Chapter 7

That much was true seeing as the "man" in question was Jack Daniel's. Chardonnay was kiddie punch peddled to chicks who couldn't handle decent booze. Or who believed the myth that they couldn't.

Extricating myself from Josh, who beelined for the blonde as expected, I pressed through the crowd to the large Exploration Gallery at the back of the aquarium which was Nefesh territory this evening, and let out a happy sigh, bathed in the spill of soft purple light from the jellyfish tanks. Talia and I had spent many a rainy day at the aquarium when Dad was out of town on "business," and while I loved the entire place, this room was my favorite.

And now it was underwater. Light filtered down through magic waves that rolled from one side of the ceiling to the other to crash and break against the wall without spilling a drop on the guests.

An unmanned ice bar was set up to my right, lined with icy stalagmites fused in deep turquoise and silver. Their tips morphed into chilled shot glasses that rapidly filled with liquid. Whenever someone snapped a glass free, the stalagmite grew a new one.

I'd never share this with my mother, but no matter how much money Mundanes threw at an event, they could never compete with Nefesh productions. Even some of the younger Untainted Party members in the previous gallery looked longingly this way.

Tempting as the shots looked, I bypassed them for a bar serving highballs and ordered two fingers' worth of Gentleman Jack with three ice cubes and a splash of water. Exactly the way Sinatra drank it back in the day.

It was a work night for me as well.

Talia had footed the bill for my ticket plus dropped that dress off along with an envelope that contained my taxi and drink allowance. She'd stopped bitching about me spending it on alcohol after I'd shown up with a purse full of juice boxes to some Untainted Party event. Because really, being around her crowd generally required a gentle buzz to keep me from punching people over their racist politics, their judgments on my chosen "profession" instead of following in my esteemed mother's footsteps, or the inevitable "Talia, you can't possibly have a daughter that age," that left me dying to tell them to pucker up a bit more because there was still some ass left to kiss.

Drink in hand, I made my way to my favorite tank containing a myriad of small, translucent jellies floating languidly. The anger that had been stoking for hours eased into a warm radiance.

My mother had no clue about the tattoo and my father was no longer around to ask. I'd exhausted the obvious, but that was to be expected. Where did I go from here? Narrowing down when I'd been tattooed would help to find the who. Old photos were pointless because even as a toddler I'd had a full head of hair and if the tattoo already existed, it would be hidden.

I really didn't want any of the hospital staff to be behind this, and especially not Dr. Zhang, the surgeon who'd operated on my leg. He'd been emblematic of everything positive and healing at a time when all color had leached from my life. He couldn't have betrayed me like that. I crossed my fingers that I could strike him off as a suspect, but I had to pursue this hospital angle.

It was better than a dead end. I toasted the jellies with my highball.

"A woman with a back that would make a goddess weep and a taste for whiskey untainted by Coke. A rare dichotomy." The low smoky voice curled through me, all illicit decadence.

I grinned evilly, turning to the speaker with my glass extended. "If you start right now, you might be able to blame the fact that you hit on me on your 'drinking your boozy heart out.'"

The gobsmacked look on Levi Montefiore's face was priceless.

"Why are you wearing that dress?" He waved his hand at it.

Even with the shoes that raised me a couple inches above my five-eight height, he towered over me by a good four inches and a skyscraper's worth of arrogance.

"I left my sackcloth and ashes at home. Sorry to disappoint. You drinking yourself out of total humiliation? No?" I shrugged and finished the whiskey before thrusting the glass into his hands. "Do a woman a mitzvah and take this away while you troll for the night's entertainment elsewhere."

Levi handed the glass off to someone else. Not even a waiter. Just some random person perfectly happy to do his bidding. That was the way of the world for the Head of House Pacifica.

To be fair, he played to his strengths. His black hair was cut slightly longer on top than the sides, swept away from his face in a classic side part that emphasized the slash of his cheekbones and a jawline sharp enough to cut. Much like the words that came out of his unfairly full and sensuous lips.

Odes had been written to his ice-blue eyes and of their unknowable depths that changed from the deepest navy to a mercurial storm. Granted those odes were inked on bathroom stalls in glittery pen, but exist they did. I liked to add disclaimers to them in thick marker and ground those flights of fancy in cold, hard truth.

I was one of the few breathing humans who didn't go into a dead faint at his proximity, though I did often wish for someone to kill me when I was around him.

Combined with the gunmetal suit that hugged his long, leanly muscled frame to perfection and made me reconsider my stance on Josh's tailoring, Levi exuded effortless power - and ego. It didn't hurt that he'd invented some virtual reality tech when he was in his early twenties and sold his company for a sum that would have made even an ogre reasonably attractive in the eyes of many.

People had been waiting to see what the boy wonder would do next, but no one could have predicted he'd challenge the previous Head of House Pacifica for its leadership.

Or that he'd win.

Pursing those lips that rumor had it were almost as talented as his fingers, Levi regarded me with a suspicion usually reserved for small unattended packages in airports. "Are you undercover?"

"In a floor-length 'come fuck me' red dress with no visible panty line?"

His eyes flicked to my ass, then away dismissively.