt like a better option than most, since it was the one I could live with and maybe even mitigate.

I was awfully aware of how biased I was, and how far I was willing to go to convince myself that Sophie wasn’t simply toying with my feelings. It was easier and more acceptable to believe that she had a good reason. That she…

The doorbell interrupted my train of thought, and I pressed on the nearest security panel to unlock it.

“Honey! I’m home!” Chad hollered.

I raced toward the foyer, holding up both hands. “I’m begging you, don’t yell.”

“Jesus Christ!” He furrowed his eyebrows as soon as he laid eyes on my face. “You drank the ocean.”

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