Page 44 of The Carver

You’re an asshole, you know that?

I was straight with you. If that makes me an asshole, that’s fine with me.She was lucky I even bothered to text her back at all. She was just pissed she wasn’t getting her way.Thought she was enough to change me, to get me to stick around, but no woman ever made me stick around.Take care.

Fuck off, Bastien.The conversation should be over, but the dots were still there like she was typing up a storm.

“Oh boy.”

She texted me again.You think you can treat me like this? Who the fuck do you think you are?

A ghost.I blocked her.

We pulled up to the house a moment later, and the second I opened the door, I forgot about the woman who’d called me an asshole. I entered the three-story house and headed straight to the dining room, where everyone waited.

When I entered the room, Godric was seated at the head of the table with a drink in his hand, his lit cigar on the ashtray. Everyone else was smoking and drinking, but the air in the room was thick with irritation at my late arrival.

I didn’t apologize for the tardiness and dropped into the last open seat.

Godric took a drink before he set it aside. “We all know President Bernard is making things difficult. His strict border control to the north and the south has prohibited the transport of product, and the government sanctions at the port have eviscerated our shipments. We’re lucky to ship a fraction of our product. At this rate, all our inventory will expire before we can get it into the hands of buyers, and we’ll lose millions.”

A new president had been elected, and he had controversial views on international shipments and relations. He wanted to strengthen the French economy by making it a country thatproduced its own goods rather than relied on our allies for essentials. It wasn’t the worst policy I’d ever heard, and I had to give credit where it was due because, unlike French presidents in the past, he was actually getting shit done. But this inadvertently hurt our business. He’d tripled the size of his security checks, and even if we bribed some of them, the number of ships allowed at the port had been reduced to a fraction, so there simply wasn’t the same cargo space as before.

And shipments over land were far more likely to get confiscated than by sea.

“So, what do we do?” Godric asked.

The table was full of our partners, people who took our product and sold it through their own channels. Some of them produced their own products as well, but the partnership allowed us to piggyback off one another. They each had their specialties, connections in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, some in Indonesia. It was a global enterprise with its headquarters in the most romantic city on earth.

Herbert was a fat man with a bad toupee and an expensive suit. “Kill him.”

I smirked because I assumed it was a joke.

But John, our personal accountant who washed the money and deposited the funds into our various accounts worldwide, seemed to think it was a serious suggestion. “Not a bad idea.”

“We can threaten him first,” Tony said. “Send a message, and see if that changes his tune.”

Godric shook his head. “I can tell he’s not that kind of man. Bribery and threats won’t work. So, we kill him. Gun himdown when he least expects it, the second he steps out of his motorcade. Problem solved.”

I looked at my brother and restrained most of what I actually wanted to say. “We are not assassinating a president.”

Godric stared at me, and it was obvious he had more he wanted to say too.

The silence stretched and built between us.

Godric finally turned back to our audience. “We’ll figure out a solution very soon. Any other issues we need to address?”

John responded. “Profits have dwindled the last nine months. Assumed it was a fluke at first, but as time has gone on, it’s clear that it’s a trend. I don’t believe it’s an issue with the product, but the cost.”

“I agree,” Herbert said. “I voiced this concern long ago.” He gave me a look of accusation, knowing full well that I was the one who insisted on paid labor rather than forced labor.

Everyone else at the table gave me the same look, holding me in contempt.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “Is everyone here a billionaire?” I glanced around the table, looking at everyone, even John.

Of course, no one said a word.

“That’s what I thought.” I looked at my brother again, expecting him to echo my words.

But he didn’t. He said nothing.

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