Rules of Bennett Read online

  By Ember Michaels

  RULES OF BENNETT

  Copyright © 2019 by Ember Michaels

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher listed above, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or purely coincidental.

  Cover designed by Laura Hidalgo of Spellbinding Design

  Editing and proofreading by Victoria of Edits By V

  My mother once told me that I couldn’t be saved, that some people were just born to walk down a path of darkness. It wasn’t until years later that I understood what she meant.

  You couldn’t save the devil.

  “We’re here, boss. Where do you want him?” Bruce said over the phone. I looked at the screen in front of me to see him pull up in the alley on the side of the club, waiting on instructions.

  “Bring him to the basement. Just make it seem like a regular meeting. Did you activate the audio jammer?”

  “Yep. Did it as soon as I approached him just in case he was wearing a wire. Didn’t need anyone to know where we were going or the last person he was with.”

  “Very good. Bring him on in then. I don’t have all night,” I said and hung up.

  The loud bass from Club Secrets, one of many clubs my family owned, vibrated around me in the damp, humid space. It was such irony that while life thrived upstairs, many ended downstairs in this very basement. Sometimes I wondered how people would feel if they knew that people were strangled, burned with acid, shot, and mutilated down here while they danced the night away.

  “Stop fucking pushing me, you fucker! I can walk perfectly fine!” I heard outside the door.

  I pulled another audio jammer off of the shelf and placed it on the old wooden desk, flipping it on as soon as Joseph and Bruce walked through the door. I nodded to Khalil “KC” Swanson and when the door closed, Joseph looked back at it when the heavy lock clicked from the outside.

  “What’s with the locked door?” he asked, pointing back at the door with his thumb.

  “Just a precaution. We have some important shit to discuss and I don’t want people walking in who shouldn’t hear about it,” I said, leaning against the desk. “Have a seat.”

  He slowly made his way over to the single wooden chair in front of me and sat, his beady black eyes traveling between Bruce and me.

  “Hopefully this meeting won’t take too long. I have a hot blonde waiting for me,” he said with a nervous chuckle. I folded my arms across my chest with a grin.

  “It won’t take long at all. Let’s go ahead and get started then.” I pointed at his shirt. “Get rid of that.”

  He looked down and then back up at me. “What? For what?”

  “You of all people know that I don’t like repeating myself, Joe. You want to get back to that blonde, don’t you?” I asked with a raised brow.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat when he swallowed. “I mean is there a reason why?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No shit, Sherlock. I damn sure don’t want to see your beer belly for fun,” I ground out as I pulled the gun from my waist band. “Get rid of the fucking shirt.”

  He took his time pulling the bottom of his shirt out of his jeans, going so slow that I couldn’t stand to continue watching him.

  “Bruce, get the fucking shirt off,” I finally said. Bruce wasted no time ripping the man’s shirt from his body, revealing what I suspected all along.

  I tsked and shook my head. “A wire, Joe? I thought you were better than that. I never took you to be a snitch.”

  “It’s not what you think, Benny, I swear. Some asshole just put it on me and—”

  “Who’s Detective Olive?” I interrupted.

  His mouth opened and closed for a few moments. “I-I don’t know any Detective Olive,” he stammered.

  I chuckled and picked up the manila envelope on the desk. “It seems like you do,” I stated. Joseph’s face fell when I pulled out a picture of him and the cop taken from the camera that was in the interrogating room. “There’s actually a lot of pictures like these with your little cop friend.”

  When I dropped the folder of photos to his feet, he scrambled down and grabbed them, looking at them with wide eyes. Checkmate.

  “Come on, Benny! You got it all wrong! You know I’d never betray you,” Joseph babbled, shuffling through all the pictures.

  Just looking at the man before me made me want to put a bullet between his eyes and get it over with. But no, I had to make him suffer like he’d made my business suffer for months while we all tried to figure out who was ratting us out. When people threatened my freedom or stopped my cashflow, I made them pay with their blood.

  “Never betray me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “So someone Photoshopped those pictures to put you in them?”

  “I don’t know what they did, but I know I’m not a fucking rat,” he hissed.

  I raised an eyebrow and gestured to the wire he still wore. “Then why the fuck are you wired, Joseph?” I asked.

  He swallowed, a bead of sweat rolling down his bald head. “Starfish,” he murmured, never looking away from me. When nothing happened, he repeated it a little louder. “Starfish!”

  “Let me guess, that’s your code word to tell your cop friends that you’re in trouble,” I said with a smirk. They can’t even hear this conversation right now. Did you think I didn’t know beforehand? I was prepared before you even knew you were coming here.”

  His gaze followed my hand into my pocket as I pulled out a small tape player. “You want to take a guess on what could be on this tape I have?”

  “Whatever it is, I swear it wasn’t me! Somebody’s trying to set me up!” he exclaimed.

  “Set you up, huh? Well, let’s see what you said on this tape,” I said and pressed play. The small basement filled with Joseph’s voice as he divulged into my family’s business affairs. Human trafficking, prostitution, gun smuggling. He told them of people we’d murdered and how we washed our money through legitimate businesses. As we all listened, Joe only lowered his head and shook it.

  I looked to Bruce. “That sounds a lot like Joe, yeah?”

  “Sounds like him to me,” the large man a few feet away as he glared down at Joseph.

  “My father and I thought we could trust you, Joe,” I said with a shake of my head before coming to a stop before him. “You were my third in command. After all my family has done for you, you thank us by fucking us over and snitching to the cops?”

  “Bennett, I swear to you, man. I’d never do that to you. You’re my family!” he exclaimed.

  “You know there’s nothing I hate more than a snitch and a liar. And you turned out to be both,” I stated, my voice even as I lowered my gun and shot him in the knee.

  “Shit! Bennett, please man! You don’t have to do this!” he wailed, clutching his wounded knee.

  It was interesting to watch what fear did to a grown man. Watching them beg. Plead. Turn into a little bitch when I held their life in my hands. The thumping bass from the club above us reminded them of the inevitable. No one would hear them scream. No one would call for help.

  No one would save them.

  “My first thought was to just put a bullet in the center of your face, but I had a change of heart. We were friends after all,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “So I’m going to give you a choice.�
�

  “What fucking choice? It’s not like you’re going to let me walk out of here alive,” he growled.

  “Now what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t give that choice to you?” I mused with a grin. “Actually, I want to play a little game. Let’s call it….would you rather?”

  “Just get on with it, Bennett,” he wailed, the pain starting to really settle in.

  “Okay then.” I put the gun down on the desk as Bruce walked over and handed me a small glass box. “Would you rather eat a Carolina Reaper pepper or take two more bullets? And think smart because they both have their consequences.”

  “The pepper! I’ll take the fucking pepper!”

  “Are you positive? I mean this is the world’s hottest pepper we’re talking about here—”

  “It’ll hurt a lot less than being shot two more fucking times,” he snapped. I raised my hands with a grin.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “Pepper it is. As long as you eat the whole thing, I’ll let you walk free.”

  He looked up at me. “Are you fucking with me, Bennett? You’ll really let me walk out of here after what happened?”

  How fucking pathetic.

  Even when looking death in the face, he still had hope that he’d get to leave this basement alive. As many times as he’d been down here to assist me in my “meetings,” he should’ve known how this would work. No one that was brought to a meeting left out of here alive, no matter how close we were.

  “Sure. You eat the pepper and I’ll let you out of here. But if you keep talking with the police, you won’t get a second chance.”

  “I swear it won’t ever happen again, Benny. I can promise you that,” he exclaimed. I fought the urge to laugh. Him snitching after tonight was the least of my worries.

  I opened the glass box, looking away from it when the smell alone made my eyes water. Picking it up by the stem, I held it out to Joseph.

  “Open up.”

  He hesitated for a moment, wrinkling his nose when the heat of the pepper slapped him in the face. I watched him as he blew out a breath and finally bit the pepper off the stem.

  At first, nothing happened. I was almost convinced that my added surprise hadn’t worked. But then his face turned red as he grabbed his throat, coughing. Leaning against the desk, I grinned at him as he gasped and coughed, clawing at his throat.

  “What the fuck, Bennett?” he wheezed in between coughing.

  “There was one teeny, tiny detail I left out, buddy,” I teased. “While you’re actually eating a Carolina Reaper pepper, I injected a little bit of pure capsaicin into it for extra ‘kick.’”

  “I can’t….breathe….” he panted, his eyes darting around the room.

  “Did you know that pure capsaicin is at the top of the Scoville Chile heat chart? In fact, it’s so hot that it isn’t recommended for human consumption,” I started, ignoring his pleas.

  “Bennett….please….”

  “It’s so hot that it causes your body to have a violent reaction to it in order to protect itself. To protect the rest of the layers in your mouth, you get blisters in the places the capsaicin touched.” I paused and looked down at him with a bright smile. “That’s why it’s hard for you to breathe.”

  Joseph’s black eyes bulged out of his head as blood dripped from his mouth. His tongue and the inner part of his lips were covered in red blisters as he coughed and gagged. There was nothing more satisfying than watching the rat die a slow death.

  I squatted down in front of him. “I always told you that mouth of yours would get you killed,” I said, just as he fell off the chair and onto the floor. His body jerked violently as bloody foam came out of his mouth, his eyes bulging so far out of his head that I thought they’d pop out. “You can’t win when you play games with the devil. Save a seat for me in Hell.”

  Bruce and I watched until he took his final twitches, blood pooling from his mouth.

  “You’re getting more and more creative when it comes to killing people,” Bruce mused.

  “I have to say I’m pretty impressed myself,” I said with a chuckle just as my phone rang. “Get rid of the body, will ya?”

  “Will do,” Bruce said and got to work.

  I took a few steps away from him and retrieved my phone from my pocket, seeing my father’s name on the screen.

  “Yeah,” I said upon answering.

  “Has it been taken care of?” he asked, skipping the formalities.

  I glanced back to see Bruce wrapping Joseph up in a black tarp. “Don’t I always take care of things?”

  “Very well. You’ll be paid handsomely for getting rid of the rat, but now we have another issue.”

  “Well, I’m on a roll tonight, so what’s up?”

  “Come to my office. There’s too much that can’t be said over the phone.”

  “Okay then. I’ll be there as soon as I clean up here,” I said and hung up.

  Bruce looked up at me. “Everything cool?” he asked.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. When it came to meetings with my father, they always made me nervous. You never knew if you were on his good or bad side and he rarely invited people to his home office. Even while growing up, I was never allowed in his office. Hopefully my night wouldn’t end like Joseph’s when I got there.

  “Yeah. Let’s hurry up and wrap this up though. Gotta meet with Command.”

  *

  Walking into the mansion I grew up in was bitter sweet. While there were good memories, there were so many more bad ones. Once upon a time, my mother and baby sister made this place brighter despite the darkness looming around my father. But soon enough, the darkness swallowed them too, along with my innocence.

  I fought the urge to look at the winding staircase in the foyer, but it didn’t stop the flashbacks of my mother’s body laying on them with a gunshot wound in the center of her forehead with my bloodied sister in her arms. The day my mother and sister were gunned down was the day the innocent Bennett died. I was now nothing but a shell of pain and anger, reborn from death, darkness, and destruction.

  “Mr. Moreno, your father will see you now,” a voice said, breaking me out of my painful memories. I turned to see Yolanda, my father’s housekeeper, standing in the hallway, waiting for me to follow her.

  I pushed the thoughts of carnage from my mind and followed her down the hall to my father’s office.

  How he could still live in this house after what’d happened was beyond me. I’d booked it out of here as soon as I made enough money to buy my own. He always told me that people had their own ways of dealing with grief, and maybe staying here was his way of dealing with his guilt. After all, those bullets were meant for him, not them.

  My father, Wilson Moreno, stood from his desk when I entered and walked over to me, pulling me into a tight hug.

  “Always good to see you, son,” he said, his deep voice resonating around me.

  “Good to see you, Dad,” I said when he finally pulled away. He looked like he usually did, wearing a black buttoned-up dress shirt and tan slacks. His hair had a bit more gray in it than it did when I saw him a few months ago. “Keeping the grays this time, old man?”

  “The ladies seem to love the silver, so why not?” he joked, clapping me on the shoulder before walking over to his desk. “Cigar?” He flipped the lid on the cigar box and looked over at me.

  I shook my head, looking at the picture of him and my mom that sat on the bookshelf. Pain constricted my chest looking into her smiling face. I still remembered how her blonde hair would tickle my face when she’d snuggle me close. Her favorite Chanel perfume was stained into my memory, and her voice still sounded in my head when I missed her too much.

  “Think mom would’ve liked your hair?” I teased when he came to stand next to me.

  “I think so,” he murmured. “Come, have a seat.”

  I ground my teeth and nodded, trying not to let it bother me at how dismissive he was anytime I talked about her. Or how almost all of her pictures tha
t used to be around the house were now gone. It was almost as if she was never here aside from this one picture he’d had of her in his office. I followed behind him and sat in the chair across from his desk as he settled behind it.

  “So what’s this about?” I asked.

  He lit his cigar and sat in his chair. “We have a little situation,” he said and took a long pull from his cigar and exhaling the smoke. “One of our packages has gone missing.”

  “What package? And missing since when?” I asked.

  “A girl,” he simply said and took another puff.

  “A girl?” I flipped through my mental inventory of all the girls we’d recently gotten. All of them should’ve been accounted for. I was always careful about that because one fuck up could be the end of us. “I don’t know anything about a missing girl—”

  He held up his hand. “This one isn’t on you. This girl…she was given to me in exchange of a deal,” he started.

  “So…what does that have to do with me if it’s not one of my girls?” I asked, growing impatient.

  He pushed a folder across the desk to me and nodded toward it. “Go on,” he said.

  I ground my teeth and plucked the folder from the desk, opening it on my lap. A picture of a gorgeous woman with long, chestnut hair, bright brown eyes, and succulent pink lips caught my eye immediately. This girl would bring me so much money once I add her to my stable, I mused. Men would pay big bucks to have their way with such an innocent face. I could only imagine how she’d look underneath the sweater dress she wore in the photo.

  “Who is she?” I finally asked, shifting through different photos of her.

  My father stood and walked over to his mini bar. “She’s Aurora DuPont,” he stated, tossing a couple ice cubes into a glass.

  There was something about her last name that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. As if reading my mind, my father continued.

  “She’s Sergio DuPont’s daughter,” he said, grabbing a bottle of Bourbon and pouring it into the glass. “You remember Sergio, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered idly, looking down at the photo of the man. He used to scare the shit out of me when I was a child. His wild black hair, mean dark eyes, and the scar that traveled clear across his face in a diagonal. He was my father’s right hand man back in the day, but then he just fell off the face of the earth. “So why is his daughter the missing package?”