CHAPTER ONE
The weather was especially dreary for a late October night in Munich. Rainwater drowned the city's streets, and seeped down the alley gutters he trudged pass every day on his way home.
It's been a tough day, he thought as he recollected the evening's events. That man from Milano had some nerve to put him under so much pressure. But, it was only a matter of time before he would put that bastard out of business. It was a game of patience after all.
The wind swept past him and he pulled his cloak tighter around his neck.
As he turned the corner, he stopped dead in his tracks. In a dead end ahead of him, between two garbage containers, he was greeted by a quite unpleasant view. There was a man lying on the ground. Well, to be more precise, it was the leftovers of something that used to be a man not long ago. Now it was a mere pair of lifeless legs and a huge mess of meat and blood that was spilt over the ground as well as the containers and the walls of the buildings that surrounded the little place. The biting smell of alcohol and gastric juices assaulted him although he was a good ten feet away. He clamped his one of his gloved hand over his nose.
A boy about fifteen or sixteen years, panting and emaciated to his bones, was crouching over the pile of bones and flesh and he looked almost as dead as the corpse underneath him. His clothes were torn, muddy and dangled from his small figure. As he turned his head and looked at the other man who was staring him straight in the eye, a warm smile crossed his observer's face. The boy's eyes glowed in the dark, illuminating the street and painting every inch an icy blue colour, when he bared his teeth and a growl escaped his throat. The blond man kept watching, and started to close the distance between them.
"Well, what have we got here, young boy?" He put his hands in front of himself, exposing his empty palms and hoping the boy wouldn't jump at him before he got the chance to start a conversation.
He stopped a few feet away from him and knelt down although his cloak got soaked by the puddles mirroring the sky. The boy's eyes still gleamed, but he hadn't moved an inch yet. He merely kept watching his approach.
Now, right in front of him, the other man could see that the blood was also spread all over the boy's face. He slowly rummaged for something inside his pocket, but the boy shrank away.
"Don't be scared, I just want to give you something to clean the mess on your face, alright?" He pulled out a pristine white handkerchief and offered it to the boy. To say he looked sceptical would have been a massive understatement. He stared at the piece of white with such distrust, the other man had to chuckle.
"It's okay, seriously. I didn't poison it and I didn't do anything disgusting with it, either. Take it and wipe your face. And afterwards, I'd like you to come home with. Get a proper shower, and tell me how you got in a place like this. Since you already had your meal, you should be fine for the night, but in the morning, I can get you whatever you want. What do you say?"
The boy kept staring for a few more moments, the light in his eyes gradually fading.
Finally, he spoke. "You aren't some kind of fucking pervert, are you? 'Cause if you are, you bet your ass, you're going to end like this cocksucking little shit down here."
The blond man broke out in laughter. "Sure not, kid. I can think of better alternatives to find someone to spend the night with than randomly picking up some child who kills time slaughtering drunk men in a dark alley."
The boy took the handkerchief and wiped his face. Gazing down on the dirtied cloth, his face twisted in disgust. "Filth," he mumbled.
"Thus, my offer." The blond man rose to his full height, turned around and started walking down the alley while the boy gave his prey one last glance before he followed.
"Oi, what's your name, big boy?"
"Pardon me." The man turned around, took off his right hand's glove and offered it, that smile still on his face. "My name's Erwin Smith."
Fifteen years later and 700 miles away, somewhere downtown London, a man in an elegant looking suit climbed up the steps of a large, hardwood staircase, embellished with a heavy royal blue carpet and golden brackets holding everything in place. But he didn't even take a moment to glance at its beauty since he had seen it so many times before. The same applied to the expensive murals that covered every inch he passed. He just wanted to know why the hell he was supposed to come here in mere daylight. Worse, in the fucking morning.
At the stair's top he stood in front of a huge wooden door, but he didn't bother to knock. Pushing it open, his eyes attached to the ones of a very familiar face. Behind a massive desk, the kind that probably stood in all the business rooms of every existing world leader, sat a tall man with blond hair neatly parted on the left side, his bright blue eyes being one of his most striking features besides his thick and bushy eyebrows. As always, a collected expression settled on his face.
"What the fuck am I doing in your office at eleven a.m., Erwin?"
"Bad mouthed as ever, aren't we, Levi?" Erwin leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and his chin on top his pleated hands. "As I already told you on the phone, I have a job that needs to be done. Only this time it'll somewhat differ from the usual." One of Levi's eyebrows raised up.
"Cut the shit, Smith, and spit it out."
Erwin took a deep breath and continued: "A good friend of mine needs you to act as a bodyguard for his daughter. It appears some complications will occur in the near future concerning her. Someone might try to kill her and given the circumstances, to me you seem to be the best man to secure her safety-"
"What circumstances?" Levi interrupted.
Erwin closed his eyes. He had seriously hoped that Levi would overhear that point.
"Trust me, Levi. It'd be best if you don't know until the time comes. Otherwise, it might endanger you as well as the safety of your client and his daughter."
He opened his eyes again, his face calm.
Levi walked to the huge wooden desk, never dropping his glare on Erwin. He halted in front of him, put his palms on the desk and stared down at Erwin, trying to read the other man's thoughts. But as always, all he saw was sincerity. His smell didn't give away anything, either. Would it have been any other person despite Erwin, he would never even think of dropping such a subject. If he was going to risk his ass, he had the damn right to know what he was getting into. But in fact, it was Erwin sitting in front of him. The one and only man on this cursed planet he trusted. Fully. The one he would follow blindly into any fucked up situation as he already had so many times before. And Erwin earned his trust, for he was the reason Levi made it out alive when things became too hard for him to bear alone.
"Fine. Who's the client?"
Erwin's lips twitched up, relieved. "His name's Grisha Yeager. You might've met before since he's a member of the Big Ones."
Levi tried to remember the faces he had seen on their meetings. The Big Ones were a gathering of people Erwin did business with. Some mafia bosses, others in charge of oil or weapon companies, but all of which were important men and women who pulled the world's strings from the shadows. Some more, some less.
"He runs one of the world's three largest weapons ring and his residence happens to be close as well. I've known him since he started business. I've helped him turning it into an empire almost thirty years ago, and in exchange I take part in his research, to ensure that I get a hand on the latest technology. He used to be a scientist, which is why he still leads the research department alone, and his results never fail to impress me. Additionally, he's an exceptional strategist. You can imagine that he and I got along pretty well right from the start."
Levi stood still, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he listened to what Erwin said.
Yes, he could imagine, Erwin would like someone like this Yeager-guy.
Erwin wasn't the type to ever show his disliking of other people openly, but there were only a few who hold his respect. And judging by the way he spoke about Yeager, he seemed to be one of them. So perhaps working for him wouldn't be too bad after all.
Then again, he wasn't going to guard Grisha Yeager but rather his daughter. Just because her father may have been a respectable person didn't mean that she was as well. Hell, he knew that the best men might have the worst kids. And vice versa.
"Nice to know, but I still know shit about his daughter, why she's threatened and, more importantly, what I'm going to protect her from." Levi kept his usual bored expression.
Erwin sighed heavily, evidently bored that he had to repeat himself.
"As I've already told you, you don't need to know the details. And as for the daughter herself, I don't know very much about her, either. Her name is Mikasa Ackerman, she seems to be a shy and silent girl, she's nineteen years old-"
"Are you fucking serious?" Levi interrupted him, losing his cool despite this little information. "Are you out of your goddamn mind to put me in charge of a fucking teenager? What the fuck am I, a stupid babysitter? Do you know what it's like to bodyguard a nineteen year old girl? I assume, this'll be a 24/7 job, so I would have to follow her to every fucking shopping tour, every stupid party at some dirty as fuck dance club, and stay close to her while she hosts retarded pyjama parties? No, forget it. Go get some other moron to do this shit. I'm out."
Levi turned on his heels, stomping out the room but before he reached the door, he heard Erwin shout: "Levi, I beg you. It has to be you, no one else can do this."
Levi flinched and stopped, still not looking back. It was rare that Erwin begged. Fuck, he was one of the biggest underground bosses, he rarely needed to. He could tell people to rip their legs off, and people would be tripping over themselves to fulfill his request. That only left one option as to why he did it nonetheless. He requested it as a friend.
He had to have some personal interest in Levi doing this job. Which Levi couldn't just shrug off and ignore, and Erwin fucking knew that. Little son of a bitch.
"When do we start?" Levi spat out through clenched teeth.
He could almost feel the blonde smile. "Now. And to calm your nerves, as I said, she's more of a silent one. As far as I know, she has only two friends, one is her brother and the other a similar silent young boy. So, she doesn't seem to be a typical teenage girl after all. The three of them are lectured at home, so they rarely leave their house, as Grisha had told me. Moreover, I will search for the suspect myself. In the best scenario, it'll only take me a few weeks, I'll take care of him myself, and you'll earn a nice amount of money for looking out for a couch potato girl."
Levi hoped Erwin was right. Having her brother as one of her only friends was pretty paltry. "Wait, you said her surname is Ackerman. How's she the daughter of someone named Yeager?"
Erwin passed Levi, looking straight ahead out of his office when he was about to exit.
"She's adopted."