Page 76 of Pretty Little Things

The darkness in Jac is an angry one, but Hendrick’s has a similar feel, the little he lets me see of that. A flash.

It’s not like Hendrick’s opening a door and asking me in, but this is intimate. Things slip free. Even if he hadn’t worked it out with me and Jac, he’d know I was lying, hiding something. Which I am.

I rub a cheek against his arm, and he slides his hand over my hair. I raise my eyes to him. “What the fuck is this?”

“Asking the wrong person here, Cat.” He sighs. “But I’ve a penchant for fucking complications no one needs.”

It’s an odd thing to say because on paper, and in my observations, Hendrick is nothing like that.

I can tell he goes for easy entanglements when it comes to lovers, and those are almost always something to push an agenda. I learned a lot about him in my deep dive into his life last week. Even with the women he fucks to fuck and nothing more, when they go their separate ways, there’s no drama.

Uncomplicated in choice of anything like a relationship. Man of little feeling. Of only one-nighters.

Even in his past.

Unless he doesn’t mean romantic complications, but something else…“Like you and Jac?”

“Something like that.” He strokes his hand against my cheek. “I have no idea what I’m doing right now, either. That’s the fucking truth. You and me? Magnets I didn’t see coming.”

“Or you could be playing me.”

“Things aren’t always so cut and dried, even when they seem it.” Then he nods at the screen. “So, what’s your professional opinion on this…?”

* * *

It’s late, and I’m now wide awake. We had rough, hot sex again, in a slow burn way, one that even now, hours later, ripples through me.

Outside a storm’s started, and though the sound of it is muted in the three-story brownstone, I can hear the crack and rumble of thunder.

Hendrick is asleep and doesn’t stir, so I make myself get up.

As sweet as that interlude was tonight, I’m here in his home. The real one. I need to take advantage and search.

I pull on his shirt and creep downstairs to the ground floor, going room to room. There aren’t any papers lying around. He has a computer in the study, but it’s locked down. I can’t find a safe, hidden or otherwise.

Making my way up, I search the floor with his bedroom and living room. Nothing there, either.

Slowly, using the intermittent lightning and streetlamps below, I search the third floor. Guest rooms, a small gym and a library.

I’m about to leave when I notice the painting on the wall. It’s a Picasso.

But not just any Picasso, it’s a larger copy of the one in the reading room at the mansion.

I stare at it.

Two options. Go back downstairs, get back in bed, and leave in the morning like nothing’s going on at all and I’m not looking for the Heart of Dark Desires. After that, I can vanish from Hendrick’s life—as much as one can vanish on a Quinate member in the same city as them—and find another attack point.

Or search his place right now and get whatever intel I can. Maybe even the necklace.

It’s a no brainer.

Option two, all the way.

I switch on the lamp and lift the painting.

A safe.

I don’t have my tools. They’re in my bag downstairs.

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