Page 40 of The Cat's Mausy

“Get out,” Felinus breathed without looking away from Issac. He wouldn’t be drawn in by those dark eyes again.

“Boss, I need-” Snake started.

“GET OUT,” Felinus roared. “All of you! Out!”

There was a pause. Through the open door of the office he heard whispers, the opening of the elevator doors then silence save for Issac’s pained breathing. Twisting his hand, Felinus looked at Issac’s neck, seeing the impression of his fingers forming against Issac’s pale skin. He had been ready to exterminate a rat in his home. But fuck if it hadn’t hurt to see Issac back away from him, to grab his hand as if he could stop Felinus from choking the life out of him, to see those tears still falling down his cheeks.

He wanted to take him to bed, to wrap him up in blankets, to hold and kiss him until Issac couldn’t remember what that fear Felinus inflicted felt like. But he couldn’t, not yet. The name Lukas Maus had meant something to Issac and Felinus believed that this unknown man was Issac’s father, or at least a father figure. Lying about that would be stupid and Issac wasn’t stupid.

He let go of Issac all at once, watching him sag forward. Turning away, he walked over to the couch, pausing on the way to pick up a balled-up piece of paper.

It was from a notebook, several lines filled with Issac’s color-coded notes, parts crossed out as a line was repeated or a word misspelled. There were drawings under it. Two cats, one just childish and simple, the other wearing what appeared to be a vest as it stood on its hind legs. It would be cute if he had found it under any other circumstances. The page was torn by a violent scribbling near the bottom but he could just make out two stick figures, one bigger than the other, the smaller with red curls around its head, the ink smudged from water drops.

He looked at Issac, still on his knees with his eyes locked on the paper in Felinus’s hands, tears still rolling down his cheeks every few blinks. He sat down on the couch, setting the paper down next to him. “Come here,” he ordered. “No,” he added when Issac made to stand up. “On your knees.”

He had expected some level of outrage about Felinus treating him with more respect now that he knew who he was. Issac was hardly the first person who was revealed to be slightly more important than Felinus originally thought. Even if they had been hiding it, the minute it was out they tended to get pompous. Issac did hesitate, staring at Felinus for a few moments then crawled over to him, wincing when his hands touched the ground until he knelt at Felinus’s knee.

Felinus’s cock twitched in his slacks as those dark eyes looked up at him, questioning, hurting, but no less his baby boy. Without thinking, he took Issac’s chin again in his grip, gently this time, letting his fingers wipe away some of the wetness from his cheeks. “I want the truth, Issac,” he said softly. “Starting with why Snake came running in here to tell me your father’s name.”

Issac didn’t lean into his touch like he had last night, nor did he pull away. Instead, he sat perfectly still, staring into Felinus’s eyes. “He was a Reaper,” he breathed, his voice hoarse from the combination of being held by the throat and crying.

“You said that,” Felinus said. “I didn’t know being a Reaper was something one could retire from.”

Issac swallowed. “He didn’t retire. He was murdered.” His voice cracked and another tear rolled down his cheek. “So was my mum. Fifteen years ago. In the alley outside of our apartment.”

Felinus’s fingers twitched but he managed to keep his expression neutral. “That is when you were placed in the foster system?”

Issac nodded. “Mum was an only child, Dad immigrated alone three years before I was born. There was no other blood family.”

“What about O’Hare,” Felinus asked. “He should have taken responsibility for you as a Casualty Orphan. If the war killed your dad and your mom got caught in the crossfire then-”

“It wasn’t the war,” Issac breathed, and there was a spark that Felinus hadn’t seen before. Rage boiled just behind those black stones. “The man who killed them was a Clover, like Dad. He shot my dad in the back of the head in the alley under our apartment and gunned down my mum when she tried to run!” His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t crossfire.”

Felinus stared down at Issac and felt his chest knot. “You saw it happen,” he breathed.

Issac nodded, more tears rolling free from the corner of his eyes.

“I’m sorry, baby boy,” he said softly. Issac would have only been ten for less than a month when the first sit down of the Three Rings took place to start peace talks, only a few months when the treaty was officially signed. That was too young to see that sort of thing. Fuck, the first dead body Felinus had ever seen was when he was sixteen when he had to identify his father’s body at the city morgue- and that was too fucking young. “You said your dad was a Reaper. Do you know what name he went by?” The Irish used Reapers like boogeymen, particularly back in those days. If Issac knew what his dad was called then it might answer more of the questions Felinus had about why a Clover killed another Clover and his wife.

Issac swallowed as he nodded again. “They called him the German Reaper.”

There were very few things that could shock Felinus at this point in life. He’d seen too much, done too much, to be surprised by anything people said. Hearing Issac say that his father, Lukas Maus, was the notorious German Reaper who disappeared around the time of the peace talks short-circuited his brain. No one knew how or why the German Reaper had disappeared. There had been a rumor that the Clovers, the German’s employers, had done away with him because he was too bloodthirsty to leave the war behind. “Is that what this is all about,” he asked Issac softly. “You’re trying to find out who killed your dad?”

Issac let out a laugh, a bitter, angry sound that cut Felinus’s heart. “I know who killed them,” he said, hate in every syllable as he looked at the paper on the couch. “I know who betrayed my dad and took my family away. He was a man my dad had trusted. Someone he named me after. I called him my uncle.” He breathed in sharply, shaking as his knuckles went white on his knees and his face flushed red. “I have known for fifteen years who did this to me. Who left me alone. Who took everything away from me.”

He looked up at Felinus, and he could see the pain, the anger, the loneliness, and the shattered trust. Issac had told Dimitri that telling the truth came with history and baggage, and Felinus was seeing it, all of that baggage in an unsteady tower waiting to fall and crush whoever dared get too close.

“But I’m not stupid enough to think I could ever go after him,” Issac whispered, the wall starting to build back up, to hide the things he hadn’t let anyone else see. “I’ve stayed away from my dad’s world. Made sure that my brushes with it were brief and left no ripples to alert them of where I was. Dimitri isn’t the first to try to make friends with me. I have had to be very creative in the past on how to get rid of interested men. Then… you came along.”

Felinus lifted Issac into his lap, making him straddle Felinus as he stared into Issac’s eyes. Issac’s hands pressed against his chest like he could hold Felinus at bay with them. “Why did he kill them,” he asked softly.

The wall didn’t come down. “I don’t know,” he said, all the anger gone from his voice, “and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter why it was done and who else might be involved. It won’t bring them back. I stopped caring about answering that question a long time ago.”

“Liar,” Felinus breathed, drawing Issac closer to him and feeling him resist briefly before caving to rest his forehead against Felinus’s. “You do care. How could you not? But you aren’t stupid. You know that alone you could never go against the Clovers. With no allies and no power to hold over them, it would have just meant your death too.” He paused. “Is that why you went into politics? To get the power to go against the Clovers?”

To his surprise, Issac suddenly blushed. Not the angry flush it had been but an actual blush of embarrassment. “No,” he said, trying to look away from Felinus without moving. “I… My parents used to say I would be a senator one day. I just… When they died… It seemed as good a goal as any. It would have made them happy.”

Felinus laughed, surprising himself as well as Issac. It was such a childish, innocent reason to pick a career that he couldn’t doubt it, even if he had a hard time imagining the fabled German Reaper bragging about his son being a senator one day. “Have you had any contact with the Clovers since your parents’ deaths?”

Issac shook his head, frowning at Felinus. “There were a few close calls growing up in the system,” he said, some of the sadness returning to his eyes. “A few near brushes with men I knew and who knew me. Wannabes and recruiters I didn’t know trying to hook a lonely kid. I… The first time, I tried to warn the foster family I was initially placed with but they brushed it off until I told them that there were twenty men with guns or knives at the park she had taken us to. It had scared the other kids… They removed me the same day and I was placed in a completely different school district, but still in what would become the Irish Ring. I was with them for about a month before they sent me away, too, because I kept trying to explain that it wasn’t safe.” His head drooped slowly. “By the time I was twelve, they had moved me out of the Irish Ring because they ran out of homes that would take me. I was placed into part of no-man’s land. I stopped trying to warn the foster parents about the dangers but there were… other things that would get me removed. By the time I was fourteen, the system gave up on putting me with families and I lived in a group home. It wasn’t really any better, but I was at least able to finish high school in the same place.” He looked up at Felinus, droplets on his eyelashes. “My parents didn’t want me to be in this world. I have done all I can to avoid it, but it’s like it keeps sucking me back in. I can’t escape it.”

Felinus lifted his hand to cup Issac’s cheek and this time felt him lean into the touch. “What do you want, Issac,” he asked him softly. “You have said what your parents wanted, what other people wanted. What about what Issac Maus wants?”

Issac’s bottom lip slipped between his teeth, distracting Felinus as he lowered his thumb to slowly pull it free.

“Answer me, baby boy,” Felinus said, drawing him a little closer.

The lip came free, red and damp as it pressed against its sibling. Issac swallowed. “I want to be seen,” he breathed, his arms slowly rising to wrap around Felinus’s neck. “I want you to see me.”

“I see you,” Felinus said, drawing Issac closer. “I see you, Issac. The person you have been hiding away. I see him. You don’t have to hide from me.”

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