Nico (Ruin & Revenge #1)(86)

“I just gotta go take a piss.” He needed to send a message to Jack. A team was always on standby to tail Ben and pull him out in case of an emergency, and after his encounter with Gabe at the community center, he wasn’t taking any chances.

“No time.” Mikey Muscles gently pushed him forward to a beat-up vehicle parked on the street. One look and Ben knew it was stolen. And that meant whatever was going on needed to be covered up after the event.

“Sure thing.” His heart pounded so loud, he could barely hear Frankie when he gestured to the front seat.

“You drive.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ben slipped into the front seat. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. This was definitely it. Wiseguys were an alpha bunch. The only time they asked someone else to drive was when they were taking him to his own funeral. They were going to tell him to drive out to the sticks, park the car, and then Frankie was gonna pop him from behind.

If he was lucky.

If he wasn’t, he’d be wearing the same kind of necktie they found on the Wolf.

“So, what’s this all about?” He pulled the vehicle away from the curb, his mind spinning with options. He could crash the car and pray he got out alive. He could hope that Jack had someone watching the clubhouse, although his surveillance team had been cut back over the last year. He could speed the car or run a red light and maybe they’d get pulled over by the cops, but there was no guarantee that wouldn’t invite them to just pull the trigger, or that the cop who pulled them over wouldn’t be on Nico’s payroll.

“Forget about it,” Frankie said, settling in the back seat beside Mikey Muscles. “Just drive.”

Ben’s stomach knotted as Frankie directed him though the city and out to the east side. In a crazy way, he was almost relieved. He’d been waiting for this moment for the last ten years; always looking over his shoulder, always sleeping with a gun under his pillow, always knowing this day would come. If not for little Daisy, and his regret about betraying Nico, a man he liked and admired, he would almost have accepted his fate.

And Kat. Life was so fucking unfair. He’d finally met a girl who swept him off his feet, only to die the next day.

“Pull up here.” Frankie directed him to a bar just off Charleston in the Naked City, one of the worst neighborhoods of Vegas, and the only place cabs or taxis would not go through after dark. It was a place where you could shoot a man in the street and no one would call the cops, because no one in the Naked City saw anything.

Ben parked the car in the gravel lot outside a stand-alone concrete building that had been spray painted black and tagged multiple times. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Could he ask them to do something for Daisy? Frankie was a cold, hard son-of-a-bitch, but Mikey Muscles was a good guy, with a couple of rescue dogs at home …

“Outside.” Frankie waved his seven-inch Fixation Bowie knife in the direction of the door.

Jesus Christ. They weren’t going to give him the mercy of a bullet to the head. It was going to be the fucking necktie like the Wolf. He wasn’t afraid of the pain, but of Daisy one day reading the papers and knowing how her daddy died.

Forcing himself to be calm, he stepped out of the vehicle. He wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t beg. He had known the risks when he accepted the assignment. He would die with honor and pride, and the knowledge he was being punished for his betrayal.

“Here. Take these.” Frankie offered him a pair of leather gloves.

Stunned, Ben just stared

“So you don’t get prints on the gun.”

Ben took the gloves and pulled them on, his mind spinning with possibilities. Was this a joke? A set up? Were they going to make him pull the trigger himself? Make it look like suicide?

Dare he hope?

Frankie handed him a 9mm Beretta. “Loaded. Serial number is gone. Can’t be traced.”

Ben’s heart pounded, and he swallowed hard. “What’s this all about?”

“Nico’s opened his books. You got your contract,” Frankie said. “You pull off this hit and you’ll be allowed to go through the ceremony to become a made man.”

God, no. He couldn’t kill an innocent man. But if he refused to pull the trigger, Frankie would kill him. No questions asked.

“Who?”

Mikey Muscles patted him on the back. “Dante’s bodyguard, Rev.”

“The bartender is a friend of ours.” Frankie sheathed his knife. “He says Rev is sitting at a table in the courtyard out back. We’re gonna go in the front door, make our way through like nothing’s going on. We get out back, you pop Rev, and we’ll jump the fence.”

“Are we whacking Rev to get to Dante? Is Dante inside?”

Frankie shook his head. “Rev’s a threat to Nico. He’s been asking around, trying to find places where Nico hangs out. He’s gonna try and pop Nico before Nico pops Dante, and it’s not gonna happen on my watch. He’s also a drug trafficker who sold some bad shit to friends of mine and put them in an early grave. Bastard is a waste of space and the world will be a better place when he’s gone.”

Rev. Gabe. The man who’d got Ginger hooked on drugs so she couldn’t be a mom to Daisy. The man who Ben was pretty damn sure had touched his little girl in a very bad way. And now Ben had a gun in his hand and it was going to be his life or the life of a piece of shit who deserved what was coming to him.