7. Bastien
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.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see the text.
So you’re going to ghost me.
It was a girl I’d met last weekend, a friend of a friend of a friend type situation. The chemistry was there like a match to a cigar, and we smoldered and burned. But after the third fuck, I lost interest, like I always did. I told you it’s run its course . The last time we’d hooked up, I flat-out told her she wouldn’t hear from me again—but she texted me anyway.
You’re an asshole, you know that?
I was straight with you. If that makes me an asshole, that’s fine with me. She was lucky I even bothered to text her back at all. She was just pissed she wasn’t getting her way. Thought she was enough to change me, to get me to stick around, but no woman ever made me stick around. Take care.
Fuck off, Bastien. The conversation should be over, but the dots were still there like she was typing up a storm.
“Oh boy.”
She texted me again. You think you can treat me like this? Who the fuck do you think you are?
A ghost. I blocked her.
We pulled up to the house a moment later, and the second I opened the door, I forgot about the woman who’d called me an asshole. I entered the three-story house and headed straight to the dining room, where everyone waited.
When I entered the room, Godric was seated at the head of the table with a drink in his hand, his lit cigar on the ashtray. Everyone else was smoking and drinking, but the air in the room was thick with irritation at my late arrival.
I didn’t apologize for the tardiness and dropped into the last open seat.
Godric took a drink before he set it aside. “We all know President Bernard is making things difficult. His strict border control to the north and the south has prohibited the transport of product, and the government sanctions at the port have eviscerated our shipments. We’re lucky to ship a fraction of our product. At this rate, all our inventory will expire before we can get it into the hands of buyers, and we’ll lose millions.”
A new president had been elected, and he had controversial views on international shipments and relations. He wanted to strengthen the French economy by making it a country that produced its own goods rather than relied on our allies for essentials. It wasn’t the worst policy I’d ever heard, and I had to give credit where it was due because, unlike French presidents in the past, he was actually getting shit done. But this inadvertently hurt our business. He’d tripled the size of his security checks, and even if we bribed some of them, the number of ships allowed at the port had been reduced to a fraction, so there simply wasn’t the same cargo space as before.
And shipments over land were far more likely to get confiscated than by sea.
“So, what do we do?” Godric asked.
The table was full of our partners, people who took our product and sold it through their own channels. Some of them produced their own products as well, but the partnership allowed us to piggyback off one another. They each had their specialties, connections in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, some in Indonesia. It was a global enterprise with its headquarters in the most romantic city on earth.
Herbert was a fat man with a bad toupee and an expensive suit. “Kill him.”
I smirked because I assumed it was a joke.
But John, our personal accountant who washed the money and deposited the funds into our various accounts worldwide, seemed to think it was a serious suggestion. “Not a bad idea.”
“We can threaten him first,” Tony said. “Send a message, and see if that changes his tune.”
Godric shook his head. “I can tell he’s not that kind of man. Bribery and threats won’t work. So, we kill him. Gun him down when he least expects it, the second he steps out of his motorcade. Problem solved.”
I looked at my brother and restrained most of what I actually wanted to say. “We are not assassinating a president.”
Godric stared at me, and it was obvious he had more he wanted to say too.
The silence stretched and built between us.
Godric finally turned back to our audience. “We’ll figure out a solution very soon. Any other issues we need to address?”
John responded. “Profits have dwindled the last nine months. Assumed it was a fluke at first, but as time has gone on, it’s clear that it’s a trend. I don’t believe it’s an issue with the product, but the cost.”
“I agree,” Herbert said. “I voiced this concern long ago.” He gave me a look of accusation, knowing full well that I was the one who insisted on paid labor rather than forced labor.
Everyone else at the table gave me the same look, holding me in contempt.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “Is everyone here a billionaire?” I glanced around the table, looking at everyone, even John.
Of course, no one said a word.
“That’s what I thought.” I looked at my brother again, expecting him to echo my words.
But he didn’t. He said nothing.
“Paid labor stays,” I said. “And anyone who disagrees will get a bullet in the back of the head.”
Melissa had fallen asleep in my bed.
I wanted her gone, but I wasn’t enough of a dick to wake her up just to ask her to leave. I closed the doors that separated the bedroom from the other part of the suite. The space was two thousand square feet on its own and still a fraction of the property.
I sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and lit up a cigar. The only game was a rerun of Manchester United versus Crystal Palace, a game I’d seen last night, so I flicked through the channels until I found something.
My phone rang in my pocket, and I answered without checking the name of the caller. It was almost eleven in the evening, but it felt like midafternoon. “Yes?”
“Bastien, it’s Carl.”
“What is it?” Carl was the site manager for our operations. We rotated the location of our production every round so it would be harder to hit us. It drew less attention from anyone in the area too.
There was a pause, far too long for a simple conversation. “There’s something you should know, but before I tell you, give me your word Godric will never know it came from me.”
The knife of betrayal scraped my skin and was about to draw blood. I gave no audible reaction, grabbed the remote, and turned down the volume so there would be no distractions. “You have my word.” And that statement actually meant something because I proved it to my allies as well as my enemies.
“Godric is trafficking again. He’s using the girls at another location.”
A flashback of that night came back to me, my father aiming his gun at me while he screamed at me to kill some girl whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I still remembered the way the gun shifted in my hand, the way Godric took control and fired the weapon as I still held it. I’d come back to the business under one condition, and he’d revoked that condition without telling me.
“Why increase production if we have no way to sell what we have?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you know Godric better than I do. He’s always got a trick up his sleeve.”
An old movie played on the screen because there was nothing else to watch, but it was interrupted by sudden news coverage. Two reporters appeared behind a desk on the screen, and the headline below read, “President Bernard Shot.”
My mind didn’t believe my eyes for a few seconds. All I could do was stare at the screen blankly. “Thank you for the information, Carl.” I hung up and turned up the volume on the TV.
The image changed to a reporter on the street, police cars everywhere, along with ambulances. People were crowded on the sidewalk, and the reporter in a heavy coat and gloves spoke. “President Bernard was leaving Sphere when he stepped outside the doors and was shot by a sniper. The president was swiftly taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. There are no leads on the shooter, and no one else was harmed. This is an active investigation, and police have closed off all streets within three square miles. No one can come in or out of the perimeter until they’ve been thoroughly searched and interrogated…”
I leaned back into the couch as the cigar continued to burn between my fingertips. I hadn’t taken a single puff, and now I forgot it even existed—just the way my mother had forgotten her cigarette when my father died.
My father said family was all you could trust.
But now I knew family was who you should trust the least.
The driver let me through the gate to his building. Security didn’t search me before I was permitted inside. With my heart pounding in my throat and lava in my veins, I entered his home and waited for the butler to inform him of my arrival.
Of course he was upstairs, probably with a couple whores, since he’d hired someone else to do his dirty work and shoot the fucking president. I looked out the windows to the terrace in the back with the fountain, a slice of privacy in Paris. But no amount of tranquility could calm the rage that had exploded inside my chest.
Godric joined me a moment later. “I think I know why you’re here.” He was in just his sweatpants, clocked out for the night, relaxing with a bottle of scotch and pussy on his dick. He sauntered toward me with a casual gait, either not concerned by my visit or showing his best poker face.
“I doubt it.”
He stopped before me and stared, waited for me to take the first step so he wouldn’t have to show his hand.
“I joined the family business under one condition— one fucking condition —and you shit all over that.” I was angrier than I realized, my voice already bursting like a volcano, screaming at him in his own house.
But he kept his cool, his stare stoic like he wasn’t even alive. “I don’t know what you’re?—”
I grabbed him by the throat and punched him so hard in the face his nose broke. Blood dripped all over his face before I shoved him to the floor. “You serious right now? You’re going to fucking lie to me?”
He lay there, his hands up like I might try to stomp on his face. The blood dripped over his mouth and chin. With guarded eyes, he watched me, not saying another word.
“I suspected you were going to shoot Bernard, so I tailed you. Followed you to the warehouse on Elm and found those girls there against their will. Fucking children .”
He closed his eyes and released a guilty sigh because he’d been caught.
And he had no idea how I’d really gotten the information.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You heard our partners. They’re pissed about the margins, so it was only a matter of time?—”
I already knew he’d done it, but to hear him admit it and justify it just pissed me off more. “Fuck you, Godric.” I stepped away, knowing I might break his windpipe if I stood there a moment longer.
He got to his feet and wiped the blood on the back of his forearm. “It’s an ecosystem, Bastien. If I don’t keep all the members of the system happy, it breaks down. They’ll come for me, or they’ll come for you. If we keep the system happy, then there are no problems. When I said we would do it your way, I meant it. But I have to think about my neck and your neck and Mom’s neck. I kept you in the dark to spare you—and that’s the honest truth.”
I’d made my way toward the window, keeping a huge gap of space between us because I wanted to punch him again.
“I got my hands dirty so yours would be clean.”
“And President Bernard? Was that to protect me as well?”
His nose had stopped bleeding for the most part, just trickles coming down. With his arms by his sides, he stared at me in defeat. “It had to be done.”
“He was the most popular president we’ve had in decades.”
All he did was shake his head. “It was just going to get harder?—”
“There are more important things than money, Godric. Like integrity, which you have none of. President Bernard worked his whole life to reach this moment, and you took it away from him instead of finding a different solution. You didn’t even try. Because life and freedom and humanity mean absolute shit to you. You’re him , for fuck’s sake.”
“If by him, you mean Dad, then I take that as a compliment.”
Divided once again, just as we were when we were teenagers, we were enemies. In the five years we’d worked together we’d grown closer, put aside old resentments, built a relationship that hadn’t had a chance to grow. But all of that had gone to piss. “This is the way I see it. I have two choices…”
Some of the blood had dripped over his chin and down his throat. His chest was still because the breaths he took were gentle and even. He appeared calm as he stared at me, but it was all an act.
“I kill you and run the business—since you’re incapable of doing it yourself.”
He smirked slightly. “You don’t have what it takes, Bastien.”
“You think so?” I cocked my head as I stared him down. “How long has Dad been dead? Five years now?”
The calm he maintained was suddenly shattered by the question, his eyes narrowed like he didn’t understand the direction of the conversation.
“And you’ve never come close to figuring out who did it. Why do you think that is?”
Now, his breathing spiked, his chest rising and falling with the movements of his lungs. He suddenly shifted his weight, his eyes hardening like he saw the monster before him for the first time—and he had no idea I’d been in the shadows.
“Because you never looked in the right place, Godric.”
He took a step back, the breath he took so audible, it was like a gasp. In utter disbelief, he had no reaction, no words. He was in shock, so much shock that he couldn’t compose himself.
“So, yes, I will fucking do it.”
All he did was shake his head slightly, incredulous at the information, refusing to accept it.
“So, should I kill you and run this business ethically? Or will you let the girls go so I don’t have to?”
He finally gathered himself. “You kill your own father then act so righteous? Like some kind of fucking savior? Who gives a shit about these girls? They’re fucking nobodies?—”
“Danielle wasn’t a nobody.”
He gave me a blank look. “Who the fuck is Danielle?”
“The girl I went to school with. The one you shot.”
He shook his head slightly, looking mad as hell. “If only you knew…”
“Only knew what?”
He looked away, his jawline so hard the cords in his neck popped from the strain. “Nothing.”
I waited for him to answer me because I couldn’t force him to. Even if I put a gun to his head, he was stubborn like our father. “What’s your answer?” I pulled the gun out of the back of my jeans and cocked it. “Are those girls going to go free, or are you going to die in the middle of your kitchen?”
Any other time, he would have called my bluff, pressed his forehead right up against the barrel of the gun, between the eyes. But knowing I’d killed our father in cold blood made him realize I was capable of a lot more than he ever knew. “You win, Bastien.” He’d looked at me like he hated me so many times, but this look was different. It was lethal. “Congratulations…”