Page 95 of Wicked Little Lies

“Yes?”

“Look at me?”

I do.

“I got those out because—”

“You wanted a thrill?” I try and breathe.

“Fuck no. I don’t ever want to see that shit.” He pulls a file that has negatives and the top photo…

Lili’s young, too young. Naked, a man between her legs, three others touching her with more men around her. She looksbeyond fucked up. I hope she was. I hope she only had vague memories of this violation.

But there’s a man watching, and I know who it is.

Hendrick’s father.

There’s a lot of his father in Hendrick not to notice. The looks, the dark hair, but Hendrick has sharper angles some more refinement to his features that must come from his mother.

“I thought my father might have had some information down here, but…Jac can’t ever know of this stuff.”

He pulls out a lighter and rips up the photos and throws them in the garbage can, then adds the negatives and burns them.

“There’s more upstairs.”

He nods.

“I just don’t…this doesn’t deserve to be here. I know who’s in these photos, and if they’re alive, they won’t be much longer.”

I shiver at that. There’s no threat. Just flat fact, and it’s scary as fuck. And it makes me love him more.

Then he gets another folder, putting it on the table. It’s full of photos and it readsLucas Family Party 1934.

“That was the first matriarch,” he says. “Look…”

The ring.

I go and look for more. I start going through the last one in the fifties. “Why does it end here?”

“The young heir…” He takes the file, puts it down, and goes through pulling out a photo another fluttering to the floor. I pick it up. He shows me the one in his hands. “She married the Gimboni clan, her sister married into Ivan’s family and the brother joined up with the Kincaids. Back when the Kincaids were palatable.”

“So no more Lucas clan?” I ask.

“Not as a powerhouse, no.”

“But she’s got the ring…” He pulls it and then goes to another cabinet. I’m about to put the photo I picked up with the others when I something catches my eye.

The young heir is with some other woman, but around her throat…

My locket.

My grandmother’s locket.

I stop.

No… It can’t be.

It could be another one—it has to be—but it’s cheap, like the one I know so well. And then there’s the fact that no one wears a dress that looks like that with a cheap necklace without it meaning something.

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