Page 46 of Play Dirty

Ixion looks good. More like himself than I’ve seen him in almost a decade. He played a game a few months ago. Well, that’s not technically true. I hired him to do surveillance on a woman named Evangeline Rolaine. A crazy violin child prodigy who couldn’t perform on stage anymore because the thought of being watched terrified her. Her therapist, Lucinda Chatwell, set this game up, so it was more like treatment than a game.

Until Ixion fucked it all up, that is.

But hey, he fixed her. And they’re still together so I count that as a win.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Question for you,” Ixion says.

“A question? Why didn’t you just ask me on the phone?”

“Because I haven’t seen you in a couple weeks and I wanted to check in.”

“You’re worried about me?” I ask, unable to hide my smile or the chuckle that comes out with it.

“A little bit,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. “But first… you still have access to that house?”

“Which one? The mansion next to the gardens?”

“Yeah, the one we played our game in.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda… living there at the moment.”

“Oh,” he says, considering this. Ixion is a fuck-hot dude. I’m kinda into dudes. Not all the way into dudes, but I appreciate the addition of another guy in a relationship. Which is why Augustine and Alexander came to me, right?

Well, anyway. Ixion is hot. He’s got a nice build. One of those tough guys who wears jeans and t-shirts and rides a motorcycle. But the guy is fucking loaded. His family was killed in a car crash years ago, right after all that shit went down in LA, so he inherited everything. I don’t even know how much money this guy actually has because he never talks about it. Never spends it either. At least not on himself. And it occurs to me… “Why?” I ask. “You wanna buy it?”

Ixion chews his lip like he’s not sure. And then he says, “Maybe. I’m not sure. Evangeline is sorta fixated on it.”

“Oh,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “Fixated how?”

“Like… she can’t stop talking about that family, ya know? All those photographs and stuff. She keeps bugging me to ask you who they are.”

“I dunno.” I shrug. “I bought the house on foreclosure last year. These old historic mansions almost never come up for sale so I snatched it up because… fuck, I have no idea why I bought that stupid house. None. Just… an impulse buy, I guess.”

Ixion laughs. “A seven-million-dollar impulse?”

“I didn’t want anyone else to have it.”

He laughs louder. Because spending seven million dollars just to get something no one else has is so… me.

“But if you’re interested in buying it, I’m definitely selling. It was a dumb idea. And I’m house-poor now and I hate it.”

“Well, I don’t know, man. It might be too big, ya know?”

“Tell me about it. I live in the fucking office. And I sold all the furniture so the whole place is empty.”

“You sold everything?” Ix asks.

“Yeah.”

“What about the photos?”

“I boxed them up and sent them over to Lawton’s office. What he did with them, I have no clue. Why?”

Ixion chews his cheek for a second, thinking. “Evangeline is just obsessed. Wants to know who they are. You don’t know anything?”

“No. The bank owned the house when I bought it. Their name wasn’t on any of the papers.”