11. Bastien
11
BASTIEN
I hadn’t drunk like that in a long time. Even around dinnertime, I still felt the effects of all the rounds that kept coming to the table. It was the first time I felt like I was in my thirties instead of my twenties. I guessed I was getting older.
Fleur didn’t call me out on it, at least not directly. But she looked me over like she was worried about me. She sat across from me at the dinner table, wearing a low-cut top that showed her plump tits for me to enjoy. She took a drink of her wine as she looked at her menu.
I’d ordered wine even though I would have preferred to have water tonight, but I was too proud to admit that all the vodka had nearly knocked me off my feet last night. Vodka had always fucked me up differently than everything else.
“What are you getting?” she asked.
“The steak.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, and she looked like she was about to admonish me.
“I used to eat it every day. I can have it once in a while.”
She stared at me for a moment before she returned her attention to the menu.
“What about you, sweetheart?”
“It’s between the beet salad and the pasta.”
“Those options couldn’t be more opposite,” I said with a quiet chuckle. “Why don’t you get both?”
“I can’t eat both.”
“I think you can.” I’d seen her inhale a whole stack of pancakes first thing in the morning.
“If we really are going to end up in a broom closet, I should stick with the salad.”
I tried not to smirk. “It’s not going to make a difference.”
“But my stomach gets all puffy when I eat pasta.”
“I’ve never noticed.”
She looked at me over the top of her menu. “That’s very gentlemanly of you to say.”
The waitress came over to take our order. I ordered my steak rare. “She’ll have the pasta.”
Fleur shot me a small glare, but it was playful.
The waitress gathered the menus and left.
She rested her fingers on the stem of her wineglass and regarded me. “You’re so hot. I could look at you forever.”
Words like that would normally make me smile, but this time, they didn’t. I was the one who was supposed to worship her, but she said things that made me feel like the prized stallion. The other women in my life were too busy playing a game to capture my heart that they never spoke their minds. Played hard to get. Like the less they cared, the more I would care. None of that shit ever worked because not a single one of them made the impact that Fleur did. I wasn’t a romantic guy, but I swear to god, it had been love at first sight with this woman. I loved the fact that she made me feel good, that she never played games with me, that she made me feel wanted because she was the only woman I wanted to want me.
The moment was interrupted by the vibration of my phone in my pocket. I pulled it out and checked the name, seeing that it was Luca. I’d call him back later, so I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
After it stopped vibrating, he fired off a couple texts. I could tell by the way the phone shifted in my pocket. I pulled it out and checked the screen just to make sure it wasn’t important.
Asshole, pick up the phone.
They got Adrien.
He was trying to leave the country, and they got him.
“Shit.”
“What?” Fleur asked, her tone completely different.
I gave a sigh of frustration before I returned his call.
Luca cut straight to the chase. “Erik told me. It happened a couple hours ago, in broad daylight. Looked like he packed up his shit and was about to take off. It’s not your problem, but I knew you’d want to know.”
Fleur continued to stare at me, her face turning as white as her wine. She’d either heard what Luca said, or she could read the disappointment on my face.
Luca waited for me to say something.
But I didn’t know what to say. I’d told Adrien this wasn’t my problem, but it looked like he’d tried to take my advice and get out of there before they came for his head. He just didn’t leave quick enough. “Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“No, but I can call around.” He hung up and got to work.
I returned the phone to my pocket.
Panic continued to burn in her eyes. “What is it? What’s happening?”
So, she didn’t hear. “I warned Adrien about the Aristocrats. Told him he should leave the country. Guess he took that advice, but he didn’t take it quick enough because they got him.”
“Oh no.” Her hand immediately cupped her mouth as the emotion swept over her face like the incoming tide. She didn’t dull her emotions for me, wore her heart on her sleeve because that was how she was, always transparent. It was a testament to her goodness that she cared for someone who had disrespected her so many times. A lesser woman would have said he deserved what he got. But not her.
I had been prepared to let Adrien suffer his fate, but I knew I couldn’t after seeing her reaction. Her eyes were coated with tears that she didn’t shed, and her breathing was erratic because of the panic. She would never ask me to do it, but she didn’t have to. “I’ll get him back.”
“No, I don’t want you to?—”
“I know you don’t, but if I don’t do this, he’s gonna die.” And no one else could pull this off except me. The rest of the organizations in Paris would question my leadership by getting involved, but I knew Adrien’s death would affect our relationship. His ghost would haunt us and chase away the joy that we’d found together. She would grieve like a widow.
“Bastien.” She turned emotional right in the middle of the restaurant. “I can live without Adrien, but I can’t live without you.” She chose me. Put me first. Showed her loyalty to me. That meant the world to me.
But I would always put her first too. “You don’t have to live without either one of us.” I dropped the napkin next to my wine and left the table.
She scooted her chair out and followed me. “Bastien.”
I walked out of the restaurant and stepped onto the sidewalk as I texted my driver.
She yanked on my arm even though I was standing still. “Bastien, I don’t want you to do this. Please, just stay. He made his choice.”
“I’ll be fine, Fleur.”
“It’s not worth the risk.”
I saw my driver round the corner and pull up to the curb in front of us.
“He’ll take you home. I’ll call when it’s done.”
“No.” She dug her boots into the sidewalk like a stubborn horse. “I want you to stay.”
“Sweetheart.” I cupped her face. “If I stay, he’ll die a gruesome death. I’m not going to tell you the things they’ve done to others in the past because you’ll never sleep again. I understand you’ve chosen me over him, but I also understand you’ll never be the same if this is how he dies.”
Her eyes continued to water and she blinked to fight them back, but that just made them release like rivers down her cheeks. “I’ll die if you die, Bastien. I will…” The tears started to roll down like an avalanche, and she cried right on the sidewalk.
“I won’t die, sweetheart. They don’t know I’m coming. It’ll be quick.”
She breathed and panted, a mess in the cold but a beautiful one. “Promise me you’ll come back. Please.”
I didn’t make promises, not in this line of business, but I wanted to give her the reassurance she needed so she could go home and wait for me, so she wouldn’t waste more time. Every second was a second closer to death. “I promise.”
The SUV pulled over onto the side of the road, and Luca threw the door open so I could hop in quickly. The vehicle took off before I even fully shut the door, and then Luca opened the barrel of his shotgun and filled it with bullets.
“My contact says they have him at the church. Going to offer him as a sacrifice.”
Of course they were.
He rested the gun across his knees. “You sure about this?”
I stared at him.
“It’s not a good look for us. We don’t get involved in the affairs of our partners.”
“My girl almost died because of them. That can be our excuse.”
“Let’s hope it’s enough.”
The driver sped through the streets, our vehicles in a line like a motorcade to protect President Martin.
Luca handed me a vest, and I strapped it on.
I shoved a knife into my belt sheath then loaded my pistol before I cocked it. I’d take a shotgun as well. A rifle was too dangerous, especially when we were trying to avoid shooting Adrien. “Marcus admitted they knew about the plan, so they’re all culpable in their violation of the rules. They deserve the same fate as Oscar.”
“But you made peace with them.”
“Yeah.” I felt a little guilty about that, going back on my word. “Hopefully they didn’t tell anyone.”
“Yeah.”
The cars arrived outside the church, taking up the entire block. The pedestrians who happened to be on the sidewalk immediately booked it because they knew shit was about to go down. It’d become an unspoken rule that if you stayed out of the way, cop or civilian, you would be spared from gang warfare.
We hopped out of the vehicles and converged on the church. Didn’t bother trying to break down the door. The doors were fifty feet high, so the guys lined it with explosives and prepared to destroy a piece of French history.
We all stood back and then blew the doors. They broke from the hinges as soot marked the outside of the grand church and desecrated its history.
“They aren’t gonna like that,” Luca said.
“They’ll be dead in ten minutes, so whatever.”
Shotguns in hand and with a line of my guys around us, we moved through the smoke and stepped into the church. Adrien was the easiest to spot because he was staked to a cross like Jesus Christ. He was soaked in his own sweat and writhing in pain, pierced through his hands and wrists and clothed in a blood-soaked robe. Music from an organ continued to play like it was coming from a sound system that they hadn’t turned off.
The back wall was lined with their guards, men with rifles and shotguns who were as prepared to blow us to smithereens as we were to do that to them. They already had their guns aimed, but they wouldn’t fire until Marcus made the call.
Marcus was in the center in his golden robe, and he gave me a look packed with more rage than he could express with words.
Adrien looked like he was going to pass out. But his eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me. He didn’t speak, but he looked livelier when he realized there was a chance he would escape this.
Marcus’s stare went ice-cold. “The Butcher is not a man of his word, it seems.”
I stepped forward, my gun held across my chest. “As the First French Emperor of the Fifth Republic, I declare that every member of the Aristocrats violated the code. You knew Oscar took an innocent woman, and you supported that decision. You’re just as guilty as the man who snatched her from her bed.”
“You asked for peace?—”
“I changed my mind.” I cocked my gun, aimed the barrel at his chest, and fired.
Marcus was blown away, the bullet hitting him square in the chest and killing him instantly. He hit the floor next to one aisle of seats and lay still.
The second he was down, it was open warfare.
Luca ducked into one of the aisles and aimed for the gunmen who marched forward. Bullets shattered the stained-glass windows, broke the chandelier that hung from above, desecrated the altar.
Adrien was stuck in place. Hopefully he survived this.
I took down one of the guys who came for me then ducked behind a seat. “Don’t let the robes get away,” I called to my guys. I came out again and fired another shot before I had to reload. I shoved the bullets inside, but one of the guys jumped over the seats and came at me straight with a knife. He cut me on the arm and drew a line of blood, but I punched him so hard in the face he flew back and collapsed on the floor.
I grabbed him by the throat and snapped his neck then moved on.
The rest of it was chaos, blood on gold, glass everywhere, bodies at the foot of the altar. The shooting finally came to a stop, and only one enemy remained. A speck appeared and disappeared in the corner.
“Luca, he can’t get away?—”
“I’m on it.” Luca sprinted across the room, and one of our guys followed.
I had to make sure none of the Aristocrats lived to tell the tale of what had happened here. I trusted Luca to handle it and moved to the stake that the robes had nailed Adrien too. He was still alive, still sweating profusely like he was about to faint.
The guys cut him down and laid him on the floor, and I quickly yanked all the nails and knives out of his skin.
He screamed every time, blood gushing out and dripping everywhere.
If I didn’t get him to a hospital soon, he’d probably bleed out.
“Why—why did you come for me?” He was barely conscious, his eyes bloodshot and glazed like his mind was slowly slipping away.
I took the gauze from one of the guys and bundled his wounds tight. It was unclear whether he would make it, his face whiter than snow, whiter than cream in coffee. “Ask Fleur when you see her.”