Bennett Mafia(106)

Every person in that room was now a prisoner. Kai had taken complete control.

I tried not to react to this, but I couldn’t ignore the tingle that ran down my spine, the way it curled toward my stomach and began to warm me.

Kai looked at me once before turning back to Levi. He stood right next to him, speaking down to him. “You have a secret about my family, don’t you?”

“What is going on here, Kai?” Rose demanded. “I don’t like being a captive to your men. We all have men. We all have families, and I’m not saying that in the way Jillian was. My family will hunt yours down if you don’t get—”

“I’m getting to the goddamn point!” Kai yelled, his calm exterior slipping. “Sit your ass down. NOW!”

She quieted, her mouth clamped shut, and a second later, she sat down. I watched how she swallowed, her jaw trembling before she raised her chin.

“Kai Bennett, you cannot speak to another—”

“I can, and I will, and you might want to keep quiet so you can understand where the hell I’m going with this!”

“Kai—” another member began.

“Shut up!” He burned them with a look. “All of you.” Without waiting, he rounded to Levi. “Tell them what your family was hired to do. Now!”

But he didn’t. Levi held back, his eyes skirting around the room, passing over me without a second glance and lingering on the door before facing Kai again.

“Shit.” He raked his hands through his hair. “That’s what this whole thing was about, wasn’t it? Not about me turning on my family or having a fling with your sister. It was about the other matter. Look, man.” He started to get up.

A guard pushed him back down, hard. Levi barely noticed. He held a hand up, imploring Kai. “I had nothing to do with that. That was my uncles, and to be honest, they’re all right bastards. We’re basically nonexistent on the market in Milwaukee. Another family’s pushed us out. We just have a few businesses, a couple gambling circuits. That’s all.”

Kai waited for him to stop blabbering, and once he was done, he repeated, “Tell them what your family was hired to do against mine.”

Levi cursed. He began shaking his head, groaning as if he were in pain. “I can’t do that. I mean—shit. I can’t. I can’t. The stuff I was turning on my family was petty. Nothing big. Nothing like this. I can’t—no. Don’t make me. Please. I love your sister—”

“You don’t love my sister. You just called her a fling.”

“I know. I know, but there’s feelings there. Right? Man, I had plans. I was gonna—” He searched for words.

He was stalling.

“I was gonna ask her to marry me. I was gonna—yeah. Yeah! I had it all planned too, until you picked me up. I was heading to Minnesota to get her. We were going to go back to Mexico, get married there. I wasn’t even turning evidence, not really. It’d been a setup by the local cops. They set me up with child pornography.”

Oh God.

My eyes opened again. I was starting to see the dots.

Oh my God.

“They confiscated my computer, put that disgusting crap on there, threatened to take me in if I didn’t give them something on someone,” Levi whined. “So whatever. What I did tell them was minor, so minor. Just a slap on the wrist.”

Kai was letting him hang himself. The more Levi said, the worse it was for him.

I’d helped Brooke get to Minnesota, but he’d been the one to find her a place to hide. Those people had been his connections. That meant…

A string had tightened inside of me, twisting all my organs around and around each other, all into a nice, tight bowtie.

“Tell them. Now.”

So quiet, but so lethal.

I saw Rose close her eyes in surrender. She knew what was coming, whatever it was.

“Fuck!” Levi yelled before slumping in his chair. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” His hand went through his hair once more before he shot forward in his seat, sitting on the edge, his feet bouncing up and down. “Fine. You want to know what they did? We killed your mom.”

I deflated. And I looked at Tanner in the other room.

He had been expressionless until now. Now his eyes were wide, his eyebrows high and his mouth open. He reached forward, grabbing the back of a chair in front of him.

A few of the council members cast him sympathetic looks, but not Rose. Not Richard, and not the elderly man. I didn’t know what families they represented, their last names, but I didn’t think it mattered. Somehow, in some way, they were involved, because all three were eyeing the guards around them.

I suspected there was a policy that council members couldn’t sit at the table with weapons. So they were sitting ducks for whatever was coming their way, set forth by Kai.

“Explain.”

Levi eyed Kai, shaking his head. He just kept shaking, and his leg started bouncing up and down. “You’re a dick, you know that?”

Kai hadn’t been watching him, but his dead eyes slid his way now. He stepped closer. “Start talking, or I’ll start torturing. Happily.”

Levi stalled for one more moment before giving in. “Fine.” He looked up, already flinching over what he was about to say. “About twenty years ago, my family got paid to make a hit look like a robbery. My two uncles did it. It was supposed to be just the woman, but then a second order came through for the guy too.”