Chapter 302: Hooks Without Bites
Beside the lake, a row of weary figures sat in varying states of dejection, their fishing rods planted in the soft earth, lines disappearing into the glassy water. The surface barely rippled, the bait hanging unseen below, waiting for a bite that never came. The late morning sun poured over them, warm but indifferent.
Jacklin sat forward on her folding chair, eyes darting between the unmoving floats bobbing in the distance and the three men hovering together a little further away.
"Please! At least one of you tell me what was going on last night!" she whined, her voice cutting through the quiet like a stone breaking still water.
Her question was met with a wall of silence. Not even a sideways glance. She turned her head to the person behind her. "Sister Georgina, say something!"
Georgina, lounging back in a recliner, tugged the brim of her oversized sunhat lower until it nearly shadowed her whole face. Her eyes fluttered shut. "So loud," she muttered, her voice low and scratchy. "My head hurts. I drank too much." She gave the faintest wave of her hand, a lazy, evasive gesture of dismissal.
Jacklin’s brows pinched. She opened her mouth to ask again, but Dean, sitting beside her, sighed and patted Jacklin’s shoulder. "Give it a rest. Little Uncle will tell us sooner or later."
On Dean’s other side, Emile nodded in agreement. "Yeah. This isn’t something he could hide forever. We will see Micah eventually."
"What do you mean??" Jacklin asked, puzzled.
Emile pressed his lips together, his gaze slipping down to the rod in his hands. After putting things together, he had a hunch. But it wasn’t something he could blurt out. He was starting to suspect that little Uncle and Micah had that kind of relationship. But the whole Asena situation was a tangled mess, and Jacklin was far too fixated on Asena to hear anything else right now.
"I mean literally," he said after a pause, choosing his words carefully. "We could just ask Micah ourselves. But I’d rather not step on the lion’s tail again. Uncle will throw us out if we meddle one more time."
Jacklin shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. Her eyes darted around at the others. It felt like everyone knew what was going on except her. Even Dean seemed more composed than she was.
With a huff, she crossed her arms and left, lips sealed but still radiating frustration.
Beside Dylon, Lin Heye leaned closer and sighed in relief. "Ah, finally she got off our backs," he whispered.
"Yeah, she is the persistent one," Dylon whispered back, casting a wary glance toward Jacklin to make sure she hadn’t overheard.
Mason, sitting a little further away, glanced toward the condo barely visible through the trees. "You think... what they are doing back there?"
"Remember, Soha is there? Nothing explicit like you’re imagining," Lin Heye shot back.
"I didn’t mean it that way. Why are you treating me like some pervert?" Mason grumped.
"Aren’t you?" Lin Heye replied flatly, voice hushed. "You are the one who opened your big mouth and spouted nonsense right in front of Micah last night!"
"Ah... I was out of it, okay? Had a few too many," Mason said, scratching the back of his head. His sheepish smile looked more like a grimace.
"Good thing we patched things up," Dylon whispered, shifting his weight. "Can you imagine my relief when I didn’t see Clyde in the living room this morning?"
"Yeah. They must’ve made up. Otherwise..." Lin Heye’s tone fell lower, "...Clyde would have made sure we disappeared!"
"You three, stop murmuring." Georgina’s voice came from her reclined position. "You are getting on my nerves."
Lin Heye leaned an elbow on his knee, looking at her with faint annoyance. "Why would you even come here? You could’ve stayed at the condo with Soha."
"Yeah. Right," Georgina mumbled. "After that prank I pulled, I wasn’t risking being alone with Clyde if Micah saw. That is exactly the kind of situation that would start another war."
"That was...Yeah. That was really bad." Mason nodded. "We all messed up pretty badly."
The four of them sighed in resignation.
A little distance away, the Du Pont juniors were observing from their own seats.
Dean leaned slightly toward Emile. "What exactly did they do? I get that we brought up Asena in front of Micah, but what about them?"
Emile shrugged lightly, his gaze flickering toward the others. "Umm, Uncle was angrier at them than us! Strange."
"Those four are all oddballs," Jacklin muttered. "We never could guess with them."
"Yeah. They are." Dean agreed, shaking his head. "Or how else could they handle Little Uncle this long?"
He and Jacklin had met Clyde’s circle enough times to know how peculiar they could be. They had come to the conclusion that a higher IQ had its own downfall.
"Yeah. Even though we grew up with Little Uncle, sometimes, he still intimidates me..." Jacklin mumbled.
Emile looked at them, but he didn’t ask what they meant. He had heard enough rumours over the years, but his mother always insisted that they weren’t true. Still...Clyde’s coldness, his sharp control over everything, his emotionless face, those were facts, no whispers.
But since returning from overseas, Emile felt Clyde had changed. Until this morning, he had never seen him that intimidating. And honestly, they couldn’t even argue back.
The group sat in uneasy quiet, the fishing rods forgotten. That quiet broke when footsteps crunched along the path behind them.
When Micah appeared with Clyde at his side, the air seemed to drop a few degrees. Micah took the scene with an arched brow. The slumped shoulders, the downcast faces, and the sombre mood. It felt more like a ritual than a fishing trip.
"Is this a funeral or a picnic?" Micah asked. "No luck fishing?"
The group stiffened like a flock of startled birds. Slowly, their heads turned toward the sound. And there he was, the so-called demon king, standing right behind Micah, looking at them with a gaze full of authority.
They gulped, some of them looking anywhere but directly at Clyde. Thank god we were whispering, was the shared thought between them. Because if either man had heard their conversation....
Well, they would have ended up as fish food.