Bennett Mafia(100)

He was waiting for a car.

Kai drew us up behind them, thirty feet separating us, and he watched.

An SUV turned in, idling in front of them. My father and cousin got in.

The SUV pulled out, and another SUV replaced it, but this time, Kai and I were running. I got in the back. Kai got in the front. “Go when ready,” he said into his phone.

Two more SUVs sped past us, moving to intercept my father’s SUV until it veered and the driver hit the brake. As it stopped, the guards ran from the other SUVs, surrounding the one my father and cousin were in. They pulled the doors open, pointed guns in their faces, and yanked them out. My cousin was thrown to the sidewalk. The man in the passenger seat of my father’s SUV raised a gun and hit the driver in the head with it. The horn sounded until his body was tugged to the side, and that was all they stuck around for.

They forced my father into one of our SUVs, the guards slammed their doors, and off they went.

All over in thirty seconds. Kai’s men worked as a well-oiled machine. My father never stood a chance.

I turned just as we shot forward and caught a glimpse of my cousin, her eyes wide in shock.

She was pale, her mouth hanging open before moving into a cry.

But those eyes. I wouldn’t ever un-see them.

I recognized the look. It was the same I’d had when I learned my mother was dead. Cousin Tawnia had been traumatized. This moment, this memory would be forever burned on her consciousness. She would never be the same.

I didn’t want to think that or feel it, but as I turned back in my seat and faced forward, I knew it was true.

And I had been part of doing that. Whether it was for good or for ill, it just was.





CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE


There’s this sense in the air when something important is about to happen.

It’s a feeling around you, but inside you too. Like something doesn’t make sense, like something is off, like impending doom is an invisible freight train and you can’t get out of its way. You’re on the tracks. You can hear it. You can feel it. You can even smell it, but you can’t see it.

You just know it’s coming for you.

Riding in that SUV, hurtling down the streets of Milwaukee in a caravan of two other SUVs, I felt that feeling.

I looked away from the window and watched Kai in the front passenger seat. His jaw was strong, his shoulders relaxed. He didn’t seem rigid, or tense, or anything other than calm.

Serene.

That’s the word I was looking for, but that way of describing what was about to happen seemed wrong too. I didn’t know what Kai had planned, but I knew he did have a plan. He always did, and I knew the end result would be my father’s death. Somehow.

My stomach should’ve clenched at that.

I should’ve felt ready to have a nervous breakdown. But I didn’t. I only had a feeling of something dead in the air, and how fucking helpful was that?

We drove north to the same warehouse I’d slept at earlier.

All three SUVs sped into the parking lot, into the warehouse, and hit their brakes. The guards emerged all at the same time.

There was a lot of yelling.

A van pulled in behind us, then a second van.

Guards dispersed, four going to each van. They opened the back doors. More shouting. Commands in the air.

They brought a man out with his hands tied behind his back and a bag over his head. He wore black clothing, same as the guards—a black suit, but athletic shoes to run in. His clothing was wrinkled and torn, and he smelled as if he hadn’t changed clothes or showered in days.

Out of the second van came a guy wearing dirtied and ripped jeans, and a T-shirt whose ends stuck out underneath a ripped sweatshirt. Two halves of the sleeve dangled off one arm, which was a mess of bruises and redness. Dried blood. A rash. Other scars.

As the guards hurried him past me, I saw that the scars were rope burns.

His arms were tied in front of him, and he had a bag over his head too.

My dead feeling only intensified.

Prisoner one was taken to an office on our right. The second was taken to a side office.

Then they pulled my father out, his hands tied with rope and a bag over his head too. A guard replaced the rope around his wrists with a zip tie before gripping his arm and leading him into the office on the right.

Kai stood outside my door, waiting for me. Watching me.

“Where are Brooke and Jonah?” I asked.

“On their way back to Vancouver.”

I had a fleeting thought that maybe it was for the best. They’d both been drunk. They could sleep most of the way. Then that thought left and the emptiness returned.

Finally I asked, “Why am I here?”

Kai didn’t need me for this. Maybe for my father, because I’d asked, but not the other two. And who were the other two? How long had he been planning this? How long had he had them?

He frowned before stepping closer. “Do you not want to be here?”

Did I?

He waited.

I looked down. I’d told him I did. Gone to huge lengths to make that statement, actually. I’d told him I wanted to be a part of this because of my father, that I wanted to destroy him, but I wavered now.

Kai stepped closer, his hand sliding around my neck and his fingers threading into my hair. He lowered his forehead to mine. “You don’t have to be here. You really don’t.”