Page 114 of Wicked Little Lies

I turn and open up his cupboards, and yeah, it’s clear from the lack of anything other than the basics in crockery and glasses, he doesn’t live here. He has shit—he’s fucking Hendrick Agnossio. We’re both billionaires, we can do what the fuck we want. Buy what we want. But his cupboards aren’t groaning with shit to entertain.

Even the pantry…there’s a fair bit, but I get the feeling as most of it is what he’s stocked for MG.

That sticks in my fucking side. She should be at my place.

“Spiced honey?” I ask, pointing to the jar on the pantry shelf.

He takes it to look at it and shrugs. “Shopping, Miller?”

“Fuck you.”

Setting it back down, Hendrick leans in. “When you say trust, I mean that she’ll rob us both blind, given a chance. With my life? I trust her.”

I sigh. I don’t hand out trust, and I’m not used to all this upheaval in me over her, so I don’t say anything.

“Why do you think that fucking kidnapper isn’t sending her the last jewel?” It’s something to say, but I’m actually curious.

If someone’s trying to come at me or disrupt the Quinate, they’ll get a rude awakening, but it’s her involvement I hate. That’s one big thing fuckface here has in common with me. We don’t like the fact she’s in fucking danger.

It’s hard to protect someone who can disappear, and it’s hard to protect them when you’ve got no fucking idea who the enemy is.

“I’d love to fucking take Kincaid out,” I confess.

He sends me a sharp look as he stacks the dishwasher. “It might not be him. Yeah, it looks that way, but until he makes it known…”

“We can’t stain the streets with his blood.”

“He’s an interesting one, isn’t he?” Hendrick says. “No one likes him, not one of the Quinate wants his business.”

It isn’t exactly true. We’d all love his business…if the kid were someone else. Anyone else. Someone less…vile and sordid.

“Take him out while he’s innocent might just bring a world of unwanted shit down,” I say. If it were just me that had to deal with the fallout from that, and not everyone at the Quinate table, I’d do it.

I’m beginning to suspect Agnossio would, too.

“Unfortunately,” he says. “But they’re taking their time. She’s infamous. The best in the world, so it’s like they want us at each other’s throat.”

“To pave their way to the table? But…” I stop. “They can’t. I don’t think whoever it is knows that. No matter what kind of fucking legend or weird magic act with the jewels they think will happen.”

“I think we should let them think that,” he says, dropping in a cleaning tablet. He closes it, and sets it. “Give them rope.”

“And let them string themselves up to the nearest fucking tree?”

“Or smoke them out. Give them what they want. We don’t like each other, Jac. I think there’s another plan. Let’s give them what they want. Us in our natural state.”

It makes sense. I don’t have to fucking like the asshole who’s brains I’ve wanted to see decorating a wall for a long time. I don’t prod that to see how I feel now. I know I don’t like him. We’re too different. Too alike. Into the same woman. “So you get her?”

“Don’t be your usual hotheaded self, Jac. Get the fuck out of your own way.” Hendrick pulls out some wine glasses. Picking up the honey again, I turn it in my hands. “We do what we’ve been doing, asking around, getting information. And only discuss it with me if you definitively find out who it is.”

“So believe the lies?”

“Sort of?” He gets the bottle opener and opens the wine fridge. “I don’t have to like you to trust you more than anyone else. If you wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be here and vice versa.”

“That’s…fair. And I trust you.” It’s a fucking weird thing to say, but it’s true.

He rises with a bottle.

“What now?”

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