Bennett Mafia
Chapter 44 - BENNETT MAFIA

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I had five days.

Five days of feeling Kai inside of me all night long. Five days where I'd wake and reach for him, where he'd roll inside of me or I would straddle him. Five days where we didn't leave the room until a late lunch. Meals were spent around a table, laughing, hearing stories from his siblings. Even Tanner began smiling halfway through the first day. Brooke loved cooking, so we enjoyed her gourmet meals-apparently she'd always wanted to be a chef.

Jonah left first, returning to his residency. He only had a few days' leeway, and his time was up.

Tanner was next, needing to return to the Vancouver home for the family business. I didn't ask what he did for them. No one offered that information.

Brooke, Kai, and I were left now.

Sitting up in bed, I glanced at the clock. It was a little after four in the morning, but I knew the other side of the bed was empty without looking. Rolling to the edge of the mattress, I tucked the sheet around my naked body.

Kai stood at the window, an arm braced against the wall beside the window frame. He wore sweatpants, which hung low on his hips. The full moon outside bounced off the lake, and I could see every muscle in his shirtless back. The shadows fell over them, gracefully showing me a path along his spine.

I moved to his side, the sheet trailing behind me, and he brought his arm to my waist, tucking me next to him.

"I woke you?"

I rested my head against his shoulder, feeling content and secure. "I don't know what woke me. What woke you?"

He was still gazing out the window. His hand tightened on my waist for a second. "I never fell asleep."

Something was wrong. "What's going on?"

Now he looked down, and I saw regret before he masked it. "I'm going to Milwaukee today."

We were still tucked in the northern end of Minnesota-only lakes and forest forever.

"You're driving?"

He shook his head. "There's a little airport thirty minutes away. We'll leave from there."

The moon cast half of him in shadow.

"You and Brooke are going to drive north, back to Vancouver."

"What? But-"

"It's safer that way."

Cord.

The plane accident.

He didn't want to risk us.

Fine. On that matter. But something else remained.

"I told you I would help with my father. Remember?"

He lifted his head back to the window. His jaw clenched. "We talked about this."

"Wha-"

"You." He rounded back to me. "Us. That changed everything." He pointed to the bed.

I fell quiet. How could my heart plunge in one second and soar in the next?

"He knows I'm alive. I want to see him."

"I'll bring him to you."

"Why are you going to Milwaukee?" I pulled out of his arms and faced him, folding my arms over my chest. The sheet rustled as I adjusted it.

"That's family business."

Which meant it wasn't my business. But I knew better.

"You're going to deal with my father, aren't you?"

He began to move away, but I grabbed his pants.

"You can't do that without me. It's my right."

"I said I would bring him to you."

He didn't get it. Or maybe he did. Suddenly, it felt so important to be there, to see him, to be the one to walk into a room when he wasn't expecting me. I wanted to make him feel unbalanced, to have him feel a small portion of the fear he'd put me through, put us through.

"Why are you doing this?" I choked out.

Kai's hand came to my arm, but I shrugged him off, stepping out of reach.

His tone was apologetic. "There are too many factors up in the air. I need Brooke away from Milwaukee. I need you away from Milwaukee. Your father knows about you. He's already tried once to get you. I can't run the risk-"

I shook my head. "This is total bullshit. You never said a word, but I know you caught the guy, whoever he'd embedded in your organization. You wouldn't have come back to me if you hadn't. It's safe for me again. You have a million guards. Your security team is unlike anything I've ever seen. You think twenty steps ahead. Don't tell me it's unsafe for me there, that you can't risk me "

"Because it's the truth!" He got in my face, backing me up. "I cannot risk you. I won't. I've had my mother taken from me. My brother. I won't risk anyone else, and I won't apologize for that. I care about you. Whether it's rational or not, I won't chance losing you."

That stopped me cold.

I was angry, determined, I wanted to fight to go with him, to have my own vengeance, but hearing this, hearing him-I blinked back sudden tears.

He gentled his tone. "If there's even a chance he could get to you, do you know what I would do?" He moved closer, his hands finding my arms, circling to my back. He pulled me to his chest and tucked my head under his chin. I felt his voice vibrate through his chest. "I would rain hell over everyone connected to your father."

A shiver went down my back.

"I am not the good guy here. I am everything you've ever called me. I'm a murderer. I'm a bastard. I'm ruthless. I'm calculating. I will kill everyone your father holds dear, everyone who has helped your father, and I will relish it." He pulled back, tipping my head to meet his gaze.

What I saw there doubled my shiver.

Death.

He was promising it to me.

"I will not gamble with the lives of those I care about, and you're one of them now." He stepped back, his hands leaving me, and I was suddenly chilled to the bone.

His head lowered, and his eyes locked with mine. "You are not coming with me."

Got it? I felt the sentiment, but he didn't say the words.

He didn't say anything else as he went to the closet and pulled on a shirt, then a sweatshirt. He didn't say a word as he finished dressing and picked up the phone by the bed. "I'm ready," he said into the phone.

He paused, looking at me.

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't fight him. He wasn't going to budge on this matter.

The door clicked shut behind him, soft but final.

...

The door opened again ten minutes later, but it was Brooke who slipped through.

I tightened my hold on the sheets. "Wha-"

"We have one hour, literally one hour."

"What are you talking about?"

She moved inside, and I was able to see her better-hair pulled into a low ponytail, dressed all in black, even her runners. Brooke always smelled of perfume, but today she smelled of nothing. Not even soap.

She pulled her backpack off and opened the front pocket. Dumping passports, phones, and money, she pointed at it. "Kai is leaving for Milwaukee, and whether Levi is going too or if he's being shipped in a different vehicle, I don't care. I just know my man is with him, and whatever move he's making with the man I love, I'm going to be there."

She looked at me. "You can make people disappear. It's your turn to disappear, and you're taking me with you."

"But..." I was already looking through everything she'd dumped on the bed.

We had different IDs. Plenty of cash. I stopped counting after I saw ten rolls of hundreds. I picked up one of the phones. "Burners?"

"You got it." She folded her arms over her chest, raising her chin.

My mind raced, but I wanted to go.

Something sparked inside of me.

This. This was right.

This was what I did.

"Your brother has people in the Network. We can't call them."

"Already on it." She pulled out her phone and showed me a screen of text messages.

I recognized an alias Blade had used one time. Just once. It'd been him, Carol, and me, and we'd snuck out to a nightclub and didn't want the Network to know. He was a goddamn genius.

I felt myself smiling.

"I'm in."

She looked up and made a praying motion. "Thank God." A quick squeal, and she was on her phone. "Okay, your friend is two miles from here to pick us up. We need to trek two miles through the woods in an hour." "Why an hour?"

I was off, running to the closet to change. There was no time for modesty. Brooke was about to see me naked, and I tore through the clothes, throwing them into the room.

"You have a bag for me too?" I called.

"Of course."

"Put those in there."

"Okay."

I felt my heart in my throat. The clock had started ticking the second Brooke entered the room. I was wasting time, and we needed all the time we could get.

I pulled on a shirt. "You work out?"

"Yes..."

I held back a groan. She sounded hesitant. "What do you do for conditioning?"

"I swim. Sometimes." She snorted. "Hardly ever."

Fuck. If it was just me, I'd run there in under twenty minutes, give or take a few because of the foreign terrain.

Which reminded me, "Why an hour, Brooke?"

"Because that's all the time we have before the next shift of guards switches at the security cameras."

I wasn't going to ask.

Shit.

I had to know. "What happened to the other guards?"

"I might've drugged 'em."

I paused, one second, then yanked on my pants. Socks. Shoes. I had an extra set of clothes in the bag now.

"And I gave one an entire bottle of laxatives."

"What?!" I popped my head out.

She cringed, standing with both bags over her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure he'll have to go to the hospital." She brightened up. "But bonus! That might help us."

I glared. "No, it won't. Protocol will be to check on both of us before they dispatch a team to the hospital. We have less than an hour now."

"How long do you think?"

I led the way to the back patio. I paused before opening the door. "It depends on when someone finds him or he finally calls for help."

"Oh." She cringed.

"What?"

She dug inside her bag and pulled out a radio. "I figured we could use it to listen to them."

Oh. My-I grabbed her face and kissed her on the cheek. "Sweet Jesus, you're brilliant."

She shrugged. "Just tried to think what you'd do. You helped me the first time, so I thought we could help each other this time."

I took a breath. I didn't think the door was alarmed. I had stepped outside the other day and nothing happened. Then again, Kai had been with me, but it was now or never. Outside was our best shot. We'd run into guards inside. "Wait." Brooke pulled out her phone and showed me a map. "This is where we're supposed to meet your friend."

"Okay." I showed her as much as I could. "There's a small window outside here where I never saw a guard walking. We'll have to go north, then swing to the right."

"I'm ready." She gave me a nod, letting out a breath. Her bottom lip trembled, but we weren't running for our lives here. We weren't running for freedom, not really. We were running to follow Kai to Milwaukee. There was irony in there somewhere, and I was sure I'd laugh about it someday. Just not right now.

I opened that door, and we headed out.