Page 45 of The Carver

“Paid labor stays,” I said. “And anyone who disagrees will get a bullet in the back of the head.”

Melissa had fallen asleep in my bed.

I wanted her gone, but I wasn’t enough of a dick to wake her up just to ask her to leave. I closed the doors that separated the bedroom from the other part of the suite. The space was two thousand square feet on its own and still a fraction of the property.

I sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and lit up a cigar. The only game was a rerun of Manchester United versus Crystal Palace, a game I’d seen last night, so I flicked through the channels until I found something.

My phone rang in my pocket, and I answered without checking the name of the caller. It was almost eleven in the evening, but it felt like midafternoon. “Yes?”

“Bastien, it’s Carl.”

“What is it?” Carl was the site manager for our operations. We rotated the location of our production every round so it would be harder to hit us. It drew less attention from anyone in the area too.

There was a pause, far too long for a simple conversation. “There’s something you should know, but before I tell you, give me your word Godric will never know it came from me.”

The knife of betrayal scraped my skin and was about to draw blood. I gave no audible reaction, grabbed the remote, andturned down the volume so there would be no distractions. “You have my word.” And that statement actually meant something because I proved it to my allies as well as my enemies.

“Godric is trafficking again. He’s using the girls at another location.”

A flashback of that night came back to me, my father aiming his gun at me while he screamed at me to kill some girl whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I still remembered the way the gun shifted in my hand, the way Godric took control and fired the weapon as I still held it. I’d come back to the business under one condition, and he’d revoked that condition without telling me.

“Why increase production if we have no way to sell what we have?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But you know Godric better than I do. He’s always got a trick up his sleeve.”

An old movie played on the screen because there was nothing else to watch, but it was interrupted by sudden news coverage. Two reporters appeared behind a desk on the screen, and the headline below read, “President Bernard Shot.”

My mind didn’t believe my eyes for a few seconds. All I could do was stare at the screen blankly. “Thank you for the information, Carl.” I hung up and turned up the volume on the TV.

The image changed to a reporter on the street, police cars everywhere, along with ambulances. People were crowded on the sidewalk, and the reporter in a heavy coat and gloves spoke. “President Bernard was leaving Sphere when he stepped outside the doors and was shot by a sniper. The president was swiftly taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. There areno leads on the shooter, and no one else was harmed. This is an active investigation, and police have closed off all streets within three square miles. No one can come in or out of the perimeter until they’ve been thoroughly searched and interrogated…”

I leaned back into the couch as the cigar continued to burn between my fingertips. I hadn’t taken a single puff, and now I forgot it even existed—just the way my mother had forgotten her cigarette when my father died.

My father said family was all you could trust.

But now I knew family was who you should trust the least.

The driver let me through the gate to his building. Security didn’t search me before I was permitted inside. With my heart pounding in my throat and lava in my veins, I entered his home and waited for the butler to inform him of my arrival.

Of course he was upstairs, probably with a couple whores, since he’d hired someone else to do his dirty work and shoot the fucking president. I looked out the windows to the terrace in the back with the fountain, a slice of privacy in Paris. But no amount of tranquility could calm the rage that had exploded inside my chest.

Godric joined me a moment later. “I think I know why you’re here.” He was in just his sweatpants, clocked out for the night, relaxing with a bottle of scotch and pussy on his dick. He sauntered toward me with a casual gait, either not concerned by my visit or showing his best poker face.

“I doubt it.”

He stopped before me and stared, waited for me to take the first step so he wouldn’t have to show his hand.

“I joined the family business under one condition—one fucking condition—and you shit all over that.” I was angrier than I realized, my voice already bursting like a volcano, screaming at him in his own house.

But he kept his cool, his stare stoic like he wasn’t even alive. “I don’t know what you’re?—”

I grabbed him by the throat and punched him so hard in the face his nose broke. Blood dripped all over his face before I shoved him to the floor. “You serious right now? You’re going to fucking lie to me?”

He lay there, his hands up like I might try to stomp on his face. The blood dripped over his mouth and chin. With guarded eyes, he watched me, not saying another word.

“I suspected you were going to shoot Bernard, so I tailed you. Followed you to the warehouse on Elm and found those girls there against their will.Fucking children.”

He closed his eyes and released a guilty sigh because he’d been caught.

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