Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 94915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
It’s Julien. To my utter astonishment, he replied right away.
Julien: And yet pussycat describes you perfectly.
Brianne: Yeah? And why’s that? Don’t be gross.
Julien: You are so soft and cuddly.
I smile at the phone, shaking my head.
Brianne: You’re a sarcastic asshole.
Julien: But you think it’s funny, mon minou.
Brianne: If I marry you, you’re going to have to learn how to be a little bit nicer to me.
Julien: When you marry me, I will be merciless and controlling, and I think you’ll enjoy it.
Arrogant bastard. It’s nice that he’s so willing to remind me why I dislike him so much. I put my phone in my back pocket and go upstairs, hurry through the living room where Dad’s staring at the TV and pouring beer down his throat. Upstairs, I fold and put his stuff away, before retreating to the kitchen.
“Get me another,” Dad grunts at me as I pass.
More than happy. After eight, he’s practically catatonic. The sooner he gets there, the better.
Before I can start on the dishes, I find one more text from Julien.
Julien: But don’t worry, mon minou, I haven’t forgotten about your list. In fact, I think about it almost every night.
I hate that it makes me smile, and to save even the smallest shred of my remaining dignity, I refrain from typing back.
Even though I really want to tell him that I’d rather go through the list with a rabid chimpanzee than with him.
Because as I plunge my hands into cold, soapy water and start to scrub a pan, I’m extremely aware that Julien is my ticket out of this hell, and I’d better not screw it up too badly before I’m gone.
Chapter 6
Julien
The fireplace in my office crackles and the warmth of the whiskey spreads into my toes. I look at my phone, wondering if Brianne’s going to text again, but force myself to put it back into my pocket.
I don’t know what made her text to begin with, but I’m glad she did. I needed the distraction.
“Merde, Julien, your books are absolute shit.” Grandpère’s hunched over my desk skimming through my accounting ledger. Those books include all of my organization’s income, including the illegitimate sales and expenses. Most criminals don’t keep books—but most criminals aren’t running multi-million-dollar operations and can afford to forget a few dollars here or there.
Grandpère has had nothing good to say for the past two hours.
He complained about the hidden compartment in which I store the ledgers, and he complained about the quality of the men that work for me, and he complained about my handwriting approximately ten thousand times.
It’s almost like he forgets what I am and where I came from. Like he doesn’t remember how I could barely read and write when he found me, and how I worked my ass off to learn. The scars of those years are still with me, burned into the messy way I form my letters and the way it takes me twice as long to read a book as anyone else I know.
That’s what happens when a boy grows up an orphan on the streets of Marseille.
And yet I did learn.
It killed me, but I learned, despite the brutal way Grandpère insisted on teaching me.
A wrong answer was a swat on the hand with a ruler. Two wrong answers were two swats. And so on, until my fingers were black and blue. Then he’d move on to hitting my arms twice as hard.
Despite all that, I still fucking learned.
I let Grandpère grumble to himself and refill my drink. He’s going to be at this for a while yet, and there’s nothing I can do but sit back and ignore his comments. I remember the biting criticism he tossed my way so casually and cruelly when I was growing up, the way he called me stupid and disgusting, nothing more than a pig in a suit, and I worked my ass off to make him remotely proud. Which rarely happened, but the few times I managed to get his approval only made me crave it even more.
I spent my childhood in crumbling apartments, grabbing a few hours of sleep in moldy basements, stealing bread and cheese from street vendors when their backs were turned, and dumpster-diving when I couldn’t find anything better. I sold drugs at ten and robbed houses at eleven. Grandpère found me at twelve, a dirty street rat skinnier than a piece of rebar, and he brought me back to the Moreau mansion to get cleaned up.
I’ll never forget seeing that house for the first time. I thought it was a dream; I didn’t realize it would be a nightmare. I still don’t know why Grandpère did it, or why he insisted on me never calling him father, or what he wanted to get out of adopting a little street thief and training him in the fine arts of running a criminal empire, but from the day Grandpère took me in until the day I left for America, he insisted that I do everything the proper way. Which meant his way. And the consequences for impropriety were always new and always insidious.