Page 110 of Sunrise Malice

He holds me tighter. “No, baby, I’m just kidding. Keep that lovely skin of yours flawless.”

“Well, maybe a little something. When we’re in France.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “We’ll discuss that later.”

“Getting all controlling on me already, huh?”

“Only because you like it. We both know I’d let you do almost anything you want.”

“True. You spoil me. What a bore.”

He growls, pulls my hair, and buries my mouth in a searing kiss. “The door locks,” he says with a vicious smirk. “And you need to be punished.”

Which is exactly what I want.

Epilogue

Pascal

Each step fucking hurts.

Not like it felt good before my bastard grandson shot me in the goddamn knee. I’m old, damn it, much too old. My hands shake as I haul myself from the living room, walking down the old, creaky halls toward my bedroom in the back of the house. The smell of the sea wafts in through the open windows. I hear my guards laughing down in the courtyard. They’ll be smoking and drinking by now. The lazy assholes. I need to find better men, but things aren’t good right now. Maybe next month.

I lower myself down into my easy chair. My bed’s unmade and messy. Pictures of my father, my mother, and all my brothers and uncles line the dresser. I talk to them sometimes. The habits of an old man. The sound of the ocean lapping at the cliffs filters in with the breeze. The moon’s full and it’s dark. I should sleep, but I don’t sleep much these days.

Everything aches.

I’m twenty pounds too light, but I can’t gain weight anymore. My voice is raspy and quiet thanks to the way that Serbian fuck treated me. My second-in-command paid my ransom, which was a ludicrous sum, and now it’s like I must work twice as hard to earn the price on my head, as if I didn’t already work ten times harder than any man in France.

But I do what I must to put my organization back on solid footing after that mess in America.

I stare down at my gnarled, old body.

I remember running through the streets of Marseille, seabirds singing in the sky, full of life and promise. I remember building an empire. Men bowed at my feet. Women gave themselves over willingly.

And now I sit here in this chair, and I’m so damn old. The days come and they go, slipping away before I even realize they’re gone.

There are nights, sad nights, pathetic nights, where I wish I had done things differently. Where I wish I had taken better care of Julien and brought him into the fold. Where I wonder what he would have become had I not gone and made the choices I made. But those are weak thoughts, and I am not a weak man.

When I’m better, I’m going to hire the best killer in France, and I’m going to make sure Julien suffers.

But for now, I pull my tablet onto my lap, perch my glasses on my nose, and begin to sift through the day’s news. I make notes on people to call, politicians to shake down, moves to make. Losing the American branch was a blow, but it’s not the end of me. I’ve come back from worse.

There’s a noise. This house is old, far older than me. It creaks more than my own joints. And I know every loose floorboard, every crack of joists.

“Antoine,” I call out, assuming it’s my evening guard. “Bring me some wine.”

A figure appears in the door. He steps forward, pulling it shut behind him. I stare, uncomprehending.

I’m hallucinating. I’m having a stroke. There’s no other explanation. But he steps forward, and the floor makes the correct sounds, and when he raises the gun to aim at my chest, I’m sure it’s him.

“Julien,” I rasp, still refusing to believe. “How?”

“I grew up in this house, remember?” He stares at me, his eyes hard. A strong boy. A clever boy. I was so proud of him once, and I pushed him hard because I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to be even better.

But he let me down so many times.

The fucking failure.

---