Rules of Bennett: The Complete Collection Read online

  Rules of Bennett: The Complete Collection

  Ember Michaels

  Contents

  You Will Bow

  Author Note

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  You Will Break

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  You Will Obey

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  Moreno Forever

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  About the Author

  Also by Ember Michaels

  Author Note

  Hey you! Reader!

  Okay, so if you picked this book up, I want to let you know that there’s a prequel that comes before this book! I know, I know, you want to go ahead and dive into this one. While I appreciate your enthusiasm, this trilogy is all one continuing story. It’s best to start with the prequel, Rules of Bennett, before starting You Will Bow. You Will Bow picks up where Rules of Bennett ends, and I’d hate for you to be confused! The good part? The prequel is now FREE 99, honey! So, now you can start the series for free just by signing up for my newsletter here and find out how Bennett is that anti-hero you’ll definitely love to hate.

  -Ember

  People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.

  -James Baldwin

  Aurora

  When I was younger, I was always told where there was light, there was darkness. Everything in the world had an opposite to balance it out. To believe in God meant the devil existed, too.

  And if I wasn’t a believer before, Bennett Moreno changed that in a matter of hours.

  My body shook as I stared at the dead woman on the table, my eyes filled with tears. Her eyes stared at nothing as blood pooled on the polished wood, staining her blond hair.

  I’m the reason she’s dead, I thought.

  My breaths came in quick as my heart raced. Taking slow steps away from the table, a scream ripped through me as my actions quickly sank in. Bennett’s words echoed in my mind.

  Welcome to Hell.

  Nausea rolled my stomach, the stress of today’s events finally taking its toll. I turned around, dry heaving with nothing to vomit but stomach acid.

  “Now that’s not very ladylike,” Bennett taunted.

  “Fuck you,” I wheezed.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, moving to stand in front of me.

  I ground my teeth but kept my eyes on the floor. I couldn’t bear to witness that asshole grin of his, proud of what he forced me to do. Proud to know this would haunt me forever.

  Proud he’d made me do his dirty work.

  “I asked you a question, slut,” he ground out, his voice rough as he yanked my ponytail to bring my eyes to meet his.

  “What does it mean then?” I forced out.

  His dark, evil eyes pierced through me as his lips tipped up into a lopsided grin. “It means you’re not as innocent as you think you are,” he said.

  I glared at him. “You forced me to—”

  “No, no, no,” he interrupted, shaking a finger at me. “I gave you a choice, and you chose to kill her.”

  “You said you were going to rape me,” I snapped back, trying to pull away from his grasp on my hair.

  “But is rape really that bad compared to having someone else’s blood on your hands?” he mused with a chuckle.

  My stomach rolled once more. He was right. Compared to being the one who ended her life, my punishment for not doing it would’ve at least given me a clear conscious. Instead, I had someone else’s blood on my hands to save my own ass.

  Like father, like daughter.

  “You’ve been acting all self-righteous, like you’re so innocent and can do no wrong, but you’re just a selfish little slut like any other bitch would be in this situation. Just like your so-called ‘best friends’ who took half a million dollars of hush money. Just like your sorry excuse of a father who gave you up just to stay alive.”

  Sadness overwhelmed me as I thought of my friends, of Heath, and of my life back in South Carolina. Just the thought of that life being gone sent a pang of grief through me. Heath was dead. My friends were told to move on with their lives as if nothing happened, and I was a whore to a psychopath who got off on torturing others.

  “They had no choice,” I ground out.

  He shook his head, his grip moving from my hair to my bicep. “No, baby doll. We all have choices. They chose their own safety over the well-being of their friend,” he said.

  Despite Bennett pulling me toward the door, Alice’s dead body was burned into my mind. Her teary blue eyes. Her pale skin turning ghostly white as she begged for her life. Disgust and horror filled me as Bennett forced me to look at what I’d done, reminding me that I was now like my mother. Like him.

  A murderer.

  “Not bad for you first time, Pet,” Bennett said, his grip on my bicep tight.

  “Fuck you, you psychotic fuck,” I snapped, anger pulling me out of my nightmare.

  He only chuckled, nodding to a couple of large men down the hall. “Get rid of the body and clean up in there, will you?” he said and then turned back to me. “That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble. I’d advise you to keep it closed.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stopped walking. When that sinister grin appeared, my heart fluttered as anxiety crept up in, “Did you not learn your lesson on the plane? ‘Over your dead body,’” he mocked. “I can go ahead and arrange that. At least if I kill you now, you have a hole-buddy to go with.”

  “What, you’re going to shoot me in the head, too?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice from trembling.

  He scoffed. “You think I’d travel across the country to get you just to put an easy bullet through your head? Oh no, no, no, doll. You will suffer until you beg me to kill you. I’ll just throw you in the same hole Alice is going into.”

  He winked, and I almost wanted to vomit again on the carpet.

  “You’re sick, you know that?”

  “So they say,” he replied, pulling me down the hallway.

  The red lights that lined the ha
llway cast an eerie glow against the black walls and the strip of red carpet running along the floor. Although there were lights next to all six doors in the hall, only a few of them were on. Each door we passed that had a red light, I could hear a screaming girl on the other side of it.

  “What the hell are they doing to them?” I asked.

  Bennett kept his eyes forward, completely unmoved by the screams of torture that filtered in the hall.

  “Getting what they deserve,” he said.

  “No one deserves any of this,” I spat. “No one deserves to be treated as less than a human.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Who gives a fuck what you think someone doesn’t deserve?” he said, his voice hard. “Speak again, and you’ll be missing teeth by the time we get to my father, like you’ll deserve.”

  The growl that followed his words dissolved the rest of mine. The back of my thighs and ass were sore, bruises from his earlier assault already forming. With every step I took, it reminded me of what he was capable of. Now that we were off the plane and in his domain, I knew he was capable of so much worse.

  I lowered my head and allowed him to pull me along, trying my hardest not to focus on the screaming around me as those girls begged their captors to stop, as they apologized for whatever they’d done and promised to be good.

  My heart broke for every single one of them. I wondered what kind of lives they had before they came here. If they were in relationships, had good jobs, or even had children. I wondered if their friends and family gave up looking for them or searched for them night and day. Tears burned my eyes as I thought of my friends and the fact that no one would look for me. No one would save me.

  I was trapped with a demented jackass on a power trip.

  Bennett nodded toward Bruce, who stood at the door leading into the main house. I squinted against the brighter light when the door opened, stumbling a bit as Bennett jerked me forward. The earlier chaos had died down, and men and dolled up women now casually sat around the kitchen island as if someone hadn't just been killed underneath the very place they stood just minutes before.

  When we’d pulled up to the mansion, it didn’t make sense for him to have such a big house when he was only one man. However, after seeing all the people milling about in the kitchen and playing video games on the couch in the living room, I realized this was a large compound. The fact that they all carried on living normally despite the horrors going on underneath the house in the bunker made everything crystal clear.

  This place was full of fucking nut jobs.

  “Ah, finally,” a deep voice said, snapping me out of my musings.

  Bennett and I stood in what looked like a study, bookcases filling every available wall and a large, shining cherry wood desk and black leather chair sitting in front of the window. The room smelled of old books and cigar smoke, the man before me blowing a cloud of smoke into my face as he looked me over.

  His dark brown eyes twinkled in amusement before scratching his salt and pepper beard. He looked like a much older version of Bennett, about 6’3, athletically built, and dressed in a similar business casual outfit of slacks and a dress shirt. His expensive cologne overwhelmed me, and if I didn’t get out of there fast, I was bound to get a headache from it.

  “Even prettier in person,” he mused before looking at Bennett. “You sure you don’t want to put her to work? Our contacts would pay good money for her.”

  Bennett shook his head, yanking me closer to him. “Nah. It’s been a while since I had a pet.”

  “I’m not a pet, jackass,” I spat before I could stop myself.

  The man narrowed his eyes at me, that same sinister look I’d seen on Bennett appearing in his gaze. “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, bitch,” he growled. “If you think Bennett is bad, you should know I’ll do so much worse to you.”

  I ground my teeth but said nothing. The rebel in me wanted to spit in his face, but the way his hand clenched into a fist, I knew one wrong move could earn me a broken jaw.

  “Sorry about that, Dad. I haven’t had time to house train her yet.” He looked at me. “Now apologize,” Bennett said.

  Dad. Well, that made sense. He was probably the fucker who started all this in the first place. I made a mental note to add him to my “People Who Need to Die” list right along with his asshole son.

  I blinked and looked at him. “For what?”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, Aurora,” he said with a growl.

  “But I—”

  I yelped in pain as his father put out his cigar against my arm, a psychotic grin on his face. Grabbing me by the shoulder, he roughly pushed me to my knees. I winced, my shoulder still sore from being dangled from the plane earlier.

  “Apologize,” he growled.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “For?”

  “That you’re a weak ass bitch for wanting an apology for a response that had nothing to do with you,” I stated, spitting at his feet.

  He raised his hand to strike me, but Bennett stopped him.

  “Don’t worry; I’ll deal with her,” he said.

  His father expelled a long breath and took a step back with his hands up. “I’ll let you handle your new slut,” he said, practically spitting the insult at me. “Anyway, I’ll properly introduce myself. I’m Wilson Moreno.”

  “As if I give a fuck,” I muttered, no longer caring. I wanted this nightmare to be over. If it meant Bennett would go ahead and kill me so I didn’t have to endure any more, then fine. I had nothing left to lose. My lover, family, friends, and everything I’d worked my ass off for was gone. There wasn’t anything left to fight for.

  Heath didn’t propose to a quitter, a small voice reminded me.

  Fresh tears stung my eyes as one of them slapped me, but it wasn’t the pain that caused me to cry. It was the thought of Heath’s smiling face as he got down on one knee. I’d never know what it would be like to spend the rest of my life with him. I’d never see what our children would’ve looked like. My life as I knew it had gone up in smoke, and I was left to burn in the flames that destroyed it all.

  As Wilson berated me, I made a vow to myself.

  If I had to die, Bennett and Wilson would also.

  “Wake up, slut,” Bennett snapped, yanking me up to my feet by my ponytail.

  I ground my teeth, my cheek burning as I narrowed my eyes at Wilson.

  “Bennett and I aren’t the enemies,” he started, and I fought the urge to scoff.

  Yeah fucking right.

  “Your father put you in this position long before you were on Earth.” He relit his cigar and took a pull from it. “Back in the day, he used to work for me. One of the best men I had.”

  Anger and grief swirled around inside me at the mention of my father. My mind was so angry at him for what he’d done to me, but my heart reminded me of the father I remembered and loved. The father who played with me, bought me whatever I wanted, and read me to sleep every night and promised to protect me from the monsters under my bed. But he couldn’t protect me from the monsters he’d left me with, and they were the scariest of all.

  “Why did he do it?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  Wilson took a slow pull from his cigar, the smoke releasing from his nose when he sighed.

  “Your mother became pregnant when things were getting chaotic with the business,” he stated, leaning against Bennett’s desk. “Our men’s families were being targeted, and he wanted to protect his.” His lips curved into a smile. “But in the mafia, there’s only one way out.”

  “Then why didn’t you kill him?”

  “As I said, he was one of my best men. While he pleaded for his life, he told me his wife was pregnant with a girl. That I could have you when you came of age. But…” he trailed, taking another puff of his cigar. “Your father isn’t very good at honoring his contract.”

  “Please! This isn’t fair to me! I didn’t know about any of this!” I exclaimed.

  Wilson shrugged. “And that
’s on your father. This is all unfortunate, but a contract is a contract,” he stated.

  “You guys won’t get away with this,” I said through gritted teeth. “People will come looking for me. You can’t just snatch up a makeup mogul and think no one is going to notice.”

  “Are they now?” Wilson asked, looking at Bennett, who shook his head.

  “They won’t be. Part one of my plan was executed, and they know the consequences if they go to the police.”

  “Sure her little boyfriend won’t?”

  “Not unless he can snitch from the grave,” Bennett said with a smirk.

  Wilson smiled. “You never cease to amaze me, son,” he said, walking over to clap Bennett on the shoulder.

  “Part two will be even better,” Bennett said.

  My blood ran cold. If part one had resulted in carnage, what in the entire fuck would part two involve?

  “Then I’ll let you get to it,” Wilson said before looking at me. “You should be lucky Bennett chose you as a pet and not a working girl. As long as you fall in line, you could live a lavish life.”

  “I highly doubt that,” I said, my voice flat.

  He only shook his head. “Hopefully, you’ll have learned your place by the time I visit again,” he said, giving me an almost painful, firm pat on the cheek. “Otherwise, I won’t be so nice next time.”