Page 61 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 13-16
Ellisandre inclined their head.
Jun came out of the bathroom into their room with a towel over his head, rubbing his hair dry. Water ran down the side of his thigh and back behind his knee. Gorgeous. And no time to take advantage of all that naked skin. “We need to have a hunt when we get back.”
Jun groaned. “It’s been forever since we had anything.” He dropped the towel over the back of a chair and reached for underwear.
“Wait.”
Jun turned around. “What?”
Damian held up the new tag Ellisandre had delivered. “I need to change out your tag.”
“Oh.” Jun crossed to the bed and dropped to his knees in front of Damian, tilting his head to the side. “Why? They look the same.”
“This one,” Damian said, unscrewing the tag in Jun’s ear and swapping it out, “has a tracker.”
“Kinky.” Jun layered as much innuendo as possible into the word, but stayed still until Damian was done. “It feels heavier.”
“We’re giving everyone a tracker. Ellisandre stopped by to talk. They have word from Sevastyan. Your father’s been broken out of prison.”
Jun grimaced, still on his knees. He fiddled with the tag, turning the tiger eye jewel and silver and gold dangles this way and that. “You’re worried he’ll come here.”
“Ellisandre gives it good odds. They’ve profiled him: charming as long as he gets his way, desperate and revengeful when crossed.”
“I’ve more than crossed him.” Jun touched Damian’s knee and stood, going back to getting dressed. “Is everyone being tracked?”
“Everyone we legally can. Mi Hi and Gigi as well. We even have trackers on Maribel and Artemis back home.”
“Our security bill is astronomical.”
“Fortunately, Richard has a hero complex and is not overly attached to money.”
Jun snorted and smiled. “Should start calling him Batman.”
While Jun prepared for the dinner that night with sponsors and celebrities, Damian filled him in on the rest of Ellisandre’s analysis. Jun grimaced here and there. Damian came and stood beside him while Jun applied his makeup and styled his hair. It was getting long and Jun refused to even consider cutting it. He’d decided to grow it out to at least his shoulders. But it did make styling take longer. Damian approved. More to grab.
As Damian explained Sahyuk’s resentment towards starting over and his reliance on Jun’s income, Jun paused in his work. He straightened up to be eye to eye with Damian, a wrinkle in the middle of his forehead. “I wonder, sometimes, if he’s the reason Mama never came back. If he had gotten used to the money, there wasn’t any good reason for him to let me go, so did he…just make sure…” Jun shrugged.
Who would want to have to say what they were both thinking?
“I think it’s a possibility we have to consider.” Damian said.
“I’ve been considering it for months. When I saw Rei—when I realized they all were connected. It just…it would have been easy for him to make her disappear, to even make money off it.”
Damian shoved his hands in his pockets. “He’s evil.”
“Yes, he is.” Jun went back to doing his makeup.
They entered the restaurant for the meal an hour later, side by side, walking in front of Richard and Collin. Émeric and Linda were hosting a dinner elsewhere for a different set of people. Ellisandre, for once, had chosen to accompany Richard and Collin, but they were playing assistant for the evening, not host. Which was a fancy way of saying they were running security.
“The Merchari are here, watching,” Jun said as they entered the banquet room at the back of the establishment. “Standing on the right, holding the champagne flute, black suit, round-rimmed glasses.”
A spike of danger shot through Damian’s nerves but he said nothing, face carefully cheerful, greeting guests for a couple of seconds before glancing in the direction indicated. Of course the Merchari were watching. They’d given Jun a year, only five months of which had passed. Even so, their investment was about to prove itself one way or another.
Jun went on bowing and shaking hands beside him.
The Merchari agent who’d crashed the comeback party was standing beside one of the sponsors for the venue, chatting and looking at home in the swirl of well-dressed guests. It was different seeing him in person, rather than on the security footage they’d used to help Jun identify him before. Damian worked the room in that direction. He recognized and called out the sponsor by name, gripping arms together and giving air kisses. They were European, after all. “I’m afraid I don’t…” Damian said, turning to the Merchari.
“My plus-one of the evening,” the sponsor said. “One of our suppliers and long-time friend. Sathers, meet Neumann, Neumann, Sathers.”
