Nate(107)

Thank you to everyone who has helped me in creating this book, and for everyone who keeps the Fallen Crest world alive!





Also by Tijan





Related books:

Fallen Crest/Roussou Universe

Fallen Crest Series

Crew Series

The Boy I Grew Up With (standalone) Rich Prick (standalone) Frisco



Other series:

Broken and Screwed Series (YA/NA) Jaded Series (YA/NA suspense) Davy Harwood Series (paranormal) Carter Reed Series (mafia) The Insiders



Mafia Standalones:

Cole

Bennett Mafia

Jonah Bennett

Canary



Sports Romance Standalones:

Enemies

Teardrop Shot

Hate To Love You

The Not-Outcast



Young Adult Standalones:

Ryan’s Bed

A Whole New Crowd

Brady Remington Landed Me in Jail



College Standalones:

Antistepbrother

Kian



Contemporary Romances:

Bad Boy Brody

Home Tears

Fighter



Rockstar Romance Standalone:

Sustain



Paranormal Standalone:

Evil

Micaela’s Big Bad



More books to come!





Bennett Mafia





Chapter One





“Die, you fly!”

I locked eyes with a black fly, or maybe our eyes weren’t locked, but he was perched on the rock next to me. He was going down. He had been harassing me for the last hour. I was outside, trying to clean up the yard, but I was going nuts with this damn thing buzzing all around me.

He was teasing me, taunting me. He flew out of the way every time I swung at him. He was too fast, and as he paused on my shoulder, I swung at the same time the screen door opened. I heard its creak across the yard right before a numbing pain exploded in my shoulder.

“Ry—did you just clock yourself?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I groaned, my knees buckling.

I had.

I’d swung with the rock in my hands, and now I felt blood trickling down my shoulder and arm. My shirtsleeve was rapidly turning red.

The fly fucker was trying to kill me, by outsmarting me.

“Shit.”

The door slammed shut, and I heard Blade’s feet scuffling down the stairs as he ran to me. The gravel crunched under his weight, and then he slid in behind me. His pants would be ripped up, but knowing Blade, he wouldn’t care.

He rarely cared about clothes. We were just happy he wore them, most of the time.

“Fuck.” He swore under his breath, his very tanned and slightly oily fingers gentle as he looked at my wound. His dark eyes seemed to penetrate my shoulder before he sat back on his heels, raking a hand through his dreadlocks. “What were you doing?”

I wasn’t going to admit a fly had outwitted me.

When I was doing yard work, Blade made himself scarce. For the years he’d been living with us, he’d been content to clean the inside. He did most of the cooking, cleaning, and dishes, and it wasn’t uncommon for us to come home from shopping and find him wearing a maid’s apron and duster—and nothing else.

So for him to come looking for me outside like this wasn’t normal.

“What is it?” I jerked my head toward the house, hearing the television blaring.

His concerned eyes lifted to mine, and a whole different look slid over him.

My alarm level went up three notches.

Of the three of us living in this little cabin outside of Calgary, or Cowtown as we called it sometimes, Blade wasn’t the one who got concerned about things. He enjoyed indulging in marijuana, kept his hair in tight dreadlocks, and dressed like a child from the sixties in a brown vest, no shirt, and a tie-dyed bandana over his hair. Only instead of bell-bottoms, he wore tight, frayed jeans over regular runners. He handled all our computer stuff, and when we walked inside, I wasn’t surprised to find he had switched over the news he’d caught on his computer to the main television screen.

I also wasn’t surprised to be watching a report from New York City.

“—ennett mafia princess has been missing for forty-nine hours now.”

Ice lined my insides.

A picture of my old boarding school roommate, Brooke Bennett, flashed on the screen, along with numbers to call if she was found.

Found…

As in, she was lost?

I felt punched in the chest.

Brooke was missing.

Dazed, I reached out for a chair to sit in. Blade moved to my side.

“That’s your old roommate, right?” The chair protested. Blade’s hand left my arm, and his voice came from my side. “The one you had at that rich school.”

I almost snorted at his wording, but I was still in a daze. I nodded instead.

Brooke. Man.

The news was showing pictures from her social media accounts, and she was gorgeous. Fourteen years. I don’t know why that number popped into my head, but it felt right. It’d been so long since I last saw her, or was it fourteen years since we first met? One of those.

“She was always so girly,” I murmured, almost to myself. She’d been so full of life.