Bennett Mafia
Chapter 48 - BENNETT MAFIA

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

I didn't have a full plan.

The first day I got to Milwaukee, I set myself up at a B&B-one where I had my own exit and entrance-before I hit up a library and forged a new library card. Fake name, fake address, everything fake, but it worked. I got the card. That got me access to the library's internet, and from there, I searched for my father.

I wasn't going to search for Kai. I worried if I did then he'd find me instead. My dad was the next thing. I was going radio silent with everyone else, at least until I knew for sure what I wanted to do here.

The first article that popped up was an event my dad would be attending in two days.

The second was my obituary.

Prominent local tycoon's wife and daughter both dead. Authorities are investigating. Jesus. I felt sucker-punched.

Clicking it, I read the story of my car accident, and how my mother's own car accident six months earlier was now looking suspect. The fucker had been investigated. Good. I felt some satisfaction. He deserved it. He deserved that and more, so much more.

There was a small write-up on my funeral. These were all articles I never could bring myself to search for and Blade never offered to get for me. But I saw the picture of my father grieving. He had a hand to his face, his head bent like he was crying, and a woman I didn't recognize trying to console him.

He was faking it.

My father never cried. Ever. I wondered once if he even had tear ducts.

I got out of there, clicking on other articles.

There were more than I expected. He had gotten national coverage too; and his mafia connection was mentioned in both national stories. No doubt it was the reason for the articles in the first place.

My throat thickened, just thinking about him, about the reason for those articles in the first place. My mother.

It still hurt. I thought I was over it, that everything had been pushed into the right categories and boxes and I was this professional, no-emotions operative. But that wasn't the case. It all swept up in me again.

I usually felt the hatred. That was never far away when I thought about my father, but today, looking at his face, his name, and remembering that time, I felt mostly just pain.

By the time I left and went back to the B&B, I had a plan formulated, and I picked up the phone in my room. I dialed the number at the house we'd most recently stayed at since I didn't have any other number on hand. "Hello?" Tanner answered.

"You have my number?" I didn't introduce myself. He would know. I didn't wait for a response. "I'm going to hang up.'

There was no hesitation. "Okay. Brooke's ankle is fine, by the way."

I paused, then put the phone back on the base.

I didn't know how long it would take, but I watched the clock and began counting.

It took twenty-three minutes.

Knock, knock! "Let me in. Now."

I let out a sigh, stood, and opened the door. I stepped back, seeing Kai's tight features glaring back at me.

I pressed my hands together. "The door wasn't locked."

He moved inside and shut it with a kick.

I'd expected him to come to me, to reach out, touch me. He did nothing. He remained just inside the door.

"It has to be your decision," he growled. "Everything has to be your decision."

His eyes were hard, his mouth pressed in a flat line.

He. Was. Pissed.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

Oh boy.

His eyes were locked on me, unmoving.

I swallowed. "A day."

He shook his head. "A day. You've been here a full fucking day?"

Well, it was closer to a day and a half with the traveling included, but I didn't think he cared about that.

"How did you get here?"

I gave him a look. "Are you kidding?"

"No, I'm not! I'm not fucking kidding. How did you get here?"

"My job is to help people disappear. That is what I do, what I'm good at. You do mafia shit. That's what you're good at."

"I'm good at keeping my family safe. That's what I'm good at."

"Come on. I mean, did you really think I wouldn't get here? You really thought I would let you confront my father without me? He's my dad. Mine." "And he deserves to die."

He was growling, nearly shouting, but he rubbed a hand over his jaw. He was trying to calm down. He looked down. "You flew, didn't you?" Aw shit. "Yes."

"Goddammit, Riley!" Back to shouting.

I had to take a step back.

He wasn't moving, but it didn't matter. The air writhed around him, his words like punches. Everything was tense and riddled with fury.

Stark shadows fell over his face, making his cheekbones prominent and unyielding.

"Why are you mad?" I asked.

"I'm mad because I give a shit about you." His hand went to his hair, running briskly through it. "Maybe it's irrational, but my loved ones don't fly. It's my rule. It's the one thing I held on to when I took my father's position. Everything else I gave up. Everything. People I cared about, friends, girlfriends. School. A normal life. All of it was gone the second I took the head council position. It fucking matters, and it's one small way I'm reassured my family members are alive. You have a shot at living if your car is tampered with. There's no shot with a plane once it's in the air. No shot."

He cared about me.

His loved ones.

And his girlfriends.

It was petty of me, but...girlfriends? More than one?

His hands went to his hips, clearly frustrated. Bent, broken, but still here. Still standing. Still in the room with me.

"Brooke thinks our mother died from an illness. She didn't." His now-tired eyes flicked up to mine. Pain flared there. "Our father killed her, and he didn't act alone. I've never told anyone in the family this."

"How'd she die?"

"With her lover." His nostrils flared. "With Cord's father."

Oh-OH! My mouth fell open.

Kai sat on the edge of my bed, resting his elbows on his knees. He stared at the floor. "I was told by a source that her lover's family killed them both. They're a member of the council as well. And I've never been able to prove it, but my father helped. I know he did."

"No one knows?" I sat next to him, wanting to touch him, comfort him.

He gave me a look. "Not about Cord, but come on. Jonah doesn't look like us. It's obvious she was a cheater. And who could blame her? Her husband was a monster."

I winced, hearing my own thoughts flung back at me, words I had spoken before too.

He stood, pacing the room. "Fuck. I don't even know why I'm telling you this." He stopped suddenly and shot me a heated look, one filled with anger and loathing and worry.

The worry got to me, melting me. His tone, not so much.

"I don't care where you decide to go. I honestly don't, as long as you're safe. You're not a captive, even though you snuck out like one. If you and Brooke had demanded to come to Milwaukee, what'd you think I would've done?" "Taken away our phones and kept us locked away in a log mansion?"

His mouth closed with a snap. "Yeah. I see your point, but you're not Brooke. You don't have a boyfriend that could fuck everything up for this family like she does. You have a logical head on your shoulders. Brooke would get pickpocketed by teenagers at the mall if she didn't have guards. That's actually happened. She has no life skills. You saw what house we found her in."

Yes. The house he had exploded.

He did care. He did love.

He was angry with me about flying. He was telling me about his mom. He connected them together, somehow. A way to lose me, another person he lost. I was going with caution, but I had a gut feeling here.

He needed to talk, if even for this one time.

"You said your mom died with her lover, but how exactly did she die?"

He closed his eyes, his head falling back. He let out a soft "shit."

I waited. Instinct told me to wait, to be quiet, to let him fill the space.

"They made it look like a mugging. A random fucking act of crime, but it wasn't. She was stabbed three times, once in the throat, and the knife lodged in the side of her skull."

Holy fuck.

He didn't move, his eyes fixed on a point in the wall. Unmoving. Unseeing. "The guy bled out. They nicked an artery to make it slow and painful. Their wallets were gone. That's how they got it classified as a mugging gone wrong, but it was an execution. The only better way to have done it was a bullet to the forehead, have them on their fucking knees, but they didn't go that route. I don't know why. No one was fooled, except maybe my siblings."

I itched to move closer to him, to touch his arm, his side. "How do your siblings think she died?"

The smile he gave me was ugly. My soul cringed.

"Sudden-onset cancer."

I almost choked. "Are you serious?"

"My dad set up a doctor's appointment, sans my mother. The doctor showed him a file, told everyone about the diagnosis, and she was 'whisked off' to hospice. She was supposedly dead days later." He shook his head. "She'd been in the fucking morgue the whole time, her body on ice until the funeral."

My head swam. For him. For his mother. For Brooke, and the rest.

"I'm "

He turned to look at me. "Do not pity me. Don't you fucking dare." His eyes flared with hatred, but it wasn't for me. I knew that. It still felt like another punch, though, almost as bad as seeing my dad's articles earlier. "This is how we die in my family," he seethed. "Violently. Harshly. Cord's death was made to look like a plane accident. I made my dad's look like it was natural causes. My mom's was a mugging. The end is the same. We die. You want to be here? You want to be a part of this? You want to be locked in like I am? Because the end is the same. No matter what. Today. Tomorrow. Ten years from now. Twenty, if you're lucky. The end is the same. Someone will decide they want you dead, and it'll happen. In this life, we wish for natural causes. I would love to die in my sleep, or even from an accident, as long as it's a true accident. I don't want to die because of someone else's calculations, but I have a hard time imagining I'll get that lucky."

I narrowed my eyes at him. For once, I wasn't cringing, flinching, biting back sympathy.

I rose to my feet, slowly, and locked my chin in place. "Who do you think you're talking to?" Did he really not remember? "My father used to beat my mother on a weekly basis, sometimes daily. I was sent away to Hillcrest because she feared he'd get me too. He wanted her dead. Remember? He would've killed me. You said it before, he'll probably do the same to my cousin one day. I was born in darkness just as much as you. Maybe yours is darker, I don't know, but it's not like I ever decided to be normal. I didn't like the 'light' life. I helped others disappear too. What do you think we see when we find them? Those people are at their lowest. They're fighting for their lives. And we've been too late. Have I told you about those times?"

My voice sounded dull, echoing inside of me.

I kept on, though. He had to hear this. "Girls who got away from their pimps, who called for help. We get to a lot of them too late. We find their bodies. Or we show up to an empty hotel and get word a week later their body was identified in the morgue. Trafficked girls too. It's not just rich assholes we save people from. It's all walks of life. Girls who left home trying to get away from an abusive father or mother, get lured in by the promise of easy money, and get hooked on drugs. Prostitution. It's those too." I stepped toward him, my voice soft as silk. "Those girls you turn a blind eye to, who are trafficked in your territory, in your country. Those girls."

He watched me come toward him, his gaze matching my tone. Like a loving snake waiting to pounce.

"What would you like me to do in those situations?" he asked.

"Stop them." Easy. "Make that go away."

"Just like that?" He gave me a hollow laugh. "You don't know anything, do you, little girl?"

Oh, that fucker.

"I know the reason you reacted so violently to those people Brooke was staying with was because you recognized the signs." This was the ace up my sleeve.

I stood almost toe-to-toe with him. "I know she was being groomed, and she didn't even know it. She was living in that filth. It would've taken one bored night where she went upstairs and had a drink with them. One drink. One drug. A second night of drugs. More and more until she forgot why she was with them in the first place, until she was desperate and would've done anything. Or she would've started while she was high, out of it enough where they could use a camera on her. Right?"

I reached out, my heart jumping all over the place, but my arm steady.

I shouldn't have, but I touched his chest.

His heart was racing just like mine, unsteady and erratic. Out of control.

I licked my lips and stared at his chest as it rose and fell under my palm. "You said no one was in the house, but that wasn't true, was it?" I didn't wait for the answer. I didn't need it this time. "You had those people killed, and you burned down the house to destroy the evidence." My eyes lifted to his now. "Didn't you?"

He stared right into me, slipping past my walls, my barriers to see me naked and stripped bare for him. But I saw him, just as much as he saw me.

Slowly, he reached up until his hand curled around my neck.

He pulled me close, crushing my hand between us, and as he bent for my lips, he said, so softly, "You're goddamn right I did. And I'd do it again." Then his mouth fused with mine.