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)
Her eyes remained down on the table.
“I’m sure Godric will make him proud.” I sullied the moment with my anger. My mother tried to comfort me with her love, but I pushed her away. My father was long dead, but he continued to haunt every room in which I stood.
“Bastien.” She looked at me with pleading eyes.
I should get up and leave, but I stayed. Stayed out of love and respect.
“We don’t need to draw a line in the sand. Despite our differences, we’re still a family. I want you in this family, Bastien. I want our family dinners on Sunday evenings. I want to call and have you answer. I love you with all my heart.”
Guilt struck me like a punch to the face. “I love you too, Mom.”
Her eyes crinkled as they softened. “You’re still a part of this family, Bastien. You always will be.”
We stood in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It had just started to rain.
We’d picked a matte black casket in which to bury him. The service continued under a sea of black umbrellas, the falling rain the backdrop of sad music. The church had been packed with hundreds of people, but only a few dozen had come to the burial.
People said their goodbyes then left the cemetery, leaving my father to remain in the ground while everyone else carried on with their lives. Godric and I comforted our mother, who sometimes was delirious with sorrow and other times drier than a desert.
The clouds passed, and the rain moved to another spot in Paris. Streaks of sunshine came and went. The waterdrops reflected the light from where they hung on the leaves of the trees and the bushes.
Everyone departed, even my mother, and that left the two of us.
Me and Godric.
Godric hadn’t shed a tear. Didn’t show an ounce of sorrow—at least publicly. The men who were appointed to guard him kept their distance thirty feet away, creating a perimeter of protection.
Godric stood in a long black coat with gloves on his hands. He lifted his gaze and looked at me.
I stared back.
“You stopped using.”
I ignored the statement.
“Good.”
It’d only been two weeks, and it had been the hardest two weeks of my life. The only reason I was there that day was by sheer determination. Something about that conversation with my brother had broken the habit. I didn’t like the way he’d looked at me, and I didn’t like the way I looked at myself.
I didn’t want to give him the credit—even if he deserved it. “What’s next?”
“Still looking for the asshole who did this. It’ll take some time, but I’ll find him.”
I gave him a long stare. “I’m sure you will, Godric. What about the business?”
“It’ll continue uninterrupted. Why fix what isn’t broken?”
Every muscle in my body tightened. I saw blood in the snow, smoke from the gun, suppressed rage on my father’s ugly face. “Why use trafficked underage women when you can pay for labor?”
He slid his hands into the pockets of his coat as he stood on the other side of Father’s grave. He was quiet for a long time, the tension growing between us. “Like Father said, hired help can snitch, prisoners can’t.”
I shook my head. “You’re better than this, Godric.”
He smirked slightly when he heard his own words echoed back at him. “That’s the difference between us. You are better. I am not.”
“It doesn’t need to be this way.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “But it’s easier.”
“Godric, you and Mom have more money than you even know what to do with. More than you can even wash.”
“But if I change the system, and other dealers and enemies find out about it, they’ll know I’ve gone soft. I can’t let that happen.”
“Someone already killed Dad. You’ve got a target on your back as we speak. Do the right thing, Godric—”
“If I do, will you come back to the business?”
The question knocked me off my feet because I hadn’t seen it coming.
“It’s what Dad would have wanted, the two of us together.”
“And if I agree, you’ll let those girls go?”
“Is that a yes?” He cocked his head slightly.
I wanted nothing to do with the business, even if it was clean. The memory of that night would haunt me for the rest of my life. But I’d accomplished little in my own endeavors, turned to drugs and alcohol like they were the loving arms of someone special. I’d taken my own path and had piss little to show for it. “If we employ hired help, then I’ll do it.”
Chapter 7
Bastien
Five Years Later
I smoked a cigar in the back seat of the SUV with the window cracked to let the smoke escape and dissipate into the cold winter air. It was a sunny day, a cloudless sky, the sunshine hitting the Eiffel Tower in the most glorious manner.