“Come in, come in,” I offered with a smile at the door. “So glad you could make it.”
Elek was dressed in dark gray suit pants with a lighter gray sport coat. His black button-down had several buttons undone to show a mat of thick chest hair with zero gray in it. Did the man dye the hair on his chest? He had to.
“Thank you for having us,” Elek said with a friendly smile. “This is Demitri.”
I took in the young man’s flashy appearance. According to the information Ziv had been able to scrounge up, he truly was the son of an old friend of Elek’s, which made me wonder what his father thought of the union.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his delicate hand. “This is my Joshua.” I put my arm around Mouse’s shoulder and pulled him into my side. He blushed prettily and gave a shy wave.
“Hi. Nice to meet you. Ethan has told me so much about you. It kind of made me jealous,” he said with a little laugh. “I’m not sure if I should be jealous of you or your art reputation. I think my man is enamored with both.”
I wanted to turn and stare at my nervous young agent, who apparently wasn’t nervous anymore. He’d slipped into his role effortlessly.
“Come on in,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”
For the first hour, we had cocktails and small talk in the formal living room. Thankfully, the villa we’d rented passed quite well for our cover story couple. It was nice and roomy without being overly flashy, and its secluded location near the water was something a couple of American tourists might find appealing if they were looking for privacy.
The small talk was excruciating because it didn’t do a very good job of distracting me from my hatred of Elek Kemény. I had plenty of time to assess him physically as well as well as observe his temperament. He was flattering and somewhat affectionate with Demitri, but there was an obvious thread of control in his interactions with the younger man that bothered me. Obviously, I couldn’t help but substitute King for Demitri and imagine what that would look like.
It was one thing to enjoy being controlled in the bedroom and quite another to be told what eat and what not to talk about.
When it was finally time to move to the dinner table, Mouse managed to move the conversation to art.
“Ethan said you could maybe help us figure out how to put in some better security at the house? I hope so because it makes me really nervous that he’s spent this much money on something and we don’t really know how best to protect it.”
I acted a little embarrassed. “Babe. I’m not an idiot. We have home security. I’ve done all the online research and stuff. There are art collector forums that recommend different things. I just thought maybe Elek here would help me upgrade what we already have.”
Elek smiled and nodded. “Happy to. Why don’t you tell me what you have now?”
While answering, I said a prayer for anyone who was actually stupid enough to share details of their home security protocol with a stranger.
I tried to act a little cagey just to make it seem a little less easy.
“Well… I, ah…” and so on. Elek seemed to fall for it.
While we spoke about security systems, Demitri pulled Mouse into a separate conversation about a party in Barcelona at New Year’s. Apparently many of their fellow European art collector friends were going, and he wondered if we’d be interested in joining. For just a moment, I considered taking him up on the offer in hopes of gathering intel among the art set. There was no telling how many forgers and would-be art thieves would be at a function like that if Elek himself was going to be there.
But I had to remind myself to focus on one mission at a time. And right now I was hosting one of the most prolific art thieves of my lifetime. Just because I couldn’t prosecute him for the theft of the crown, didn’t mean I couldn’t come after him later for any of the myriad other jobs he’d done.
And if by some chance I could ever arrest him in the US, it would mean any evidence he had against King wouldn’t matter. King’s American immunity deal would protect him.
“… someone like Le Chaton,” Elek finished saying. I realized I hadn’t been paying attention. Fuck.
“I’m sorry?” I said politely.
His eyes were so intense, I couldn’t determine whether he was testing me or not.
“I said the security protocols you put in place will determine if your collection is safe from everyday home invasion or the bigger threat which is someone like Le Chaton,” he repeated. “And of course, your budget will factor in.”