Page 110 of Hidden

“I’d take prison gruel over Tools’s ass pork pie.”

“It’ll be fine once it—”

“Airs out, we heard you,” Divorce muttered.

“Have no fear, gentlemen,” I said, reaching under my chair. “I have suffered the ways of you fools for too long not to have predicted this. Many a night have I starved, my mouth salivating for just a crumb of a sandwich. Oh, the games I have lost due to the starvation and—”

“Get to the fucking point,” Dante interrupted.

“Voilà,” I announced, ripping the tea towel off the plate I’d been hiding.

The room went quiet.

“Thank you, Vienna,” I muttered, waving the plate under all their noses.

No one said anything. They all looked at me as though me carrying a plate of neatly cut sandwiches into poker night was not normal, reasonable behaviour.

“What?” I said.

Monster narrowed his eyes. “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve done something.”

I gasped, offended. “Monster, I am wounded by the accusation.”

“You should be wounded,” Dante muttered. “Preferably fatally.”

Ignoring him, I stood up and placed the plate in the middle of the table like I was some benevolent domestic deity arriving to save these useless bastards from themselves.

There were eight sandwiches in total. And I was actually rather proud of them. There was ham, cheese, a bit of pickle. All the good stuff. Solid poker night food.

“Nope,” Ant said, immediately backing away from it.

“What do you mean, nope? It’s a fucking sarnie.”

“Where has it come from?”

“The kitchen. I brought nourishment.”

Sunshine leaned sideways to peer at the plate. “Why?”

“Because unlike some people,” I said, glancing pointedly at the remains of the sat-on pork pie, “I care about this club’s wellbeing.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t trust it,” Riley said.

“Well, you’re not getting one then,” I said, pettily moving the plate just an inch further away from him.

Monster, however, had never once in his life let common sense get in the way of free food. That was why he was one of my favourite people to psychologically experiment on.

He leaned forward, squinted at the sandwiches, then reached out and picked one up. “What’s in them?”

“Love,” I said solemnly.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dante muttered.

Monster sniffed it, and then brought it to his mouth, almost inhaling it in one bite. The entire room went silent, all of us watching him chew, and chew, as though they were all expecting him to drop dead any second.