Covenant (Paris Mob Book 1) Read Online Free

shipment. Bruno was right; it was minor in the grand scheme of his operation. But Christophe made a point to know every aspect of his business at any given time, and he had a near encyclopedic knowledge of incoming and outgoing shipments, debts that were owed to the organization, employees on the verge of dismissal — or death. He had people in management positions, of course. But it wasn’t their job to make decisions that would affect the course of the Paris organization. It was his. And he couldn’t do it if he didn’t know what was going on every week, every day, every hour.
    “What about it?” Christophe asked.
    “I have a buyer,” Bruno said. “All lined up and ready to go. You let me take control of the shipment, I turn it over in under twenty-four hours, we split the money.”
    “I’ve already made arrangements for that shipment,” Christophe said. The buyer was an exporter in Rouen who would quickly load the inventory on a cargo ship bound for Ireland.
    Bruno removed a pen from the pocket of his jacket, held the cigarette in his mouth as he scrawled something on a napkin. He slid it across the table to Christophe.
    “I think you’ll find my buyer will offer you a much bigger profit margin.”
    Christophe glanced at the number written on the napkin, then turned it over. The figure was a little over half the amount he had lined up with his current buyer. Split with Bruno, his profit margin would be a quarter of what it would be if he moved the inventory as planned. They would have earned more if Bruno had agreed to work with him officially, but that was his brother — always trying to find a way around things to avoid the hard work of going through them.
    He glanced at Bruno, saw the shine in his eyes, the way he licked his lips, a nervous habit since childhood. Christophe smiled.
    “It’s a good price,” he said. “Can I count on you to insure there won’t be any… complications?”
    Two summers earlier, Bruno had taken control of a shipment that had subsequently been raided by the judicial police in Grenoble. Christophe had had to call in favors, disperse large sums of cash to make the problem disappear.
    “Of course,” Bruno said, as if the incident in Grenoble had never happened.
    Christophe nodded. “I’ll send word to my men that you’ll meet them in Lille at midnight tomorrow.”
    Lille was just over the border from Belgium. It was how all their shipments from the other country arrived.
    Bruno’s relief was apparent. He had never been good at hiding his emotions. “You won’t regret it. I’ll get you your share as soon as my buyer pays.”
    Christophe nodded. He would never see his share of the profit.
    “I should be going,” he said moving to slide out of the booth.
    “Stay,” Bruno said. He tamped out the cigarette, leaving the gold wrapped filter in the ashtray. “We can have dinner. They have good burgers here.”
    Christophe resisted the temptation. This was par for the course with Bruno: the antipathy upon meeting, the angry request for something, the almost manic turnaround when he got his way. It wasn’t born out of a genuine desire to bridge the gap between them. There was a long list of situations in which Christophe had given in, wanting to believe there was a way to make all that had happened between them water under the bridge. It always ended badly.
    “Thank you, but no. I have business to attend to.”
    Bruno’s groupies moved aside as they slid out of the booth. Christophe hesitated, then leaned in to kiss his brother’s cheeks, letting his hand linger on the soft hair at the back of his head. Family was family. No matter what they did, how they disappointed you, your heart remembered them as they once had been.
    “Au revoir," Bruno said.
    “Goodbye, brother,” Christophe said.
    He didn’t look back as he headed for the door.

5
    C harlotte watched as the men loaded the desk, wrapped in blankets, into the moving van they kept for such occasions. Once