Page 36 of The Carver

Godric’s piercing stare was locked on my face.

Father led the way, entering the first warehouse. It had a sliding door like a garage, but a small door was inside that one, and my father knocked before the door was unlocked and we stepped inside.

The room was full of tables covered in nondescript packages stacked on top of one another. Girls were working there, girls my age, and they seemed to be processing the drugs in one section, bagging it in another, and then weighing those bags before they were placed in a plastic tub on a pallet against the wall.

Not a single girl looked up from her work, even though they knew we were there. It was midnight, and they were working under the light from the overhead lamps, fulfilling the packages like they were in a time crunch.

My father walked up to one of the tables, and the girls acted like they didn’t see him. He scooped his hand into the tub of white powder and let it seep from the spaces between his fingers, treating it like sand on the beach during a vacation. “We process a million pounds a week.” He moved away from the table.

I stayed and looked at the cocaine sitting there before I lifted my gaze to look at the girls.

They all continued to work. Except for one.

A brunette with green eyes looked at me with a mixture of fear and comfort—because she knew me.

I couldn’t remember her name, but I knew her face. Instead of us going to private school like the children of other rich families we knew, our father sent us to public school because he wanted us to know real people and the real world. Neither of my parents cared about higher education or university. When Godric had said he wanted to be a veterinarian, neither of my parents was impressed by that aspiration.

I remembered her because she’d gone missing a couple years ago. Her face was plastered on posters all through the hallways at school. No one knew what happened to her, and after a few months with no leads, everyone forgot about it.

I’d never given it much thought because I didn’t know her personally.

Judging by the look in her eyes, she remembered me as well as I remembered her.

“Bastien.”

I turned at my father’s voice and broke eye contact with the girl from school. I crossed the room, my mind in a daze, and came to his side.

Godric continued to give me his ruthless stare.

He was three years older than me, but maybe he remembered her too?

My father showed me the other processing lines, the girls packing the different drugs and weighing them to be uniform before they were packaged and ready for distribution. It was more than cocaine. It was heroin too.

My father took me into a different warehouse, and this seemed to be the office space where numbers were calculated and shipping routes were designated, because it held tables with laptops. The rest of the warehouse was completely empty.

“Where do the girls go when they’re done?” I asked.

Godric stared at me.

“They’re never done.” My father grabbed a folder and pulled up a chair to one of the tables. “Sit.”

“They must sleep and eat, right?” I asked.

“That’s what the other warehouses are for, son.” He opened the folder and pulled out the papers. “Now, sit.”

I fell into the chair, the realization smacking me in the face. The girls never left. That meant the girl had been here since she’ddisappeared…which was two years ago. That meant she had only been thirteen at the time.

Godric sat in the other chair, arms across his chest, continuing to give me that angry stare.

I understood my father was a drug kingpin, but producing and distributing drugs never sounded like that big of a deal to me. It seemed like a victimless crime, but now, I realized that wasn’t the case. Those women worked to process the drugs that we sold for millions and paid for our beautiful homes, cars, staff, and yachts. And then I felt like shit, absolute shit. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m about to explain it all to you, son.”

“The girls… Where do they come from?” I knew where one came from, but what about the rest?

My father gave an irritated sigh as he looked at me. “They aren’t important. They do their job, and they do it well.”

“One of those girls is my age.”

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