Page 39 of The Carver

“You’re gonna shoot me? Your fucking son?”

“Three.”

“This is fucking insane!”

“Two.”

“Fucking psychopath?—”

“One.”

I felt the gun lift in my hand and then kick back from the shot.

Bang.

I stumbled backward, the gun still in my hand for a moment before it dropped to the ground. My ears were ringing, the world was spinning, and it took what felt like several seconds to figure out what had happened.

The girl was dead—blood in the snow.

Godric retrieved the gun and stuffed it into the back of his jeans.

My father stood with the gun at his side, but instead of reserving his anger for me, he gave it to Godric with a lethal stare.

Godric held my father’s stare in a way I never could. Blue eyes like mine, but with an edge I didn’t possess. “I told you he’s not made for this.”

Chapter 6

Bastien

Five Years Later

I sat by the window, my mind in a haze I couldn’t shake. It was summer, one of the warmest days we’d had on record, and I looked out the window at the blue sky and wished it were dark.

My phone rang beside me, and it took me a couple rings to answer it.

Because it was Godric.

I put the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”

“We haven’t spoken in two years, and that’s what you say to me?”

I continued to look outside, too tired and hungover to really care about much. “Yeah?” I didn’t repeat it to be a smartass. Just couldn’t think straight right now.”

After a long stretch of silence, he spoke. “You’re using.”

“What the fuck do you want, Godric?” I’d left the house as soon as I was legal and turned my back on my family. But no amount of distance between us could change what I was, could change the crimes of my bloodline, change the fact that I was a Dupont.And no amount of drugs and booze and women could erase the shit I’d seen.

“Dad’s dead.”

I understood the words perfectly, gave it another moment to soak into my flesh, and I still felt nothing. “Sorry for your loss.” I didn’t ask what happened because I was sure someone had shot him or tortured him to death. Doubt it was from natural causes.

“Mom is fucked up.”

I did feel bad for her. When it came to my father, she looked the other way, but she never did anything herself. I suspected if she’d known what my father had tried to make me do, she would have had a thing or two to say about it.

“She needs us both right now.”

She’d tried to get a hold of me over the last couple of years, but I’d always denied her. Didn’t want anything to do with another Dupont—even if she was innocent. “She can’t have been that surprised.”

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