Page 94 of Bound to a Monster

Montreal’s a decent city. The nightlife here is full of action. The French influence means there’s a ton of good eating. Except my contacts decide they want to meet in some quiet little neighborhood dive at a corner booth with a stack of poutine and crappy glasses of whiskey.

“Here’s to your father,” my lead contact says. He’s a stocky man named Olivier Bouchard with thinning hair and a thick gold chain. His girlfriend sits at his side and drinks a martini, lips pursed the whole time. I think her name’s Amelie, but Olivier treats her like a little yappy pet dog.

“Here’s to Oleg,” his second-in-command says. Simon’s the more serious of the two of them, taller, thinner, with a serious glare. His wife’s name is Isabelle, and she’s pretty in a tired and pale sort of way. She and Carmie are busy chatting about kids, which is good. Carmie needs a little bit of that.

We toast and drink. I watch Olivier as he wolfs down more food and sends his girl to get another round at the bar. When she’s gone, and Carmie and Isabelle are locked in conversation, he leans in close to me. His breath reeks of alcohol.

“How much did your father tell you about the business here?” he asks, tone very low. There’s a strange, menacing glint in his eye.

“Not much, only that there was a problem.”

He snorts and looks at Simon. “Hear that? There was aproblem.”

“He was right, except I doubt he was upfront about the exact nature of thatproblem.”

“Fuckin-A he wasn’t.” Olivier sneers at me. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I have feelings about your father.”

“I also have feelings about him,” I say, tilting my head. I lay on the charm as thick as I can, practically glowing with it. “Let me guess. He was a big fucking cunt and made your life more difficult than it had to be?”

Olivier barks a laugh and elbows Simon. “Sounds like the kid was here the whole time.”

“His characterization is perfect,” Simon agrees.

“What did he do?” I press, a bad feeling already in my guts.

“Your old man decided he didn’t like the deal we’d already hammered out with Valentin Zeitsev. He came up to my fucking city and started making demands of me and my fucking trucks. But the problem is you and your people don’t have any way to transport your goods from the northern ports down to the lake crossing, and without that overland support, you’re fucked.”

I sit back and study him. Olivier comes off like a brute and an idiot, but he’s definitely not stupid. The man runs a trucking company that’s essentially a front for a ring of ruthless smugglers, gangsters, bootleggers, and thieves. I never knewCanadians could be such cutthroat bastards, but it turns out the French kind are their own particularly hard breed. Maybe it’s something to do with the freezing cold winters.

“What did he want from you?” I ask, already dreading the answer.

“More money. More trucks and manpower. More of everything, and he wasn’t interested in increasing the percentages our way to compensate.”

“He was greedy,” Simon confirms.

I sit back, not happy about this turn of events, as the girlfriend returns with our drinks. Olivier launches into a raunchy story about a hooker working at the truck stops getting into a fight with another lady of the night and how they both ended up knifing each other. He tells it like it’s funny, and I’m only half listening.

Oleg fucked me. He fucked Valentin too. I doubt Zeitsev knew what my father was up to here; otherwise, he would’ve been absolutely livid.

He was trying to cut himself deeper into this deal. And he was risking the whole enterprise to enrich himself.

“Simon, we have to invite Carmela and Lev over for dinner before they go,” Isabella says and touches his arm.

“No, I couldn’t intrude,” Carmie says, shaking her head. “I was just asking about your nursery setup.”

“Happy to help a new mother,” Simon says.

Isabella gets up and drags Carmie toward the bar with a promise of more food. She hesitates and looks back at the girlfriend with a deep frown. “Want to join us, Amelie?”

The girlfriend sighs dramatically and gets up. “Might as well,” she says. “But I’m not talking diaper brats the whole time.”

“I wouldn’t dare bore you for long, darling,” Isabella says, and the three women walk off together.

Carmie throws me a vaguely panicked look as she’s dragged toward the bar.

“I’m going to be direct with you,” Olivier says once the women are gone. “I was losing interest in this deal before your father passed, and now I feel like the whole thing’s fucked.”

“Fucked,” Simon agrees.

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