Page 26 of The Chameleon

“So, who are you hunting down next?” Matteo asked the man sitting next to him.

“Huh?” Chase asked, looking up from the document he was currently reading on his tablet.

Matteo held up the journal.

“Oh, we’re going after a man named Neo next. He’s supposedly running a sex trafficking ring out of his mansion in the Swiss Alps.”

“A sex trafficker is one of our clients?” Matteo asked, quickly sitting up in his chair. He wondered how his security team had missed such a big red flag.

Before a person’s membership toLa Maisonis approved, they must undergo a credit and criminal background check. It appeared that Edwin’s sleuthing had been much better than the team of professional investigators Matteo had hired for this specific purpose.

“No. No,” Chase noted, glancing around to see who might have overheard them.

Matteo looked around as well, realizing that perhaps he had been a little louder than intended. No one seemed interested in their conversation.

“Neo’s son, David, is queer. David is the one who has a membership atLa Maison. Edwin must have been investigating David when he discovered his father’s sex trafficking ring. I doubt David is even aware of his father’s activities. They don’t seem too close. Marc is putting together a team for the takedown while I’m scoping out the specs for the mission.”

Marc was Chase’s boss and the person who had been given Edwin’s blackmail journal. He had hired Chase, a former police officer, to help him hunt down the men listed in the book and bring them to justice. Justice usually being a bullet to the head or a leisurely swim at the bottom of the ocean.

Matteo didn’t care. So long as these monsters were dealt with properly and didn’t pose a risk to his family or his business.

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Matteo asked, leaning back in his lounge chair and flipping through the journal once again.

Chase, who had only started dating Levi a few months ago, had taken up permanent residence in Levi’s bedroom. Considering most of the men Chase was hunting down were located in Europe, it only made sense for Chase to live in France permanently, as opposed to his home country of Canada—that, and the fact that he and Levi couldn’t stop boning.

“We’ll probably be on site for about a week. We’ll need to monitor the situation for a few days and learn the perp’s habits. Then take ’em down.”

“Hmm,” Matteo hummed, half listening to the man as he talked.

Flipping the page of the journal, Matteo noticed that two of the pages had been torn out from the beginning of the journal. He flipped back a page and then forward a page.

“Hmm. Profile number four is missing,” Matteo said, running his fingers along the frayed edges of the torn-out pages still stuck in the crease of the book.

Chase glanced over at Matteo.

“Oh, that. I asked Marc the same thing when I first started working for him. He mentioned that the entry was about Ares. Apparently, the guy who originally found the journal tore out the pages as a favor to him. Something to do with owing him a favor for saving his ass or something. I’ve always wondered what dirt Edwin had found on Ares.”

Matteo ran his fingers along the frayed edges, deep in thought. Given that it was Ares, the entry could have listed many things. Ares wasn’t exactly the most law-abiding citizen in the world.

And if Edwin was looking to score big, who better than to blackmail one of the biggest gun traffickers in the world? Although, if you enjoyed breathing, it probably wasn’t the smartest idea trying to blackmail one of the world’s most dangerous men.

Matteo didn’t exactly know the extent of Ares’s reach. He’d heard the rumors, the same as everyone else in the criminal underworld—that Ares’s reach was vast and all-encompassing—that he had his hands and ears in all corners of the world. If you whispered his name, he knew about it.

Still, part of Matteo was curious. The intimate pieces of knowledge that Matteo did know about Ares were several years old, and as any criminal will tell you, information older than twelve months was no longer reliable.

Feeling the fibers of the torn pages against his fingers, Matteo couldn’t help but wonder about the menacing, dangerous man that so many in the criminal underworld feared. Ares was a ghost, a phantom, a boogeyman. Many knew the stories, but few knew the man.

Ares was a chameleon among criminals. Information about him was always changing; stories varied from person to person, and no one seemed to know much about who Ares was or where he came from.

Yet, somewhere buried deep beneath that monstrous evil soul of Ares’s… was a beating heart. How kind it was, no one knew.

Well, he did save your life,that annoying voice that liked to hang out in the darkest corners of Matteo’s heart reminded.

Yes, he did.

Jumping in front of that bullet to save Matteo had been a jarring moment in Matteo’s life. It was during that moment—watching Ares’s blood seep between his fingers—that Matteo realized just how close to death he had come that night.

He could have lost everything. His life, his family, everything he had built atLa Maison.

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