Bennett Mafia
Chapter 9 - BENNETT MAFIA

CHAPTER

EIGHT

I didn't see where the Master of the Bennett Universe went, but Tanner went up the stairs, surrounded by guards. Another two waited for me, and as I started up after him, two more moved in behind me.

They led me into a grand entryway with white marble flooring. Flecks of gold nestled within the rock, which matched a fountain off to one side. The underside of the fountain shimmered gold as well. A large, white-carpeted staircase circled around, curving upward, and that's where my guards seemed to be taking me.

Tanner ignored me, disappearing somewhere farther into the house.

My guards and I kept going, all the way to the fourth floor and down a long hallway, then up another set of stairs until I felt I was in a whole other wing. We passed through a glass-encased walkway that led us from the main home into the second building, and then up another set of stairs. I tried to keep track of where we were going, but it was getting harder the farther we went.

They led me into a back hallway that rounded the second home and up one last set of stairs. A granite wall stood in front of us, and a guard pressed his earpiece, saying, "Here."

An unlocking sound clicked, and a door opened for us. We went inside, and I knew this was my prison.

Though, for a prison, it was a nice one.

It was an entire apartment, really. Sleek and modern with black countertops in the kitchen and a dark oak dining table. The couches in the living room were black leather, sitting on a white rug, in front of a television that looked more like a small movie screen. The bathroom had an oval drop-in sink of black glass, with the same hints of gold from the entrance. A chandelier hung high over the kitchen table.

A doorway led into a room past the living room, and I could see the corner of a bed there. A sheepskin had been laid across the edge, creating a scene that could've been photographed for an interior design magazine. Two of my guards stood to the side of the door, and the other two positioned themselves outside.

I didn't ask questions, and none of them said anything.

I felt it in my bones: I was waiting for Kai Bennett.

I knew I wouldn't be able to find an escape route from the apartment. But I still looked around to get my bearings.

Inside the bedroom was a king-sized bed, and a wrap-around deck beyond two sliding glass doors. As I stepped out onto it, my heart sank.

There was nothing for me to climb onto if I wanted to make my way down. The fall could've fit a thirty-eight-floor hotel, and I could see rocky terrain at the bottom. It was a rock-climber's dream, or challenge, but not mine. "Gonna jump?"

I jerked, my hands clenching the railing as his smooth voice slid down my spine. It awakened all my nerve endings, and I gritted my teeth, hating how I reacted to him. Those were the first two words he'd spoken to me in fourteen years, making four in total now.

I didn't know this guy. Why did I react to him this way?

Turning around, I found Kai standing just inside the bedroom doorway, his head cocked to the side as if he found me a puzzle.

I'd seen it before, but his presence was like a punch to my sternum. He'd been devastatingly handsome at sixteen and he was even more so now, and that set my teeth on edge.

Dressed in a business suit, the shirt unbuttoned and the ends pulled loose from his pants, he had bare feet. He looked as if this trip to see me was the last thing he had to do before relaxing completely, as if I were an afterthought. Then he shrugged off his suit jacket and shirt, catching the collars of both and tossing them on the bed. He turned to the closet behind him, which opened to showcase an array of men's clothes. My mouth dried.

This was his bedroom.

Was it?

I glanced to a second closet, wondering if I'd find women's clothes in there or more of his.

He brought out a T-shirt and pulled it on. It molded to him, revealing broad shoulders and a lean waist that had been trimmed down to a core of solid muscle.

His hands dropped to his belt buckle, and I pulled my gaze away and turned around.

Reaching out to steady myself on the railing, I heard his pants drop to the ground. My fingers clutched the steel railing, my nails digging into it.

"So are you?"

I hadn't heard him move, but his voice was closer. I turned again to find him fully clothed, wearing a pair of dark gray sweatpants that molded to his bottom half the way his shirt did to the top.

He motioned to me. "Come on. I'm tired, and I don't want to have this talk worrying my little sister's dear friend might jump to her death." He snorted to himself. "She'd really be furious with me then." There was a twinge in his voice. Exhaustion? I heard it now. I followed him, at a reluctant pace, as he went to the bedroom's far wall and pushed a button.

Two doors slid open, revealing an entire bar built into the wall. As he poured a glass of bourbon, I saw the slope in his shoulders. There were bags under his eyes, and a tired softness around the corners of his mouth. I really was an afterthought for him. He'd been somewhere else, doing something else, and whatever it had been had tired him out.

The power and charisma he exuded was still there; it was just slightly diminished. Slightly.

He was dangerous. I felt zapped by his energy, and as I moved into the main room with him, that zap just grew. He sucked the air out of wherever he was so much that my insides started to feel his same exhaustion. "Are you going to speak, or do I need to test your vocal chords a different way?" he asked, swinging his heated eyes my way. His nostrils flared as his hand tightened on his glass. "Hmm?"

Make them underestimate you.

My Hider training kicked in, and I lowered my gaze.

I didn't like the storm inside of me. I was all over the place-feeling enraged, then heated, then other things, but rounding back to hate. I needed him to view me as submissive, timid, so even though my neck tightened so much I could barely move, I forced myself to look at the ground.

The goddamn ground.

This guy he didn't deserve having me look down before him.

I knew he'd had thousands killed for the Bennett family. He'd murdered his older brother. And Brooke had never said anything, but I didn't believe for a millisecond that their father had died in his sleep. Kai had killed him too.

He was a murderer, and he was behind so many girls being trafficked, behind millions of dollars of drugs moving through his territories he didn't deserve anything from me.

He deserved to be killed. And if he was the reason for Brooke's disappearance, I was going to be the one to do it.

I would cut him from dick to throat, in that direction too.

He snorted again, this time with a twinge of genuine amusement. "Don't kid yourself, and don't insult me, Riley Bello. You don't have a timid bone in your body. If you did..."

He started for me, and I couldn't help myself. I raised my head, and I couldn't look away.

"You wouldn't be a Hider for the 411 Network," he finished softly.

My worst nightmare.

He droned on, sounding almost bored, "You were recruited into their network when your father murdered your mother. Six months after I pulled Brooke from Hillcrest, they told you your mother was missing, but you knew. You knew what happened to her when you went home the next day."

I was frozen.

"You went to her funeral. You sat beside your father, but you knew the whole time he'd killed her, because that's what he did. He hurt her. It's why you were sent away, so he wouldn't hurt you too. Am I correct?"

I felt sick.

"Their recruiter agents approached you when you were shopping. It was the day after you'd buried your mother in an empty casket. You were at the mall with two of your friends, or two girls your father had deemed appropriate for you. You didn't even know them, but they were daughters of his colleagues, and you didn't like them. Am I correct?"

I couldn't look away. I couldn't stop listening. I couldn't do anything as he stripped my world right in front of me.

He knew everything.

How did he Brooke. Brooke must've told him.

He tossed back the rest of his drink. "That was the day you decided to leave, not because he killed your mother, and not because you knew you'd be next, but because they told you the real truth." His eyes flashed at me, an unnamed emotion there. "Your mother was still alive."

I couldn't even swallow.

"How "I managed to say. "How do you know this?"

"I'm not done, little girl." A glint of cruelty gleamed at me from his eyes. "Your father did beat your mother," he sneered. "He did believe he'd killed her. He did order her body to be disposed of, but it was a 411 agent he sent to do it. He believes your mother was thrown to the bottom of a cliff and her body swept out to sea, when instead, she was hidden by the 411 Network. And when they asked you to join them that day in the mall, you said yes so fast you never stopped to think what would happen to anyone you left behind."

My gut twisted.

A flame flickered to life.

"What are you talking about?" I demanded.

He yawned-he goddamn yawned and went over to the cupboard to pour himself a second glass of bourbon.

He spoke with his back turned to me. "You haven't checked in with your father recently, have you?"

I narrowed my eyes. What was he talking about? Blade would've

"Your friend Blade never told you..."

A knife plunged into my chest, hearing him say Blade's name.

Kai turned back around, holding his glass in front of him. He leaned back against the wall, his eyes locked on mine. "...because he didn't want you to leave your location, and he knew you would." "What are you talking about?"

"Your mother had family."

My aunt. My cousin. I had an uncle too.

I shook my head. "But they-"

They hated my father. They blamed him for her death. I knew they did.

"You had a cousin. Do you remember her? She's your age, Brooke's age."

Tawnia. I didn't know her that well. My mother had kept us away from her family, more for their safety than ours.

"No. What are you saying? My aunt hated my father."

"She did. But she didn't convey that adequately to your cousin."

Was he...no. No.

I didn't want to think about what Kai might be inferring. There was no way.

"My aunt would never allow that," I hissed.

"Your aunt is dead."

He said that in the same tone he'd used when he told me to leave Brooke alone.

"She's fine." "Your aunt is dead." Both statements meant nothing to him.

"Fuck you."

He shrugged. "Maybe later." He drank from his glass. "I brought you here for two reasons. One, a trade. You tell me where my sister is, and I'll help with your cousin." Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. He was serious.

"What exactly are you saying about my father and my cousin?" I eyed him warily.

He finished his drink and set the glass beside him on the counter. "Your cousin didn't believe your father murdered his wife. She believes your father lost his wife because she ran from him. She believes his daughter was so distraught at being abandoned that you got drunk and caused the car accident that supposedly burned your body to oblivion minus the few traces of DNA left behind. She believes your father is someone to feel pity for, and that he is loving, and kind, and softhearted, and rich. Your father preyed on your cousin, and I'm sure he enjoys the close resemblance she bears to his daughter and wife."

My father was a monster, but so was the man standing in front of me. He was just as much a monster as Bruce Bello.

"You're sick. You and him both."

He stared at me, not moving an inch. An uneasy feeling traced up my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt as if I had baited a cobra.

But Kai just nodded toward the door.

"Enough. We'll continue our talk tomorrow."

No one else was in the room. I hadn't noticed the absence of guards until now. But as he spoke, the door opened and Tanner walked in.

"Take her to her room," Kai told him. "She's to stay there until I come for her."

My lips parted.

The way he said that, I felt a bolt of fear slice through me, but then Tanner was next to me. He took my arm, leading me out as I stumbled over my feet, feeling numb. I hadn't felt this emotion for a long time, not since my father.

"Wait." I had to know. Just as Tanner was about to walk me out of Kai's apartment, I turned back. "How?"

How is he going to help with my cousin?

A glimmer of a smile taunted me. "I'll have him killed."