Bene (The Guzzi Legacy Book 5)

by Bethany-Kris

  The Capo’s reply to whatever Gian had said brought Bene back to the business at hand. His brother didn’t seem to mind because now, their father was also looking their way. Not that their conversation had been loud enough to detract from Gian’s talk with his man. And really, his father was looking more at Bene than his brothers.

  “And?” Gian asked, never looking away from Bene.

  The Capo in question sighed. “Well, it might have us being audited year after year by the CRA—they’ll be so deep into our books and accounts that it’ll be almost impossible to hide anything.”

  “Or we buy that farm that consistently bleeds cash, and make it look like it is turning profit with all the other farms helping out a bit. Falsified records that can’t be proven otherwise means we can dump as much cash into it as we want to hide it while it’s cleaned, oui?”

  “Well—”

  “There’s really only one answer to that, Greg. It’s not an opportunity for a discussion, or debate about how you want things to go, considering this little scheme was my idea, family money went in to making it work, and you were just the lucky prick I put on it. Anything else is still for me to decide, as I am sure you’re aware. And so, your answer to me is …?”

  “Yes, boss, we can make that happen.”

  “Good, good.” Gian’s gaze darted back to the man, and he nodded. “That’s what I want to hear. Marcus?”

  “Sì, boss?”

  “I want you working with Greg on this venture—I’ll feel better about it knowing you’re there to keep an eye on things, and to run it the way I prefer.”

  “I can handle the farms—”

  “The business side,” Gian interjected fast, pensive stare drifting back to Bene and making him feel like his father was searching for something in his son. “Marcus will handle the paperwork and getting the right accountants on everything. And if he wishes to overlook the work you’re doing there, Greg, then he will do that, too. Underboss’s right, no?”

  The Capo cleared his throat but stayed quiet.

  Gian, seemingly satisfied with the way the conversation had gone, gave Bene one last look before turning his attention to the men in the room once again. If anyone except him noticed the fact his father kept checking on him like he wanted to be sure he was still standing there, no one said a thing.

  Not that it mattered now.

  They were on to money.

  Tribute was coming up.

  “What’s all that about?” he asked.

  Marcus, who had been quiet for the most part at Bene’s left, checked his watch. “Pardon?”

  “Papa—”

  “Boss.”

  Right, right.

  Bene was doing better about that whole thing—you know, differentiating between his father when they weren’t doing business, and Gian as the boss when other made men were around. Someone should give him credit for that, but Marcus just liked to correct his ass.

  “He keeps looking back at me,” Bene muttered. “And he only does that when …” I’ve done something wrong, and he knows about it. Gian used to pull that shit on Bene and his twin when they were teenagers, and thought they were pulling one over on their parents. It never worked. One might think Bene would learn his lesson, but apparently not. So was his fucking life. Where was the fun if he wasn’t getting into a bit of trouble now and then?

  Besides, Vanna was harmless.

  Sexy as sin.

  Looked good in his bed.

  Fucked like nobody else.

  To them, though, she was harmless.

  Bene didn’t say any of that out loud because he knew that if he did, Marcus would undoubtedly hear the oncoming lie on the tip of his tongue. His follow up of and I didn’t do anything wrong. Except he had—by bringing Vanna to the mansion the previous weekend when his parents were away—and Bene was not a good liar when it came to his brothers. They all knew the difference, so it was better if he didn’t even bother to try.

  “Hmm?” Marcus asked.

  Bene scowled. “Nothing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He gave his brother a look.

  Marcus raised his brow right back. “Good weekend?”

  Fuck.

  All he needed was that simple question from his brother—as innocent as it seemed—and Bene’s mind was thrown back to the previous weekend, and exactly how he’d spent it. Which meant, mostly between the thighs of a woman using her pussy to sustain him like it was the only thing he wanted to eat for the rest of his life.

  To be fair, her pussy was heaven.

  Didn’t matter if he was fucking it, eating it, or watching her play with it … that woman could start wars over her pussy, and Bene knew it. Besides that, there was just something about her that he liked, and he wouldn’t apologize for it, either.

  “Well?” Marcus pressed.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Marcus.”

  His brother chuckled. “Sure, you don’t.”

  “We’re supposed to be having a meeting here, not—”

  “Did you think Gian wouldn’t get suspicious that there was no camera footage all weekend?”

  Bene chewed on his inner cheek. “No, I just figured he wouldn’t look at all since he usually doesn’t unless he has a reason to. And since the digital recordings start over every five days, by the time he did look, it wouldn’t even matter.”

  “You’re fucking terrible.”

  Yeah, well …

  “And you forgot that the cameras on the entrance gate are on entirely different servers, Bene,” Marcus added.

  Ah, shit.

  They saw him come in and out with Vanna, then.

  There would be no hiding that.

  Now, he understood perfectly fine why his father kept glancing his way even though it was clear he had better things to focus on in this meeting than what one of his youngest sons had done the previous weekend.

  Perfect.

  Bene was more than willing to keep pretending like he didn’t know what in the fuck his brother was talking about—at least, until he couldn’t anymore—but the vibration in his pocket stopped him from saying anything at all. Knowing he could get away with checking his phone while his father’s attention was on the discussion of the upcoming tribute, Bene pulled it from his pocket, and kept it hidden in his palm while he glanced down at the screen.

  V the contact said.

  Contents Hidden, the message read.

  That usually meant someone sent him an attachment, like a picture or something. He didn’t even think about his older brothers standing on either side of him as he unlocked the phone, and clicked on the ribbon to bring up the text message.

  Holy fuck.

  There it was.

  Or rather, there she was.

  Part of her, anyway.

  All he could see in the picture Vanna had sent was the image of her legs in fishnet, thigh-high stockings, the stark red heels on her feet, and the tiled floor beneath her. The photo had been cropped up near the fucking promise land, keeping what was between her thighs hidden from him, but damn … this had been more than enough.

  Because now his throat was tight.

  His cock perked to life.

  And he was in no position for any of it.

  “Damn.” Marcus whistled low.

  Bene clicked the home button quickly. “Shut up.”

  “That the same one? Kind of hard to tell when you can’t see her face and—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Chris chuckled on the other side of him. “Whoever she is, she better be worth bringing her to the mansion when Ma and Dad weren’t home to meet her, Bene.”

  His father looked their way again.

  He did his best to look innocent.

  Except he wasn’t.

  Not at all.

  “More than worth it,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, tell Dad that.”

  Right.

  “Bene, feel free to close the door once everyone leaves, and tak
e a seat.”

  With his back turned to his father as he was just about to leave the office, Bene cursed inside his head. He thought he might be able to skip out of the meeting before Gian even realized he left, and then perhaps they could have the discussion about bringing a woman to the mansion at a later date. Or better yet, over the phone where his father wouldn’t be looking him right in the face when he tried to lie about it.

  Bene couldn’t be so lucky.

  “Sure, boss,” he said, still refusing to turn around.

  Marcus gave Bene a smirk over his shoulder, as he was the last man to leave the office—not unusual, considering he was Gian’s underboss. Bene responded in kind with a flipped up middle finger that only his brother could see before he closed the office door after him. Marcus was getting too much out of this, the asshole.

  “Pick a seat,” Gian said once the door was closed.

  Bene sighed. “Could I stand, or—”

  “That wasn’t an option, no.”

  Awesome.

  It was going to be one of those talks, then. It was also how Bene knew that now, he was dealing with his father again, and not the boss of their famiglia. Gian was always careful about how he had discussions with his sons, but especially when it was in the form of what someone might consider discipline. He never stood over them—never made it seem like he was talking over one of his boys. Instead, they all sat down, eye-level, if possible, like they were equals to have their chats.

  Bene avoided the heavy stare of his father until he took one of the two wing-back leather chairs across from the desk, and sat his ass down. His father’s face, void of amusement or anything, really, gave him a good indication about how this chat was going to go today.

  “Would you like to start, or not?” Gian asked.

  “Well—”

  “Let me pose it a different way, son. You can tell me what you did last weekend, here when I wasn’t home, or I can do it. Feel free to make a choice.”

  Bene sighed. “You already know what I did, clearly.”

  “Yes, but I’m starting to wonder about what you know.”

  “What?”

  “Rules, Bene.” Gian leaned back in his large chair, steepling his fingers as he peered out the windows that overlooked the front property. “The same rules you grew up with here—you know them, I have repeated them time and time again. Those rules are in place not just because I don’t want you or your brothers to disrespect our home, but because it keeps us all safe. We don’t bring strangers here—that’s never, nor will it ever, be tolerated. So, go ahead and tell me why you decided to bring a woman who none of us know to our home for an entire weekend when no one else was here. Go ahead, I will wait.”

  Well, when you put it that way …

  “I didn’t really think about it,” Bene admitted.

  “You’re doing that a lot lately, hmm?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Making choices without thinking.”

  “Low blow, Papa.”

  Gian smiled faintly. “And yet, not entirely untrue, either.”

  Bene shifted in the chair under the intense weight of his father’s stare. He didn’t need Gian to verbally cut him down, not when the man’s gaze did it for him. He knew what he did was wrong, and now it was just a matter of admitting as such and apologizing. That was really all his parents asked of their sons when one of them stepped out of line.

  Still, Bene stayed quiet.

  Gian didn’t miss it.

  “Who is she?” his father asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Matters to me, if you’re willing to bring the woman to my home and go as far as erasing my video footage to try and hide her.”

  “It wasn’t hiding her.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Avoiding this situation,” Bene returned.

  Gian chuckled. “Because you didn’t want us to know you were seeing someone, or—”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. It’s just … she gives me something to do, instead of focusing on all the other shit going on. It’s not that deep, you know.”

  “Oh.”

  His father’s quiet proclamation had Bene lifting his head to meet Gian’s gaze. He shrugged when his father waited for Bene to say something else. He wasn’t sure what he should say.

  “But would you like it to be something else?”

  That was a tricky question.

  “I like her,” he said simply.

  “Hmm.”

  “Could you give me something else?”

  Gian grinned. “Well, that’s not for me to do now, Bene. You’re the one who is apparently seeing a woman you liked well enough to bring to my home when you know you’re not allowed to bring anyone here that you don’t want to sit down to chat with your mother or me. And you know, that’s the only reason why I haven’t chewed your ass off over this yet. Because you brought her here, and you do know the rules. Which means …?”

  He intended for them to meet her.

  Some day.

  “Her name?”

  Bene dragged in a quick breath. “Vanna.”

  He didn’t bother to give her last name because he didn’t think it was that important for the time being. None of those details mattered more than the fact that his father simply wanted to know who the woman was that Bene dared to break their very clear rules for.

  Funny how that worked.

  “Lovely,” Gian murmured. “I will give you a chance to correct what happened last weekend. Your mother is having her thing for the shelter in a couple of weeks, which means there’ll be lots of people here to act as a buffer … no awkward conversation.”

  Cara frequently threw dinner parties for the many organizations she either had a direct hand in, like the women’s shelters around Toronto, or the ones she had interest in when it came to donating money. Bene didn’t usually attend them, but it didn’t sound like his father was giving him a choice this time around.

  “What do you think?”

  Bene hummed under his breath. “And what if she says no?”

  “Yet another one of those things that I can’t help you with, son. Bring her to your mother’s party, if she agrees to come, and we can properly greet her. Then, if you want to bring her back around when the rest of us aren’t here, I don’t see the problem.”

  “No promises.”

  Gian shrugged. “Then, she isn’t welcomed back here when we’re not home.”

  Seemed simple enough.

  Bene wondered if it would be.

  “Oh, and call your twin,” his father added when Bene stood up from the chair, “he’s worried that we’re lying about whether or not you’ve gone on another one of your spells.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Tell him that.”

  Jesus.

  “Fine.”

  “And say hello to your mother before you leave.”

  Bene waved a hand over his shoulder as he headed for the door, but Gian didn’t seem to mind his lack of a verbal response. At the end of the hallway outside of the office, he already had his phone in his hand, bringing up the contact list.

  At first, he planned to call his brother.

  Like his father said.

  Thing was, Bene knew Beni was good, and had his own shit to focus on with work in Chicago, not to mention his new wife—he didn’t need to be worrying about his twin. No doubt, a phone call from Bene would only get his brother worked up again because he wasn’t here to confirm everything that they told him.

  Bene was doing fine.

  Beni had to trust that.

  Instead of calling his brother, he finally replied to that very sexy picture from Vanna that still had him sporting a semi-erection, even if he had been doing his best for the last hour to ignore it. That was a pointless effort, considering nothing about that woman could be ignored.

  You home?

  Vanna’s reply to Bene’s text came almost instantly with, Yeah.

  His fingers flew over the screen o
f his phone, replying, Mind if I stop by?

  Up until that point, he’d not been to her place other than to drop her off at the front entrance. He never asked to go further, and she didn’t invite him. And yet, it was seconds before her reply came across his screen. As though she hadn’t hesitated at all in her answer.

  Sure. The penthouse has its own elevator in my building. The girl at the front desk will let you in to come up once she calls through to the penthouse.

  That was that.

  Bene surveyed the clean, modernly decorated lobby of Vanna’s building while the girl behind the front desk finished her phone call. A resident upstairs wanted someone to deal with his noisy neighbor, by the sounds of things. The man at the front door had let him in with a kind greeting, and a nod.

  “Sorry about that,” the girl said, smiling widely as she hung the phone up, “what can I do for you today?”

  “The penthouse—Vanna Falco.”

  “What about her?”

  “She said you would call up, and then let me into the private elevator.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Your name?”

  Her words said one thing, but her tone said another. Bene tried not to get too strange about it, if only because the girl looked no more than nineteen years old—how had she gotten this job, anyway?—and it was her job, after all.

  “Bene Guzzi.”

  “Just give me a sec.”

  “Sure.”

  In no time at all, the chick had called through to Vanna’s penthouse, and with the confirmation that he was a welcomed guest, she handed over the key to the private elevator. “Drop it off when you come back down, please.”

  “No problem.”

  With the key in hand, Bene headed for the elevator with the plaque labeled Penthouse right above the closed doors. Shoving the key into the pad beside the doors, he waited for the beep that signaled the elevator had been unlocked for him to use. He hit the button and waited for the doors to open which only took a couple of seconds before he stepped inside.

  Hitting the button for the penthouse—the only button on the wall, other than the emergency stop or the call buttons—he couldn’t help but notice how the girl across the lobby was talking on the phone again behind the front desk. Which wouldn’t be something that concerned him, except she was clearly looking right at him while she spoke.