Page 76 of They Break Beauty

He couldn’t manage to do the same, breaking eye contact. Whether it was shame or fear—possibly a bit of both—I couldn’t tell. Yet.

“Levi,” he uttered unevenly as he finally reached the booth. “How did you find me?”

“The more pertinent question you should be concerned with is ‘why?’”

He cleared his throat. “All right, what do you need?”

I downed the rest of my vodka, then rose to my feet. “We’ll talk in your office.”

“Here is fine.”

“I won’t do business on the club floor of a seedy strip joint.”

I could see his first reaction was to resist, but he made the right choice and gave a nod. “Sure. My office it is then.”

He tried to finagle things so I was walking ahead of him, but I made it clear it would be the other way around.

As if I’d be fool enough to allow anyone to be at my back.

Sure, thanks to my many years street fighting, my reactions were lightning-fast, but you couldn’t stop what you couldn’t see coming.

I followed him off the club floor and down a poorly lit corridor all the way to the back where my research had already determined his office was.

He took a moment to unlock the door, then he opened it and stepped inside, gesturing for me to do the same.

“So what can I do for you?” he asked, trying to feign a casual air as he tensely walked behind his desk and took a seat as I shut the door and approached.

I took a seat in one of the two chairs opposite him and kicked my feet up on the desk.

He glared for a moment, not liking the insult of it, but he didn’t speak to it.

“Your former boss has been underground for years. For as long as you’ve been hiding away actually.”

“Malcolm Lynch?”

I only just managed to suppress a shudder at the mention of that fucker’s name. No matter all the preparation I’d done through knowing it would come up, it was still a bitch of a thing to suppress a reaction.

I ground my teeth. “You know it’s him I’m talking about.”

“Fine, yeah. But, underground? He’s dead.”

I clasped my hands in my lap. “Yes, what a well-fashioned coverup that was.”

“Coverup? I don’t know what—”

“Your denial is futile. You helped with his escape from my father’s wrath.”

“Levi, I—”

“I have proof, Kyle.”

He scrubbed his hand over his clean shaven jaw. “He forced my hand. Our hands. Me and—”

“Royce Humphrey. I’m well aware you were both involved.”

“Look, even if that was true, that we helped get him out, thinking he survived much beyond that night is a whole other thing. Roman Knight and Curt Walker were after him, for fuck’s sakes.”

“You survived. For the last six years too.”

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