From the outside, there was no indication that one of the biggest kingpins in France was behind the sea of windows, drinking, fucking, sleeping, whatever the fuck he was doing. I let myself in, moved past the guards on the bottom floor, and made my way upstairs.
Women were everywhere.
French whores in lingerie were sprawled out in his living room. One lay upside down on the couch, a cigar in her mouth. She looked at me, pulled it out of her mouth, and then blew a cloud of smoke. Another sat with a drink in her hand, her legs crossed, her hair messy like Bartholomew had already had a go with her earlier in the evening. The girls standing at the counter immediately pivoted their bodies to face me, ready to proposition another client.
I didn’t recognize any of them because it’d been seven years since I was last in the game. My bed used to be full of whores, too, in a different time, when it was just me and an obscene amount of money.
I didn’t venture into the hallway because I knew what I would find if I continued—based on the sounds that carried to the living room. A woman moaning like she was there on her own time. Two, actually. And then a loud headboard to accompany it.
I helped myself to a glass of wine and leaned against the counter as I waited for him to finish up.
Like I was a carcass in the desert, the vultures descended. A blonde came first, the most confident one in the bunch, even though I barely gave her a second glance. She positioned herself right in front of me, one hand on her hip, in a black bustier with matching panties and thigh-high leggings.
“It’s Benton, right?”
I took a drink of the Cab and switched my gaze to her.
“Bartholomew paid for us the whole night, so…”
“Leave me alone.”
Her eyebrows rose up her face like she’d never heard that one before. “I think infidelity is good in a marriage. Keeps the man satisfied, which keeps the wife—”
“I said, leave me the fuck alone.”
This time, her pretty face soured, and she strutted off like she was the one who had rejected me instead of the other way around.
The loud ruckus had stopped at some point, and Bartholomew emerged in just his black sweatpants, a gleam of sweat on his chest. He went straight for the wine like it was water after a hard workout. He tilted his head back, opened his throat fully, and took it all in a single swallow. Then he threw the glass against the wall. It gave a loud shatter, but none of the girls reacted, like they were used to this behavior. He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm then sauntered over to me. “Help yourself—and not just to the wine.”
I set down my glass. “We need to talk.”
“You’re awfully serious tonight.” A few empty glasses sat on the counter, a small pool of red at the bottom of each, old glasses the girls had left when they’d switched to a new drink. He grabbed one and poured the bottle to fill it.
“After a freak breaks in to my apartment, it makes me pretty serious.”
He took another deep drink like there wasn’t already a pool of it in his belly. “What happened?”
“He left an angel statue on her nightstand.”
“That’s it?” He lifted himself onto the counter across from me, his hands gripping the edge as his glass sat beside him. The women seemed to know that this was business talk and kept their distance.
“That’s it?”
“Trying to get all the information before I overreact—like you.”
“If someone broke in to your apartment, you’d overreact too.”
“No, if someone broke in to my place, I’ll kill them. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wasn’t home, asshole. No one was.”
He grabbed his glass and took another drink. “So that freak came inside when no one was home to leave a toy? Pathetic.”
“Well, my girl is scared.”
“You told Claire?”
My glass suddenly felt heavy in my hand even though it was only half full. I grabbed the bottle and refilled it, just to have something to do with my hands.
Bartholomew could read everything on my face—he just didn’t say it.
“He broke the truce. Now we kill him.”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “Technically, he didn’t break anything.”
My eyes narrowed.
“You told him not to come anywhere near Claire and your girl.” He looked at me over the rim of his glass as he took a drink. “There was no violation.”
Now it was my turn to throw the glass down. It shattered all over the floor, and like last time, no one reacted. “Fuck off, Bartholomew. This motherfucker needs to die, and you know it. You made your threats, and you need to honor them.”
“I know what I said, Benton. And clearly, he does too.” He took another drink.
“I’m just supposed to deal with freak stalking my family until he gets bored—”
“You could just give up the girl. Solves all your problems.”
“Fuck you.” The words spewed out of my mouth like vomit. All the muscles of my face suddenly felt strained because of the way my jaw tightened and pulled everything back. “I told you she’s family—”
“No woman can fuck her way into being family. You’re blindsided—again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Claire came along and fucked up your entire life. Now you’re letting this woman—”
“I will break this bottle and shove the neck into your throat if you say that shit again.”
Bartholomew kept up his stare, his shoulders relaxed like he wasn’t afraid of the glass spikes that would penetrate his tissue and bone. “We say how it is. It’s always been that way—and I’m just being real with you.”
“And I’m being real with you—don’t talk about my daughter like that.”
“Fine.” He raised his arms. “But this woman is not off-limits. If you were smart, you would just throw her back to the wolves.”
“She. Saved. My. Daughter.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re all about loyalty—and you expect me not to be loyal to her?”
“You weren’t loyal to me.”
I clenched my jaw tighter because I would always be on the hook for this. “I had to do the right thing for my daughter. Don’t expect me to apologize for that. I won’t.”
“You’re here right now, aren’t you?”
“Because I have to be—not because I want to.”
He gave a cold chuckle. “Ouch…”
“And because I have someone at home with her while I’m away. Beatrice was a piece-of-shit mother.”
“She’s a piece of shit to you, but to me, she was someone pressured into something she didn’t want. Very different things.”
There were a million things I could say, but they were things I’d already said. Our relationship had improved, but the resentments he carried still drove us apart. He’d never forgiven me for what I did, not really. “Let me kill him.”
“No.”
“So, you didn’t mean a damn thing you said?”
He took another drink of his wine. “I mean every word that I say. So, if he crosses the line, we make our move. But he hasn’t done that. Like I’ve said a million times, he may be a freak, but he’s a smart freak.”