Page 60 of The Carver

“You already spoke to him, Bastien. What else needs to be said?”

“That’s my business.” I wouldn’t rattle my mother by telling her someone had put a hit on me. That someone could be out for revenge or someone wanted to remove me from power and take my place. Right now, I didn’t know, and none of my contacts seemed to know either. Godric wasn’t part of my world, so he might know something. “Mom.”

She looked away again, the frustration bubbling in her eyes. “Fine.”

I sat in the back seat parked at the curb, raindrops breaking their contact with the window and streaking down. The phone was to my ear, and I listened to it ring a few times before my brother answered. “Yes?”

“It’s Bastien.”

There was a pause—but that pause said so much.

“I’m sure you heard what happened the other day.”

He said nothing, either confirming that fact or pretending otherwise.

“You said people wanted me dead. Looks like you were right.”

“What do you want from me, Bastien?”

“Tell me who—because you obviously know who it is.”

He was quiet for a long time, probably sitting at home in one of his many apartments. He owned a vast portfolio of real estate in Paris, so it was hard to know where he was at any given time. “I warned you to walk away.”

“You know I don’t walk away from anything.”

“Then there’s nothing else to discuss.”

I hadn’t expected to get much out of him, but I’d expected more substance than this. “You’d have to be pretty heartless to look the other way while someone tries to kill your only brother.”

He gave a quiet chuckle. “Not as heartless as killing my own father.”

The insult rushed right past me, and I felt no remorse.

Godric said nothing else.

A thought had been at the back of my mind for a long time, for years, but I’d never had the opportunity to ask for answers. “Why haven’t you told Mom?” I had no doubt she didn’t have any idea, because if she knew, she’d never speak to me again.

He didn’t say anything.

“Why?” I pressed. “She’d turn her back on me if she knew. That’s exactly what you’d want, right?”

He remained quiet.

I waited for him to explain.

“Because it would kill her, Bastien. Don’t think for a fucking second that I’m protecting you. I’m protecting her—because she’d swallow a bunch of sleeping pills and never wake up if she knew it was you.”

I let his words bite into me with sharp fangs. I felt no guilt for my actions, but I felt like shit for what I’d done to my mother. I’d made her a widow decades sooner than she needed to be. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Godric.”

“If you’re going to tell us how to do business, then yes, it needs to be this way.”

“You make it sound like you’re the one gunning for me.”

It was dead quiet wherever he was, so he must be at home, probably in front of the fire, a sleeping woman in his bed. Therewas no sound of his breath, like a cigar was squeezed between his lips and teeth. “I’m not. But I know who is—and I’m not going to stand in his way.”

I miss you, sweetheart.It’d been a few days since I’d spoken to her. I’d been so absorbed in tracking down the idiot who thought he could make me disappear so easily that I hadn’t even texted her.

She hadn’t texted me either, and I began to worry.

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