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“I can accept that,” Marc chimed in after not saying a word for quite some time. “How do you propose we go about collaborating on this investigation?”
Matteo looked between Levi and Chase. “Well, I think Levi should help Chase with this case. He’s the one most familiar with Mr. Peabody and can provide background and additional details as he sees fit. But I want to be very clear. These investigations must be kept extremely confidential, and no one must know that you are investigating them or that I have provided you with any of their personal information. If any of this gets out, I will be ruined, and my business will be destroyed. While I might take advantage of the information I have available as a result of my business, La Maison de M provides an essential service to many of my guests who cannot be themselves in the real world and use our services as a way to help them be who they truly are meant to be. I do not want to impact that relationship with my guests in any way.”
“That sounds fair,” Marc added.
“And the next time you go around giving people information about me and my business, you might want to give me a heads up first, Ares. I don’t appreciate the constant backstabbing.”
Ares’s body froze. His eyes went wide, and he appeared caught off-guard by the sudden assault on his integrity. His mouth opened in retaliation, but he seemed to change his mind at the last minute.
The master arms dealer resumed cutting his chicken and shoveling it into his mouth without looking up at his guests.
The rest of his guests continued to enjoy their meals, making small talk and recanting stories of various travels and experiences. Ares told tales of his experiences in Austria and how he met the royal family once while at an opera. Alex was enthralled and asked a million questions about Europe and customs and such. Who would have guessed that the blond-haired social butterfly was so cultured?
Marc and Matteo continued to watch each other suspiciously, ready to attack if the other so much as sneezed.
Chase, on the other hand, kept playing a game of “catch the purple-eyed deity staring at me” and then winking when his cheeks blushed red from being caught. Working with the blushing dancer was going to be a fun and interesting time, to say the least.
17
LEVI
Using his hand, he wiped the condensation off the bathroom mirror. He had forgotten to turn the bathroom fan on while showering once again. He never remembered. Matteo must have told him a thousand times to switch the damn thing on before hopping in the shower, but he never remembered. He always seemed to remember when he was right in the middle of shampooing his hair or jerking on his cock. At that point, it was too late. The steam had already done its job and covered every surface in the bathroom.
Levi stared at his reflection in the mirror. Hair wet, eyes blue as sapphires, lips dull as ever. He was reminded of the man that he used to be. The poor, pathetic weakling who couldn’t stand up to his drunken alcoholic father. The man used to drink himself stupid, pass out, then piss himself. To this day, Levi could still smell the piss that used to waft through their two-bedroom apartment.
Shortly after his mother passed away, his dad moved them from his childhood home to a small two-bedroom apartment in one of the poorer parts of Paris.
It’s not like his childhood home was anything to brag about, but at least it had two bathrooms and a backyard. This little tin can had one bathroom that they both had to share and barely enough room for two full-grown men to live in.
It was shortly after Christmas on the year that he turned eighteen that Levi found himself homeless and on the streets.
He couldn’t handle it anymore. All his life, he had lived with the battery of verbal abuse that his father gave him and his mother. But it wasn’t until the night when his father’s actions finally turned violent that Levi realized it was time for him to leave.
As the last of the steam vanished from the mirror, Levi’s focus turned to the tiny chunk of flesh missing from his right shoulder. The flaw was so minuscule to the regular observer that you might not even notice it was there.
But Levi knew.
He would always know that it was there.
That was the evening that his father stumbled into his bedroom, drunk as sin, and stabbed him in the shoulder with a letter opener.
Startled, his eyes flew open as the weight suddenly above him caused the bed to sink.
“What the fu—” his words were cut off by the sudden searing pain of something sharp entering his shoulder. He cried out in pain as his father rolled his body on top of his, pinning him to the bed between his legs.
“Where is it? Where ish it, you fuhken thief?” his father’s voice slurred in the darkness of his bedroom.
The only light that entered the room was cast by the television that shone in the living room.
“Ow! What, the fuck?” Levi shouted in pain.
It was too dark to see what his father was holding. The only thing he knew was that it was sharp and painful.
“Where is mah fuken whisky?” his father growled once again. “I knows you hid it.”
“Get off of me, you crazy drunk!” Levi shouted, for the first time, fearing for his life. He was trapped under his bulky, bear of a father, who was piss drunk and wielding some sort of weapon.
Another stab of pain shot through his shoulder and down his arm. His father had stabbed him again with whatever the sharp, tiny object was.
