6. Bastien
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.
“He’s gone now. It’s over.”
“You’re in charge now?”
“I guess so.”
He was my father’s son because he’d been ready for this since the beginning. When he was introduced to the business at the same age I was, he rose to the challenge, was prepared to tackle it head on. “Good luck.”
“I’ve been ready for this for a long time. And I want you to join me.”
“Me?” I scoffed. “I’ll pass.”
“It’s what Dad wanted.”
“And it’s never been what I wanted. Still don’t.”
“Maybe we can turn over a new leaf.”
“I wanted nothing to do with it then, and I want nothing to do with it now.”
He gave a slow nod in understanding. “So you can sit around and shoot up all day?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re better than this, brother. Way fucking better. Now, get your shit together.”
My brother and I had been at odds with each other for a long time, but the message coming from him hit differently than if it had come from somebody else. It was a stab in the lungs, but losing that air forced me to take a new breath. Forced me to confront my image in his eyes. I never thought about my own image, but now I saw it with total clarity. I saw how far I’d fallen, how miserable I’d become, and it hurt like hell.
He slammed his palm on the table as he leaned toward me. “Because you are better than this.”
We entered my family home, the place I hadn’t set foot inside for many years. It was exactly as I remembered, smelled exactly the same, felt like my father still paced in front of the fireplace in his study.
Men were everywhere, instructed to guard my mother from a secondary attack.
We walked into the main sitting room, a round table near the nook off the side of the kitchen. The grand dining table was in a whole different room, could accommodate twenty people for the holidays.
She sat there, her eyes dry from the spent tears and dead inside. A cigarette sat between her fingers, the burning tip dangerously close to her nails. A small pile of ash was underneath her hand, like she’d sat still for minutes and hadn’t noticed the cigarette slowly burning away.
I never saw my mother when she didn’t look her best. She didn’t leave her bedroom unless she was presentable for the day, in her designer clothes and pumps, with her hair and makeup done like she had somewhere to be, even though she usually stayed home all day. It was the first time she’d broken that tradition, her makeup washed away in the flood of tears, her hair knotted like she’d fisted it and tried to yank it out of her scalp. Even at her calmest, she looked deranged.
Godric approached the table first, and even though my mother must have known he was there, she acted like she didn’t. The burn of the cigarette continued to inch closer to her exposed skin. “Mother.”
She didn’t even blink.
He gently took the cigarette from between her fingers and put it out in the ashtray.
She didn’t seem to notice.
Godric pulled out the chair to her right and took a seat.
No reaction.
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
Her eyes shifted to me, like she hadn’t expected another person, and once the flash of recognition came over her face, her eyes softened into the deepest look of emotion. New tears appeared on the surface of her eyes, my mother’s love for me breaking through the mask of sorrow.
I’d turned my back on her the way I had with the rest of my family, even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. I just wanted a clean slate, to have no association with the Dupont family at all. But in that moment, I felt like shit about it because it was obvious she truly loved me. My father had viewed Godric and me as pack mules—but not her.
She reached her hand across the table and grabbed mine. “My baby…” She squeezed my hand with both of hers as her bottom lip trembled. She did her best to defeat her emotions and remain strong in a room full of armed guards, but the sight of my face made her succumb to tears.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Sorry that my father was dead. Sorry that I hadn’t called.
“I never thought I would be happy again, and then you walked in.” She continued to squeeze my hand as she looked at me, her blue eyes identical to mine. Godric was my father’s son, but I was my mother’s son.
After moments of silence, she finally let me go. She took a breath, let it out slowly, and then cleared her throat. “We’ll find out who did this—and we’ll make them pay.”
I didn’t know the details of his death. I assumed their identity was already known.
She turned her gaze on Godric. “You’re the head of the family now. You’re in charge of the business. I want you to find the motherfucker who took your father from me and bring him to me—so I can shoot him in the goddamn face.”
Now I knew why my father had married her.
Godric nodded. “Yes, Mother.”
She turned to me. “And you will help him, Bastien. You’ll watch his back as good as he watches his front. Whoever thought they could hit the Dupont family without consequence was sorely mistaken.”
I didn’t move an inch, but I felt my body slowly drift away. “I’m sorry that Father is gone, and I hope you find the revenge that you seek. But my stance on the family business hasn’t changed. I want no part of it, and no amount of guilt or threat will change that fact. I loved Father in my own complicated, fucked-up way, but I despised what he did.”
Godric sat with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes on the table.
My mother stared with her steel-like gaze, clearly unhappy with that answer but maintaining her silence. Father was impulsive with his anger, but Mother was patient. “Godric, give us the room.”
Godric rose from the chair. “I have work to do anyway.” He left the table, walked toward the armed men, and gestured for them to follow him into the dining room so they could get to work.
Now it was silent, the uncomfortable kind of silent.
“Bastien—”
“Don’t waste your time.” I didn’t raise my voice, not to my mother, but I wanted to. I wanted to shout from the rooftops. No amount of persuasion would change my mind. I thought of that missing girl often, the one shot dead in the snow by my brother’s hand. I’d found her name and sent her parents some money anonymously…along with a note saying she was dead. It was cruel, but it was crueler for them to wake up every morning wondering whether she was dead or alive, if she suffered, clinging to a hope that she would ever come back.
“I accept your decision—and I respect it.”
My body had tensed in preparation for a fight, but now it relaxed.
“I feel no disappointment, Bastien. Your father was always a madman. I knew that the moment I met him.”
“Then why did you marry him?”
Her eyes dropped as she considered the question, and then a painful smile came over her face. “Because I liked that he was a madman.” She lifted her eyes again, tears pooled into the corners. “I liked his danger and his wildness. I liked the promise of an extraordinary life rather than an ordinary one. I liked a man who would be a father that would turn my sons into men instead of boys.” Her eyes glazed over as she savored the memories of a time before I was even born. It stayed that way for minutes before her gaze sharpened on my face. “You’re the same, Bastien. With one major difference—your heart. You’ve always cared for others as much as you’ve cared for yourself. Godric was raised in your father’s image—a ruthless authoritarian who cares only for himself and his blood. But to you, we’re all the same blood. I’m proud of Godric because he’s the man we need for this family, but I’m just as proud of you for being greater than this family.” She reached for my hand, and she squeezed it again. “You can choose a different path. We can disagree on many things. But no matter what, you will always be a Dupont. You will always be my son.”
My hand squeezed hers. “Thank you, Mom.”
“I know you and your father had your differences, but he loved you very much.”
“Did he?” Because he didn’t call me once after I left the house. When I refused to be part of the family business, he said I was a disgrace to the Dupont name. He seemed perfectly content to have Godric as his only son. While I loved him in a very unusual way, I wasn’t sad that he was gone.
“Of course.”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.”
“He was a stubborn man. You know this.”
“Sounds like an excuse. Because if I were a father, there’s nothing that would stop me from having a relationship with my son. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t ask him to shoot a girl in his class when he was just fifteen years old. At any fucking age. You were right to call him a madman because only a madman would love his sons based solely on their use.”
There was a slight flinch to her eyes, like that assessment offended her.
“Don’t tell me my father loved me when all he felt for me was disappointment and then indifference.” I pulled my hand away from hers, feeling the surge of anger that had burned in my heart for years. “I’m sorry you lost him. Truly, I am. You don’t deserve to suffer like this.”
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.”