Sonata (Butcher and Violinist 2)

“Not mine. Shalimar’s has a reputation of high-end food and service.”

“Does it now?”

Giorgio was just a chatty cat this evening. Usually, he remained silent and in the background, but Jean-Pierre had been absent more, which gave the opportunity for others to speak. Now everyone had an idea and opinion.

And unfortunately, once a Laurent man started talking. He never shut up. The Laurent men and women were known for their mouths. Crime too. And behind our backs, many breathed legends of the Laurent men’s obsessions.

Giorgio was our youngest cousin. He was never meant to be in this life with us.

For my other cousins, our fathers had forced us into the Corsican at early ages. Louis had sold drugs around nine. His dad had gone off to prison and died years later. He’d been the main support for his mother as she cleaned floors and took care of six kids. Jean-Pierre and I trafficked drugs as kids. Our oldest cousin Pierre helped his dad in the brothel, cleaning up rooms and managing money. Now, he didn’t come around much anymore, enjoying his control over our operations in Montreal.

Basically, our fathers’ generation of Laurent were pieces of shit. Although Jean-Pierre and I would never admit to it.

Only Giorgio’s father represented the high quality of what a Laurent man could be. He was religious. He still worked with the Corsican, but on a spiritual level. He had a church that laundered money for several provinces in France, but he also made sure our men came to his church for guidance and a means to unload and repent.

Giorgio disrupted my reminiscing. “So, where are we going?”

“To Shalimar’s.”

He groaned.

“Come on.” I nudged his shoulder. “I’ll finally meet the chef and have her make you some croissants the correct way.”

“I would also like her to do a nice steak frites. Something simple. A fresh green salad with classic vinaigrette dressing, sliced steak with a Bearnaise sauce, and a set of crispy fries, but with pink Himalayan salt, if possible.”

“Yeah. Nice and simple. We’ll see if she’s fine with making it.”

“She usually does when I ask her too.”

“So, you go in the back of the restaurant and have my chef make special dishes for you?”

“I give her a special tip.”

“It better not be your cock!”

“I’m not going to fuck your chef. Would you relax? Since you’ve known Shalimar has been in Paris, you’ve been uptight and edgy.”

Edgy?

Giorgio and Jean-Pierre wanted me to relax and be patient as we figured this out. Meanwhile, neither man lived by their rules.

We were Laurent men. My grandfather, father, and uncles had been known for fighting in the streets to the death over their women. They loved close to the brinks of obsession. They protected them until their dying days. Many giving up their lives for the sake of love.

Being a Laurent had given me a sense of pride, but now I saw it as a curse. There was something about our genes that made us love too strong, made us need too much, and hunger for too long.

My cousins and I had all dealt with it in different ways. Jean-Pierre jumped over the cliff for love. He fully accepted the pain. The obsession. He took it on with no fear. When I looked at him, it made me yearn for that type of crazed love too.

Louis abstained from love altogether, barely having sex. It had been rumored that he hadn’t fucked in three years. I didn’t believe it. He flirted with anything in a skirt. Surely, he was banging some of them.

Giorgio shunned love completely. He fucked and frolicked wherever he went, but there was never a woman around for more than a few hours. None that had even lasted a day. And of course, there was his weird thing about maids.

Jean-Pierre guessed that Giorgio had lost his virginity to a maid and had been trying to relive the fantasy over and over. Giorgio’s father may have been pious in some ways, but he lived like a king. His family mansion could’ve fit all of our dad’s homes in it, and still had more space to build another place.

Religion made more dirty money than pussy and drugs. All three were a way for people to escape. And there was no stronger escape than the path of God and the confirmation of immortality. People paid dearly to hear another man tell them that they would live long after they died.

However, his father had a lot of gorgeous maids with black lace thigh highs, tiptoeing around the property in six-inch heels. They’d made us all crazy when we were teens.

Yeah. Giorgio definitely lost his virginity to one of those maids.

But, where did I stand as a Laurent man? Perhaps, I stood somewhere in the middle of them. I fucked and frolicked. I loved and obsessed. I abstained, when the darkness came.