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Lawrence falls silent. Maybe he’s asking himself why he’s here, dealing with people so beneath him. Maybe he’s lamenting the fact he has to beg his daddy for money while we have a Renoir hanging in our entryway with no idea who the artist is.
That’s not entirely true.
Rune knows exactly who Renoir is. We all do. Rune knows how much the painting is worth and how much he intends to sell it to maximize its investment potential.
Or he intended to sell it until it captured Everleigh’s interest. Because it has, that painting isn’t going anywhere. Everleigh likes it, so it stays. Fuck investment potentials.
I trail Lawrence, my eyes on the back of his neck. My fingers itch to wrap my hands around it and squeeze. He hurt Everleigh; he hurt her bad.
As Rune plays the idiot, I think about how long I intend to make him suffer before I put him out of his misery.
I remember the way Everleigh had sat on the ground in Lawrence’s garden, her head in her hands. She’d ripped her dress, torn most of her nails off, and her cheeks had been wet with desperate tears.
A long fucking time is how long I intend to make him suffer.
The formal reception room is aptly named. It’s a space where none of us spends much time. When we have clients we don’t particularly like stop by for meetings, we bring them here. The room is impersonal, elegant, and decorated to impress anyone.
Our waiting room, if you will.
We don’t bring the people we like and trust in here. We have the den and the family room for that.
Rune, waiting beside one of the pale gray French silk couches, gives me a subtle look loaded with warning.
I ignore it.
My fingers flex.
Lawrence must feel the intensity of my stare, or it’s death he senses bearing down on him because he glances over his shoulder.
I smile as I step around him, heading toward the drink trolley in the room’s corner. “Drink?”
He gives me a long look that says he doesn’t trust me. “You don’t keep more servants here?”
I shrug. “We’re used to doing for ourselves.”
“Right…” His nose lifts, the better able to peer down it at me. “You built your business up from nothing, didn’t you?”
He says it with a level of disdain that suggests he thinks we’re still nothing.
“That we did.” Rune gestures at one of the couches. “Luck played a large part in our success. Right place, right time. That sorta thing.”
Luck had nothing to do with it. We put the work in every single day. Foryears.
“I suppose it would have to.” Lawrence takes a seat with a condescending smile.
“Brandy?” I lift a bottle.
I read his reluctance. He doesn’t trust me, likely thinking up a way of snooping around to look for Everleigh. Something he wouldn’t be free to do if he’s drinking brandy with us.
Lawrence is still hesitating when I angle the bottle so he can see the label. “Remy Martin Louis the eighth. Heard it was a good one.”
His hesitation melts away as he sits upright, practically licking his lips as he takes in the bottle in my hand.
Lawrence has a whiskey room in his home. He seemed entirely too eager to show off the few bottles he had likely inherited from Daddy, so I thought to check it out. I had a peek inside, wanting something a little better than what he’d been serving at his party. I hadn’t been impressed.
I give him a casual, easy smile as if I’m not holding up a three-thousand-dollar bottle of brandy.
“Perhaps just a small one,” he says, trying to hide his eagerness.
