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)
He approaches with a tight frown. That’s his default look: Pascal Moreau doesn’t do kindness, and he sure as fuck doesn’t do smiles.
“Salut, Julien.”
“Bonjour, Grandpère.” I kiss each cheek. “Comment s’est passé votre vol?”
“My flight was fine. Don’t pretend like you still speak our language.”
His English is surprisingly good, probably because that’s what he speaks with his drug-dealing criminal friends. He pats my cheek roughly and looks at Jean. “You still work with this worthless scoundrel?”
“Good to see you again, Monsieur Moreau.”
“Ah, the dog found some manners. Did you dig them up from the yard? No matter. The pleasure is mine, young Jean.” Grandpère pats Jean’s arm before taking me by the elbow.
More men depart his plane. His soldiers and bodyguards fan out around him. I recognize his head of security, Rene Pelletier, and one of his long-time confidantes, a vicious cocksucker named Henri Deschamps. I hate those two bastards, and I hate even more that they came all the way out here with Grandpère.
“Tell me, Julien. How has America been treating you?” he asks. We make our way slowly toward where the cars are parked on the other side of the hangar. My men follow at a polite distance but don’t mingle with Grandpère’s small army. The tension is obscene.
Grandpère is older, more wrinkled, walks with a very slight limp, but remains the impressive bull of a man he’s always been.
“Very well, as you know.”
“Ah, yes, I do see the income statements from time to time. You have been earning at least, despite being stuck out here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by these garish Americans.”
I grind my jaw and glance at Jean. My friend has a totally stoic look on his face, but he glances at me and I know what that look means. Don’t take the bait.
“That’s what I’m here to do, Grandpère. Expand the power of the Moreau Family.”
Grandpère’s lips press together in a patronizing smirk. There’s no humor or anything resembling joy in his expression. He pats my arm as though speaking to a child. “Yes, my boy, yes, this is true, very true.”
He begins telling me about the family back home. He talks about friends and acquaintances I haven’t seen in years. Cousin Thierry had a baby with his whore English wife, as Grandpère refers to her, and Uncle Charles died of a heart attack, good riddance, the selfish little prick. Michel is fucking a Swiss pop singer while Andre is neck-deep in a cocaine addiction.
Grandpère rattles off name after name, listing all their faults and their indiscretions, and he nearly lulls me into forgetting the reason he made the long flight out to Chicago to begin with.
But he reminds me once we reach the cars. He stops walking and faces me, his expression colder than the wind biting through my suit jacket. Grandpère would never come out to America willingly, a place he believes is morally inferior and obscene compared to his homeland, a backwater to which his adopted and disgraced son exiled himself, to his great and everlasting shame.
“I keep thinking you cannot disappoint me even more than you already have, and yet you manage to dig to surprising new lows. How does it feel Julien, down there in the mud, like a filthy toad?”
I take a breath and check myself. Don’t rise to his bait. “I know you’re unhappy with my decision, Grandpère—”
“Unhappy is not the word I would use. Repulsed, perhaps, is this a good word in English? I am repulsed by you, Julien. I am sickened. You received your orders, you understood what I wanted of you, and yet you did not obey.”
I hold his gaze and keep my back straight. “You were too late, Grandpère. I had already made arrangements. An important alliance. A new source of product.”
“Product. Yes. You are American now. That is how you think, in product. You are like a sow with a swollen belly rolling around in her own mucky filth.”
“I understand you’re unhappy—”
“I am not unhappy. You do not have that power over me. I am merely sickened by you, Julien. Collette Fournier is a very good match for you, and now you tell me you already have a wife. As though you cannot divorce her.”
“I told you already, Grandpère. The alliance—”
He waves me off, a dismissive flick of his wrist. I hold back my rage. I haven’t been treated like this in a very, very long time, and any other man would be dead already. His men and my own are staring, and there is nothing I can do to save face right now, except take Grandpère’s abuse with a straight spine.
“I do not care about your alliance. I do not care about your product. I am here to meet your wife and decide if she is worthy of my adopted grandson. If I find her lacking, you will divorce her, and you will marry the Collette bitch, ou je te coupe les couilles, est-ce que tu comprends?”