Chapter 1218: Danny Maxton

As one of the most exclusive clubs on Hell’s Paradise Island, Elysium understood that true wealth eventually developed an allergy to witnesses.

Its public floors were already obscene enough, drowned in violet light, ancient wines, beautiful bodies and music heavy enough to make the tower itself seem to breathe:

Yet above and behind all that glitter were private booths reserved for the truly, offensively rich, secluded little worlds where heirs, ministers, celebrities and old-money monsters disappeared whenever they wanted to do things they could never afford to let the rest of the world glimpse.

The booth Danny Maxton had reserved that evening was one of the finest.

It occupied a secluded corner beyond a corridor guarded by two black doors etched with golden runes that deadened sound and rejected casual spiritual perception. Inside waited broad crescent sofas upholstered in pale leather, a private bar carved from black crystal, shelves lined with wines older than several modern nations and a ceiling of enchanted glass where false stars drifted lazily through violet darkness.

Gold-veined marble covered the floor, perfumed candles burned inside translucent bowls.

Even the air had been refined through modern tech until every breath carried a faint sweetness of jasmine and expensive liquor.

It was beautiful.

But Danny Maxton had done his best to make it filthy.

Then again, that was its importance and why it was private, wasn’t it?

He sprawled in the center of the enormous sofa with the satisfied laziness of a man who had mistaken indulgence for achievement.

Danny had thickened considerably over the years. His shoulders still carried the old heir’s breadth, but a generous belly now pressed against the expensive shirt he had opened several buttons too far, flushed skin showing, gold chain caught in the hair of his chest. Heat and perfume hung around him.

His belt was already undone.

Two women clung to either side of him.

Both were slim, striking, dressed the way Elysium dressed its most expensive private attendants — their dresses cut high on the thighs and low enough at the chest that a man forgot whatever dignity he had walked in with. One had her dress already slipped from a shoulder, a bare breast filling Danny’s left hand as he squeezed without looking.

The other sat half in his lap, her thigh thrown over his, the thin strip of her underwear already damp where she had been made to rub against him.

A third knelt between his legs.

Her painted mouth was wrapped around his pathetic cock, taking him with the smooth, practiced patience of someone whose thoughts had long ago learned how to leave the room while the rest of her stayed professionally present. She worked him slowly, wetly, lips stretched around the flushed shaft, one hand stroking what she could not comfortably take. Spit shone on her chin.

Danny groaned and buried a hand in her hair, pushing her down until her throat tightened around him.

The woman lifted her eyes toward him and smiled when expected, keeping every trace of distaste safely behind a face trained by years of wealthy men believing money purchased affection along with privacy.

She swallowed around him, then pulled back just enough to lick the head, slow and filthy, before taking him again.

Danny released another pleased sound, dirty and shameless, then he turned toward the woman on his right. He caught her face between his palms and dragged her into a wet, careless kiss, his tongue pushing into her mouth while the girl on her knees kept sucking him.

The woman on his right accepted it without resistance. His other hand shoved her dress higher and found her bare snatch, and she let him, parting her thighs so his thick fingers could slide through the slick heat of her.

She was already familiar with the little habits of Danny Maxton.

All three of them were.

He came to Elysium occasionally and almost always requested the same women.

He paid extremely well, tipped even better when drunk and, for all his unpleasant enthusiasm, rarely caused them much trouble. Danny was indulgent rather than violent, boastful rather than dangerous, and his stamina had never been remarkable enough to turn entertaining him into an especially long night’s labor.

They already knew how this would end: his cock twitching in the kneeling girl’s mouth, his kiss turning sloppy, his hands greedy on whichever body was closest — and then, soon enough, the night would be over.

Money had bought him many things.

Endurance, regrettably, had refused the transaction.

Danny finally released the woman he had been kissing and turned toward the third with a sloppy grin as she rose gracefully from between his knees and ran one teasing finger along his open shirt.

"Come here," he murmured.

Far beyond the reach of his senses, something inside the booth’s shadow sighed.

Ryuzen Raizen Hayashihad been standing there long enough to begin reconsidering several things about humanity.

He occupied the narrow darkness behind one of the decorative pillars, although occupied was perhaps too generous a word. There was no aura, no breathing or spiritual weight and nothing the room could identify as a living presence.

Even the shadows seemed to have accepted him as part of themselves.

His eyes remained fixed on Danny.

Ryuzen was a monogamous man by nature and currently had so little interest in romance that the entire subject ranked somewhere beneath sword maintenance and quiet mornings.

He therefore found scenes like this genuinely difficult to understand.

Danny had a wife and children.

He had already cheated on that wife with his assistant, something Ryuzen knew because there were very few sins connected to tonight’s operation that had not been dragged into the light and catalogued somewhere. Apparently the affair had failed to satisfy whatever hollow little appetite kept gnawing at him, because he had continued coming here afterward to spend his nights with the same three women whenever boredom, lust or cowardice required somewhere private to hide<anno data-annotation-id="7a9dfa0d-52be-07b9-d1b0-eed1d6bf0c24" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Ryuzen’s gaze lowered briefly toward the laughing Maxton.

’No wonder his own family considers him disposable.’

That thought carried no amusement.

The Maxtons were preparing to murder him tonight:

With all his failures, his humiliations, his usefulness exhausted, the openly reason Danny was dying was none of those but the fact that Danny had become one of the last living threads connecting two Legacy Families to a murder disguised ten years ago as an accident.

<annotations style="display: none;">You guys remember the woman mentioned by Melissa who had helped secure the iPhone 17? That’s the assistant we’re talking about?</annotations>