Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 94915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Except this war is going to tear us both to pieces.
My phone rings. I stare at the screen, feeling numb. It’s Dusan’s name and number.
I answer, even though I’m tempted to ignore it. I haven’t had time to come up with how I want to handle this situation. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you now?” Dusan sounds strangely calm, which puts me on edge. “Tell me what I’m going to say, Moreau.”
“You want to escalate. You think that declaring war and hitting me hard in return will somehow bring back your dead soldiers. But we both know that’s a mistake.”
Dusan’s silent for a moment. I want to tell him it was Grandpère, it wasn’t my decision, but that would only look weak, and Dusan is not a stupid man. He’ll sense an opportunity and work to exploit the rift in my organization, and I can’t have that.
Grandpère fucked me, but he was smart about it. He knows I’m not a coward and I’m not an idiot. I can’t back down, even if I never wanted this fight to begin with; only strength will save my people from this disaster.
I learned that the hard way as a young kid surviving on the streets. Only strength wins in the end.
“Two dead men,” Dusan says. His cool demeanor is gone, and now his voice shakes with anger. “One of them was my cousin. My blood relative. He was twenty-three years old.”
I close my eyes and mouth a curse. Fucking Grandpère. What absolutely fucking terrible luck. “Save more lives. Be smart. Don’t push.”
“Fuck you, Moreau. Fuck you and your shit-eating soldiers. You killed my men, you killed my cousin, and now I’m going to tear you to fucking pieces.”
“If you come for me, you’ll lose, and you know it.”
“This is your only warning. I’m going to burn down your entire operation.”
The line goes dead as we pull up to the house and park out front.
Jean turns to look back at me. His face is drawn and serious. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asks.
“One of the dead soldiers was Dusan’s cousin.”
“Oh, fuck.” Jean stares grimly ahead as he leans his head against his seat.
What a damn mess. Grandpère ordered an attack on a small drug house run by the Petrovic family. There were three men on the premises when six French soldiers loyal to Grandpère rolled up and opened fire on the building with high-powered rifles. Two of the occupants were dead instantly; the third was wounded and left alone to bleed out on the kitchen floor. Grandpère’s men then entered the building, took as much of the product as they could, and left. From what I hear, the wounded man is still alive, but that could change at any moment.
It’s fucked. It’s beyond fucked. Grandpère went behind my back, and I’m livid.
And I’m also trapped.
I head into the house. Jean comes with me, staying at a distance as I storm past the guards. Nobody’s meeting my gaze, and I’m guessing they all heard about what happened and what it means for the family. I’m not sure if they understand that I had nothing to do with it, and that my Grandpère usurped my authority to go behind my back, but I’ll deal with that fallout later.
For now, I find Grandpère in a spare room that he converted into an office. The space is very simple: table, chairs, a desk, and a couch with a low coffee table. Nothing on the walls, no more decorations, only the bare minimum of what he could possibly need, a mirror of the way he lives back in France.
Grandpère is a powerful man. His villa is enormous and filled with luxuries most people only ever dream about, and yet his own personal living quarters are as Spartan as it gets. He believes in keeping his life simple as a way to force himself not to turn soft, and perhaps it works, except I’m starting to think all that hard living had addled his brain in his old age.
“Hello, Julien,” he says as I close the door behind me. I catch sight of Jean lurking in the hall, probably trying to eavesdrop while also keeping others from spying on this conversation.
Grandpère looks up from his desk. If he knows what he did, his face doesn’t show it. If anything, he seems utterly relaxed and at home, lounging back in his chair with a sigh and stretching his back.
“You should have consulted me first.”
Grandpère spreads his hands. “I tried that. You weren’t interested.”
“Which meant you should have known not to interfere.”
“Interfere?” Grandpère’s eyebrows raise. He folds his hands over his belly and tilts his head as if staring down an unruly child. “I think you’ve been out in America for far too long. I can’t interfere with anything. This is my family.”