The Butcher (Fifth Republic Series Book 1)

I sat at the bar and drank alone as I waited for Luca to get there.

He walked in a couple minutes later, wearing his leather jacket with his motorcycle helmet under his arm. He took the seat beside me and placed his helmet on the counter. He tapped his fingers against the bar to get the bartender’s attention. “Gin and tonic.”

The bartender threw his drink together and served it with a smile that asked for more than a tip.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“No problem, babe.” She walked away to serve the people who had been waiting at the bar a lot longer than Luca.

“Where’s Gabriel?”

Luca shrugged before he took a drink. “I don’t fucking know.”

My fingers rested on the top of my glass, and I looked at my reflection in the mirror, saw the way Luca stared at the side of my face.

“So, you’ve got a woman now?”

“Is that a problem?” I turned in the swivel chair to look at him directly.

“She’s still married.”

“You act like she’s having an affair.”

“It is an affair—technically.”

“Even if it were an affair, I wouldn’t give a damn,” I said. “And I don’t give a damn that you don’t like her.”

“I never said I don’t like her.”

“You sure act like it.” I took a drink.

“I just think you shouldn’t get involved with a woman with so much baggage.”

“I can lift a car—so I can carry her fucking baggage.” I looked at the front of the bar again, seeing him stare at the side of my face in the mirror.

“When you called her your woman, she had this look on her face, like she didn’t like it…or she was uncomfortable.”

She could push me away all she wanted, but I would just pull tighter—like a fucking viper.

“Did you hear what I said⁠—”

“What do you want from me, Luca?” I turned back to him. “I don’t care that she’s married. I don’t care that she’s getting divorced. I don’t care if she says she’s not ready for a relationship. She’s my woman—period. You better get fucking used to it.”

“You’ve never been with the same woman twice, and all of that changes for her? I get she’s fucking hot with nice tits, but⁠—”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

He raised his hand slightly then brought it down, like that would somehow decrease my ire. “I just don’t want you to get fucked over, man. That’s all. It’s obvious this means more to you than it does to her because you’re just a rebound.”

I gave a quiet chuckle. “I’m not the rebound, Luca. I’m the gold fucking stallion.”

“I can read people damn well. That’s why no one will deal me in to poker anymore. And I see distance and restraint from her.”

“You met her one time when she was ambushed by you idiots, and you think you know her?” I asked incredulously. “I know you’re my boy and you’re just looking out for me, but you need to step the fuck off, Luca.”

He turned quiet and didn’t continue to hound me with his ill opinion. He sat there and drank from his glass and let the tension start as a simmer and turn to a boil. It turned to steam and made the air humid.

He changed the subject. “I’ve asked my contacts about Godric. He doesn’t sit still very long.”

“I know.”

“The longer he runs his game, the more he corrupts his order⁠—”

“I know, Luca.” My fingers rested around my glass.

“There’s gotta be something.”

I inhaled a slow breath. “I asked my mother.” There was a separation of church and state, and I’d always honored it. Godric and I had very different interpretations of business and the law, and my mother refused to choose sides and favorites. She raised us to be this way, so she accepted our beliefs equally. But now, I needed her help if I was ever going to resolve it.

Luca stared at me for a long time, his hand on the glass without lifting it for a drink. “What did she say?”

“She’ll think about it…”

He gave a slow nod. “You think that will work?”

“I don’t fucking know, man. It’s been a long time since I talked to him.”

“Even if she agrees, he probably won’t.”

“Right.” I took a drink from my glass, and now, there was nothing but ice cubes left behind.

He faced the bar and the mirror and drank in silence.

We sat there together, both of us thinking about the thorn in our sides, the man I called my brother.

Then my phone vibrated with a text. It could be anyone because my phone went off all hours of the night, but there was only one person I hoped it would be. I’d just seen her this morning, but I wouldn’t mind coming home to her in my bed, her legs wrapped around my waist while she whispered my name.

But it was my mother. I’ll do it.

It was ten in the evening when my driver pulled up to the gates.

My heart was still, my pulse steady. I was on the precipice of what I wanted, but I knew just because it was close didn’t mean it was within my grasp. This meeting could have the opposite effect I desired—and just make things worse.

I checked in with her security and was led into the house.

She warned me that the element of surprise would only last a minute because his security would inform him of my arrival before I reached the dining room. Instead of being a polite guest and waiting for the butler to escort me, I walked myself through the house to the dining room located at the back.

I heard my mother’s quiet laugh before I rounded the corner.

He was at the head of the table like it was his fucking house, blond hair and blue eyes. He sprang into action right away, rising to his feet and pulling his gun out of the back of his jeans and aiming at me within a second. The laughter and merriment of dinner quickly evaporated when the tension set in. Music played from the sound system, but it was masked by the tension.

I’d honored my mother’s request and had come unarmed, but he had no such honor.

“Godric.” Mother rose to her feet and pressed her hand down on his arm.

It didn’t budge. In fact, he cocked it.

She gripped the opening of the barrel. “Put it down.”

My brother’s face was contorted in restrained rage, treating me like a hit man who’d murdered his entire family for a cheap paycheck. He had a structured jawline like I did, the same eyes. There was no doubt we were of the same parentage. After a furious standoff, he lowered the gun.

Mother twisted it from his fingers and confiscated it before clicking the safety. “Bring a gun to dinner again, and I’ll bend you over my knee and spank you like a child.” She slammed the gun onto the table next to her soup bowl. The table was long enough to fit fifteen guests comfortably, but it was just the two of them together near the window.

Godric’s stare remained latched on mine. He was in a long-sleeved shirt, so the ink on his arms was hidden from view. He was tall like I was, muscular because he lifted every morning and night, always determined to be bigger than me. “I trusted you, Mother. That won’t happen again.”

“Trust hasn’t been betrayed,” she said. “My only desire is for my sons to speak to each other.”

He turned his gaze on her, his rage restrained. “You set me up⁠—”

“I want my sons to speak to each other.”

He gave her a furious stare before he turned away from the table, kicking his chair hard and making it tip over then slide across the rug. “Alright, let’s talk.” He raised his voice to a yell so all the staff throughout the house could hear. “What does this shithead have to say?”

I was still on the other side of the room, looking at my brother thirty feet away, standing in the dining room that had vaulted ceilings twenty feet in the air. The curtains were pulled away from the windows, showing the lights of the city outside, the drops of rain that stuck to the glass.

“Speak, boy.” He gave a loud whistle, calling me like a dog.

Mother gave a quiet sigh as she watched this derail before it even could start down the track.

I knew he was pissed that his own mother had personally bested him, and like a child, he was throwing a tantrum. I moved to the sitting area and took a seat in one of the cushioned armchairs. I crossed one ankle on the opposite knee then gestured to the other armchair for him to sit.

He stared at me, his breaths visible in the way his chest rose and fell. He walked past the table, snatched the water glass off the surface, and threw it against the wall on his way, missing my head by a few inches. It shattered, and water soaked into the rug.

I didn’t react.

Godric dropped into the armchair across from me, his forearms on his knees as he leaned forward, giving me that lethal stare.

Moments passed. The music continued to play overhead.

The butler and guards entered the room to investigate the commotion. Someone turned off the sound system.

We continued to stare each other down.

Mother approached us near the coffee table, wearing black trousers and a tweed vest, a coat hanger draped in jewelry. With her hands together at her waist, she looked at us both. “I only have one son at any time, and I would like to have two. There is nothing more sacred than the blood you two share, the blood of emperors, the blood of power. It’s a shame to waste this life as opponents rather than allies.” She looked at each of us before she grabbed the gun off the dining table and exited the room.

The silence was deafening, so stagnant it made the air stale. I stared at blue eyes identical to my own but saw a man who couldn’t be more different in every way that mattered. We used to get along as kids, but once we became adults, our morals and politics ripped us apart like a thin sheet of paper.

He didn’t speak, just continued to stare me down like a cockroach he needed to squash.

“It’s just a conversation.”

“A conversation that won’t change anything—and therefore, a waste of time.” He sat back and slouched into the chair, his elbow propped on the armrest with his closed fist against his hard chin. “A fucking waste of time.”

“I don’t want it to be this way.”

“You aren’t the only one who shares that sentiment.”

“Godric—”

“How long do you think this will last? Policing those who can’t be policed. Making rules for the lawless and ungoverned. How long do you think it’ll be before your body dangles from a crane over Notre-Dame? You say it’s about morality, but it can’t be if you’re directly profiting from it.”

“You know how much money they save when they don’t have to hide their transports? When they pass straight through customs? When they load their shipments onto the docks in broad daylight? Time and money, all saved under the Fifth Republic. They save far more money than what they pay in taxes.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But the cost of labor has diminished their profits considerably.”

“Well, that’s too fucking bad,” I snapped. “A million euros poorer, what a fucking tragedy.”

“It’s a lot more than a million⁠—”

“Still inconsequential.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re pulling in a million per day…on average.”

“I’m sure you make a lot more than that, Godric.”

“The money matters, but it doesn’t matter as much as the principle of it. We run our businesses as we see fit, and following the rules of some pompous little prick is a load of bullshit. You have your beliefs and that’s fucking fine, but the rest of us don’t. Don’t make carnivores eat asparagus just because you’re a goddamn vegetarian.”

“You’re going to compare women to asparagus?” I asked in disbelief. “They’re fucking people, Godric⁠—”

He shot forward to the edge of his seat. “I don’t give a shit. Look at me.” His eyes were stretched wide, and the veins in his neck popped from the strain. “Does it look like I give a shit? Does it?”

“These are daughters⁠—”

“These are fucking nobodies, Bastien. The homeless, the poor, women stupid enough to walk through a bad neighborhood alone at two in the morning⁠—”

“So, they deserve this?”

He gave a shrug.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“It’s how the world works, Bastien.”

“But it doesn’t have to—and it’s not going to.”

He returned his chin to his hard knuckles and stared at me. “Why do you care so much, Bastien?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“I think you do when you risk a knife to your back. You think you have control of this city, but a lot of men want you dead.”

“Doesn’t seem that way to me.” No one had tried to come for me, not in my home, not on the street, not at any of the functions of the Senate. Maybe they wanted me dead, but actually executing a plan was a different story.

Godric stared in silence, his eyes locked on my face with the stillness of a statue.

“Godric, you can get into another line of business. It doesn’t have to be this way⁠—”

“It does, Bastien.”

“You’re telling me, when we were kids, your dream was to be a human trafficker?” I asked incredulously. “Because I remember all you ever wanted to be was a veterinarian.”

Godric burst with laughter. “I forgot about that.”

“You wanted to help animals, and now, you steal women from their homes. That’s who you want to be, Godric?”

“Anything you say before puberty doesn’t count.”

“Answer the question.”

His laughter died away, and he turned serious once more. “Bastien, I don’t care. I don’t care about anyone or anything—besides myself. You can try to guilt me with your questions and your exasperation, but you can’t guilt someone who lacks a conscience.”

I gave a shake of my head. “I don’t believe that.”

He shrugged. “People change, Bastien. Boys become men. We stop caring about animals and toys and obsess over money and pussy. It’s just how it is.”

My brother and I had been divided a long time, but I was still disappointed by the words I heard.

“Bastien.” His voice turned serious, his stare losing all hint of humor.

I met his look.

“The Fifth Republic will fall. The old order will return. And you can’t stop it.” His cheek was propped on his closed knuckles again, his somber eyes watching me across the table. “I suggest you embrace the old order to save your neck—or step down and let someone else take your place. Take my advice.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I guess you wouldn’t know.” He continued to stare at me, the coffee table between us. “I may not like you, but that doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“I thought you didn’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“I care about Mom. Though, not so much right now. And she’d be ticked if I let you get shanked in the street.” He looked past me out the window, his eyes lingering on the city we seemed to own together, just under different leaderships. “I’m not going to change, and if you aren’t going to change, this only ends one way—with one of us dead.” His eyes came back to me. “And it’s not going to be me, Bastien.”

I met with Roger at Chez Georges. We had dinner together like civilized people, but we talked shop the entire time, not caring about the people who sat directly next to us and overheard the entire thing. I didn’t eat bread very often, but Chez Georges had the best bread in Paris, and I enjoyed that more than my steak.

He got a call from his wife toward the end of dinner and had to leave in a rush, so I sat there alone and finished my meal, preferring the solitude anyway. We discussed what we needed to discuss, so finishing dinner together was just an obligation.

A woman dropped into Roger’s chair across from me, wearing a pink floral dress with a gold necklace around her throat. She was a pretty brunette, looked to be in her early twenties, which was a bit too young for me. “I thought you could use some company since your guest left.”

My eyes moved to the empty seat from which she originated. Another young woman was there, probably a friend or a sister. She drank her wine as she watched her companion make a move on me.

“My name is Abigail.”

My eyes moved back to my new guest, annoyed that she was there, but also annoyed that the woman getting my dick continued to keep me at arm’s length. Told me she wanted casual, but if it was casual, I would be fucking this woman and whoever else I met on the way—and I knew she wouldn’t like that one bit.

Not that I wanted to fuck anyone else…

If this woman were older, I would give her a cold reception, but since she was young, I decided to preserve her self-esteem. “I’m too old for you—and I’m married.”

“Oh…you aren’t wearing a ring.”

“I’m not the kind of guy to wear one.”

The disappointment crept into her pretty features, washing away her joy like the rising tide destroyed a sandcastle on the beach. “I’ll let you enjoy your dinner.” She scooted out of the chair and went back to her table.

I returned to my steak, listening to the conversations at all the nearby tables, talking about new decorations for the home, upcoming doctor’s appointments, the horrible traffic in the city. Mundane bullshit.

My phone lit up on the table. I like my new job. It’s nice to be home by five rather than go to work at five.

Her messages normally brought a smile to my face, but my mood was sour. Had been sour since my unproductive conversation with Godric last night. Good. I’d forgotten that she’d started at the office that day. Was too busy with my own shit to think about anything else.

The divorce papers were approved by the judge. Now we set a date for a hearing.

You only went to a hearing for a divorce if the spouses couldn’t agree on the division of assets, so I wasn’t sure what Adrien was contesting. Unless he was picking a fight to draw out the divorce as long as possible just to be a dick. Seemed like something he would do. Good, things are moving. I ate the last few scraps of my steak then asked for the tab.

How are you?

Been better.

May I ask why?

Just bullshit at work.

You say that a lot.

Because it’s true. Some days were calm, but those days were few and far between. Collecting tariffs and keeping dealers and distributors in line was an immense task. There were a lot of weapons and drugs to move in and out of France, and it was my job to oversee all that and make sure tariffs were being paid on all of it. And then I had to go up against my own brother and decide how I would remove him from power without killing him. He deserved to die for all the shit he’d done, but when it came time to squeeze the trigger, my finger wouldn’t move.

I would love to see you…if you’re up for it.

I was already out the door and waiting for my driver at the curb. I’ll be there in a few.

Good. I miss you.

I smirked before I slid the phone back into my pocket. For a woman who only wanted casual, she acted the opposite. Her texts used to be rare and infrequent, but now she texted me on a daily basis.

I hopped into the SUV and headed to her apartment a couple blocks away. When the driver dropped me off, the café was full of people having dinner inside and on the outside patio. People biked and walked down the cobblestones to the église Saint-Eustache or the mall farther down the street. Only in Paris could you find an ancient cathedral right next to a modern mall with a McDonald’s and a Claire’s.

I let myself into her apartment because she’d shared the code with me weeks back. The elevator had finally been fixed, but I took the stairs anyway because I could barely fit in the tiny enclosure. I made it to her door and let myself inside, moving down the winding hallway until I reached her main room, the dining room and living room a single space.

I stilled when I saw her—standing in nothing but a tiny black G-string.

Mother of god.

The lights were dimmed and a few candles were lit to set the mood, but all I cared about was the fine woman with the tits I was about to suck raw. Her brown hair was soft and around her shoulders, and she had that look in her eyes that showed how much she wanted me even though I was fully clothed.

I reached behind my head and pulled my shirt over my back before I tossed it onto one of the chairs. When I moved into her, one of her arms hooked around my neck, and she cupped my face, her lips parting to take the hungry kiss that was coming.

I clenched her tight ass in my hand before I lifted her into me so I didn’t have to bend my neck to kiss her. She weighed nothing to me, soft and light like a beautiful breeze on a spring day. Her kiss was fire on my mouth, desperate for my passion. She dug her fingers into my hair as she kissed me. “I fucking missed you.” She spoke to me between her kisses, her voice breathless.

Fuck, the things this woman did to me.

“Bastien.” She said my name like she’d been desperate to say it all day, like it was hanging on the edge of her tongue.

I carried her to the small bedroom and threw her on the bed.

She gave a cry when she bounced, but her eyes were lit up with that same intense passion only I could satisfy.

I’d never taken off my pants so fast. Boots were kicked off. Boxers were down and on the hardwood floor.

She stared at me like I was the finest piece of meat she’d ever seen.

I grabbed her hips and dragged her to the edge of the bed before I hooked my fingers into that little black thong and tugged it free. Then I slid my arms underneath her thighs and opened her wide to kiss that aching pussy.

She let out a cry as she arched her back. “God…”

I fucked her with my mouth, sucked her clit hard between my lips and made her wince, worshipped that pussy for the perfection that it was. I loved her taste, loved the way she was wet before I made any effort to make her that way. I didn’t go down on a woman for a one-night stand, but I was happy to get on my knees and stick my face between her sexy thighs. I could do this all fucking night.

She dug her fingers into my hair, and she rocked her hips against me, grinding her sex right into my face because it felt damn good. Her pants and cries rose, her hips bucking harder. “Stop…”

I sucked her clit and lips hard into my mouth.

She moaned again. “Wait…don’t make me come.”

I smiled against her pussy. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”

She lifted herself on her arms and dragged her body away before she opened her knees wide, beckoning my hips to slide in between her soft thighs. “I only want to come with you inside me.” Her sex gleamed from my kisses. It was red from how hard I’d sucked on her.

This was the only woman who made my dick twitch like a fucking slingshot. I moved over the bed on top of her and slid between her thighs, my dick smashing through her entrance and sliding deep inside in a single motion.

She moaned in my ear and clawed at my back as she folded underneath me.

I pounded into her with the pace of a sprinting horse, my face pressed close to hers, watching her eyes collect tears because she was about to come. “Come, sweetheart. Come all over my dick.”

Her pussy tightened before she cried out, squeezing the tears from the corners of her eyes and making them streak down her cheeks. Her nails dug into me, and she panted and cried as she felt the enormous explosion inside her little pussy. “Bastien…” She already boosted my ego enough, but saying my name was the cherry on the sundae.

I felt the slickness increase, felt all the cream she made for me. It coated my dick to the balls. “I love this pussy.” Pussy had all been the same to me, tight and wet and the perfect hole for my hard dick, but her pussy was a fucking rose garden in Versailles. It was the queen of pussies, worthy of a crown made of gold and rubies, the only place my dick ever wanted to go. I fisted her hair and gripped it like a leash before I pressed my face to her cheek. “I fucking love this pussy.”