Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“I said I don’t want it.” I said it calmly this time, but I didn’t feel the least bit calm. “This is not my path.”
Godric shifted his gaze between me and Father.
Father’s rage burned in his eyes like bolts of lightning. “Shoot her.”
“No.”
“Shoot her, or I’ll shoot you in the arm. Don’t you call my bluff, boy. Because I’ll shoot one arm and then the next and then your leg—however many shots it takes for you to be the man you were born to be.”
I didn’t know what to do, facing off with a version of my father I was better off not knowing. “Does Mother know—”
“She’ll be disappointed that her son is a fucking coward.”
“And you think it’s brave to shoot an unarmed girl?” I exclaimed. “I’m not going to do it.”
My father raised his palm to one of his men.
They handed him his pistol.
He cocked it and then aimed it at my arm. “I don’t want to do this, Bastien. But mark my words—I will.” He held the gun completely steady, aimed at my right arm, finger on the trigger.
“You’re gonna shoot me? Your fucking son?”
“Three.”
“This is fucking insane!”
“Two.”
“Fucking psychopath—”
“One.”
I felt the gun lift in my hand and then kick back from the shot.
Bang.
I stumbled backward, the gun still in my hand for a moment before it dropped to the ground. My ears were ringing, the world was spinning, and it took what felt like several seconds to figure out what had happened.
The girl was dead—blood in the snow.
Godric retrieved the gun and stuffed it into the back of his jeans.
My father stood with the gun at his side, but instead of reserving his anger for me, he gave it to Godric with a lethal stare.
Godric held my father’s stare in a way I never could. Blue eyes like mine, but with an edge I didn’t possess. “I told you he’s not made for this.”
Chapter 6
Bastien
Five Years Later
I sat by the window, my mind in a haze I couldn’t shake. It was summer, one of the warmest days we’d had on record, and I looked out the window at the blue sky and wished it were dark.
My phone rang beside me, and it took me a couple rings to answer it.
Because it was Godric.
I put the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“We haven’t spoken in two years, and that’s what you say to me?”
I continued to look outside, too tired and hungover to really care about much. “Yeah?” I didn’t repeat it to be a smartass. Just couldn’t think straight right now.”
After a long stretch of silence, he spoke. “You’re using.”
“What the fuck do you want, Godric?” I’d left the house as soon as I was legal and turned my back on my family. But no amount of distance between us could change what I was, could change the crimes of my bloodline, change the fact that I was a Dupont. And no amount of drugs and booze and women could erase the shit I’d seen.
“Dad’s dead.”
I understood the words perfectly, gave it another moment to soak into my flesh, and I still felt nothing. “Sorry for your loss.” I didn’t ask what happened because I was sure someone had shot him or tortured him to death. Doubt it was from natural causes.
“Mom is fucked up.”
I did feel bad for her. When it came to my father, she looked the other way, but she never did anything herself. I suspected if she’d known what my father had tried to make me do, she would have had a thing or two to say about it.
“She needs us both right now.”
She’d tried to get a hold of me over the last couple of years, but I’d always denied her. Didn’t want anything to do with another Dupont—even if she was innocent. “She can’t have been that surprised.”
“I’m gonna come by and get you.”
“I’m not going over there.”
“It’s our mother, asshole.”
“She chose to marry him.”
“And she chose to have you—don’t you forget it.”
He was at my apartment thirty minutes later, letting himself inside because I didn’t lock the door.
I was still seated at the table, unable to fight the fog in my head.
He came to my side, looked down at me, and then yanked up the sleeves of my shirt.
I twisted out of his grasp and shoved his hand away.
But he saw what he needed to see. He sat down across from me. “Bastien, you’re better than this.”
“I’m a Dupont. I’m no better than trash.”
He sat there, arms across his chest, wearing a t-shirt tight over his biceps. “You’re better than this,” he repeated. “I know you are.”
“You judge me? That’s rich.”
“I don’t judge you. I knew you were having a hard time, but I didn’t expect this.”
My life had derailed since I’d left the house. I’d turned my back on the family business, but I’d received poor marks in lycée because I was so traumatized by the life my father had exposed me to as a boy. I didn’t get into university, so I ended up in the exact place I didn’t want to be. But I was a buyer as much as a seller.