Page 111 of Sunrise Malice

“All I have to do is yell and my guards will be here.” I lean forward, getting a good look at him, while also reaching for the gun I keep tucked into the cushions of this chair.

Paranoia has kept me alive for a long time. It’ll hold me a while yet.

“You got soft, old man. Your soldiers are lazy and drunk. I used to sneak in and out of here when I was a teenager, and it was much better guarded back then.”

“Where’s Antoine?”

“Downstairs. He’s unconscious. Maybe dead.” Julien shrugs as if he doesn’t care.

“You never should have come here.” The arrogance of this boy. It’s obscene, and it must be punished.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You hurt my wife. You threatened everything I built. Did you really think I was going to let you live? I used you as a bargaining chip, and now I’m going to give you what you deserve.”

“Foolish boy.” I can’t help but grin at him as excitement pumps into my veins. Yes, this is what I live for. Now the bastard boy will die.

There’s a loud noise.

The explosion of a gun going off.

I move my arm.

But my arm doesn’t respond.

There’s another loud noise, and another, and I look down at myself. Three neat red holes in my chest.

And my head goes light.

And my limbs won’t move.

Rage hits me. Julien should die. Julien has to die.

My arm won’t work.

I can’t raise the gun.

He lowers his weapon and turns away as my heart beats, beats, slows.

Julien

I watch Pascal bleed out.His body goes limp, and even in the end, he looks defiant. Like he really thought he’d be able to raise that fucking gun and kill me before I finished him off.

I thought I’d feel something. This is the end of an important time in my life. Pascal was a monster, but he did save me once. I did look up to him and love him.

Now he’s a dead old man, and his threat is neutralized.

I step to his window and shuffle my way out. There’s a drainpipe bolted in the wall on the left. I swing toward it and grab on with both hands, slowly lowering myself down. It groans, and I curse quietly to myself—the last time I did this, I was seventeen and weighed thirty pounds less.

But the pipe holds. I reach the alley below as the sound of Pascal’s guards entering his room bellows out from the open window. I hurry to the street and keep going, hands shoved into my pocket. I turn at the corner, make another turn, and keep on walking, losing myself in the narrow streets and blind curves of the city I grew up in, the city I know better than any other.

I doubt Pascal’s men will look for me.

I suspect they’ll be relieved. The old asshole was past his prime and dragging them down. But now there will be a fight over who succeeds him, and I’ll be completely forgotten in the resulting chaos.

Most of all, Brianne will be safe, and Pascal got what he deserved.

I keep walking. I breathe the smell of the sea. I think about the old days, of my life before Pascal took me in. The struggle and the fight. I was a skinny little rat back then; who would’ve guessed I’d end up like this? Married to a beautiful woman and building my own empire. Sometimes, life really is strange.

The sun begins to rise as I make my way back to the hotel on the other side of town. It’s a small boutique place, but we’ll move on to somewhere fancier now that the job’s over. I ditched the gun a few hours ago down a sewer grate.

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