Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
My father rolled down the window. “Get in.”
I opened the back door and got into the seat next to the window.
Godric came out seconds later and approached the car.
“In the back,” Father said. Then he hit the button on his side and rolled up the window.
Godric halted on the spot, snow falling down around him, staring at the window even though all he could see was his own reflection. His face contorted into boiling anger, but he didn’t act on it and headed to the SUV parked behind us.
We took off, a line of cars moving through the quiet streets of Paris.
I still didn’t know where we were going, but I wouldn’t ask a second time.
The first few minutes were spent in silence. My father was on his phone, texting and doing emails, oblivious to me beside him in the backseat. He finally placed the phone in the inside pocket of his coat. “You’re fifteen now, Bastien. Our society still thinks of you as a boy, but for a Dupont, you’re a man. It’s time you learn the business.”
My parents never mentioned the business around us. It was an open secret, my father’s criminal enterprise. But from the conversations I overheard and the information I’d inadvertently gathered, my father was one of the biggest drug dealers in France. He moved his product from the city to the port and distributed it elsewhere. My father was powerful and terrifying, judging by the way he screamed on the phone in the middle of the night and jerked me awake. It explained why Godric had changed so much. Once he was part of the business, he became as cold and cruel as our father.
“What if I don’t want to learn the business?”
My father slowly turned to regard me, his eyes filled with anger and disappointment. “This business is your bloodline. You’re the third generation to be a part of it. I would share it with my brother if he were still alive.”
“Doesn’t seem like Godric wants me to be part of it.”
“He’ll feel differently once I’m gone.” He looked out the window once again and watched the snow fall.
I stared at the side of his face, equally afraid and desperate for his approval. My father had been a constant figure in my life, but I still felt like I didn’t know him. Sometimes I saw him with my mother—and sometimes I saw him with other women. My father never told me to keep my mouth shut, but I knew there would be a punishment if I didn’t. “What do you want me to do?”
“You’ll see.”
We spent the rest of the drive in silence, traveling through the quiet streets until we arrived at the outskirts of the city. Instead of the beautiful spires of the churches and the lights of the Eiffel Tower, we entered the slums, graffiti on the walls, barbed wire around buildings, and turned into a compound behind a solid gate and concrete wall.
We pulled into the large complex with multiple warehouses, guards on duty carrying rifles, snow on the ground and on the roofs of buildings. We hopped out of the car, and the guards said nothing to my father, barely acknowledged him.
Godric left the car and caught up to us.
My father ignored him. “Come with me, Bastien.”
I kept a straight face, but I was nervous. Nervous for what, I wasn’t sure.
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.