Rules of Bennett: The Complete Collection

by Ember Michaels

  “Cool. I need you to—“

  “Uncle Benny!” a small voice squealed before their weight collided with my leg.

  I looked down to see Saint’s three-year-old daughter Giselle wrapped around my leg as she grinned up at me. Her brown eyes were bright as she looked up at me with adoration, her dark, curly hair in pig tails. I reached down to pick her up.

  “Hey there, baby bird,” I murmured to her, hugging her close.

  Her pouty little mouth frowned as the palm of her hand rubbed along my jawline. “You gotta cut your face,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I chuckled. “What, you don’t like it?”

  “It’s scratchy.”

  “I’ll fix it then,” I said.

  She looked around at the other kids. “Are you having a party?” she asked. “Are we having pizza?!”

  I gave her a small smile. How amazing was it to be so young and blissfully ignorant? Saint had done a good job at sheltering her from the type of life we lived, granted that she was too young to understand in the first place.

  The children present were all ten and younger, not completely capable of understanding why they were here. Soon, they’d have questions. Soon, they’d get stir crazy and want to get out of the bunker. How the hell could I reassure them when I was still trying to navigate myself and my men through this bullshit we'd soon face?

  I looked at Bruce, who only shrugged without an answer.

  “It’s like…a fun camp,” I started.

  Her eyes went wide. “Like Disney channel?” she squealed.

  I didn’t know what the fuck she was going on about, but I agreed with her anyway. “Yeah, something like that,” I replied.

  She looked around again and pointed to a blond-haired boy who sat on the floor, rolling a dump truck over a Barbie doll.

  “He’s going to be my camp boyfriend, okay?” she said with a nod.

  “Boyfriend?” Saint and I said in unison.

  I snickered as I looked over my shoulder to see him approach from behind, frowning as he looked at his daughter.

  Giselle nodded. “Yeah! They have a boyfriend at camp on Disney channel!” she exclaimed, kicking her legs.

  “Giselle, you’re three. You don’t need a boyfriend,” Saint said, moving over and taking his daughter from my arms. He kissed her on the cheek. “You can’t have a boyfriend until you’re married.”

  “Okay, then I can marry him at camp,” she said with a grin.

  Saint looked at me. “If your father doesn’t end me, she damn sure will.”

  “You’ll definitely have your hands full,” I said with chuckle, stroking Giselle’s cheek.

  “Uncle Benny, will we have pizza at camp?” she asked.

  I nodded. “You can have whatever you want. I’ll get you guys pizza,” I said.

  “Yay! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” she chanted, the other smaller children mimicking her as they rushed over.

  Bruce smirked at me. “You sure you want to open up Moreno Daycare down here?” he asked.

  I looked at the ten faces gathered around me, their eyes full of trust and excitement for pizza. Their fathers slowly filtered into the room, their eyes thanking me when they looked my way.

  These were men I trusted with my life, men I’d lay down my life for. Whoever was important to them were important to me, so these children would be protected as long as I had breath in my body.

  “Of course. They’re all family. I’ll protect everyone in this room by any means necessary,” I murmured. It wasn’t the most ideal situation to be in, but they were safer this way. I wanted to preserve their innocence as long as I could and sheltering them from the war brewing outside the gates was the only way I could do that. They needed the chance I didn’t have, and I’d make sure they remained in the dark from the violence and destruction that was my life.

  “I want a cheese pizza!” someone called out.

  “I want a bucket of chicken!”

  “No, I want cereal!”

  “Can I have a taco?”

  “I want a block of cheese!” Theo’s son, Jamison, shouted.

  “You definitely aren’t getting another block of cheese,” Theo said, pointing at his son before looking to me. “Boy was constipated for a week and I’m not dealing with that shit again, no pun intended.”

  Bruce laughed. “Are you positive about this?” he asked again.

  I grinned and shrugged. “They’ll be fine here. I guess we better start getting food before a ‘tater tot’ war starts down here.”

  AURORA

  The sound of Jess’s blood dripping onto the tarp taunted my every thought as it pooled beneath her. No matter how tight I tried to squeeze my eyes, I couldn’t block out the noise. I couldn’t block out the sight of her pale skin as it slowly drained of life. Her dead eyes stared at me but saw nothing. And because I had no choice but to stare at the corpse—a fatal reminder of my consequences—I was forced to accept the fact that her death on was my hands.

  My selfishness was the reason she was dead.

  I wondered if she had a life like I had before she'd arrived at the compound. Did her family miss her or spend day and night looking for her? I wondered if she was a mother, a wife, someone who mattered to another person outside of Bennett's torturous walls.

  Would anyone miss her?

  I knew no one in Bennett’s world would; there was no way he could kill someone as effortlessly as he did her and care about them at the same time. I was almost convinced he didn’t care about anyone but himself.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, though it was fruitless. She was already dead.

  Nausea made my empty belly roll as I gazed at the angry, red slash across her throat. Blood drenched her blouse; the crisp, white material infinitely brighter against the darkness.

  The coppery smell overwhelmed my senses. As time passed, her body released air in strange gurgling noises through the slash in her throat or hissed from parts I didn’t want to think about air escaping. Every time I heard it, I found guilt-fueled, almost childlike hope for a chance that she could still be alive.

  That was always short lived because once the noise passed, her eyes and face remained void of life. She still stared at me with a dull, blank gaze, setting my teeth on edge. If Bennet's sole purpose for keeping me in there with her corpse was to drive me to madness, then he was well on his way to succeeding.

  “Think happy thoughts,” I said to myself, squeezing my eyes shut again. “Just think happy thoughts and you’ll be fine.”

  Tears burned the inside of my eyelids as I thought of Heath, of his beautiful smile, and of his warmth. I remembered the love that filled his eyes as he proposed to me in front of our friends to complete the biggest day of my life.

  It was still so surreal that my old life seemed so far away now, even though I hadn’t been gone away from it too long. Heath felt like a distant memory, as if he’d been my lover in another life. Being with Bennett could make a person feel that way though. A single day felt like years of Hell and there was no finish line in sight for when the suffering would end.

  I shook my head. I refused to take the blame for his actions. I may have made a mistake, but I didn’t kill her. Bennett was the reason she was dead. My actions may have spurred the events, but her blood wasn’t on my hands; it was on his.

  But you’ve always been selfish, a little voice in my head reminded me. You were selfish with Heath and your friends every chance you got. A small sigh slipped through my lips as my mind ran though my interactions with Heath, one in particular standing out.

  “Babe, taste this,” Heath said, thrusting a wooden spoon in my face. “It’s the new sauce I want to pitch to the head chef. I'm hoping to get his recommendation to fill his position when he leaves.”

  I turned away from my computer, stressed from trying to create the perfect formula for my upcoming launch, and forced myself to smile at him.

  “Okay, let’s see what you have.”

  He held the spoon to my lips, watching
with bright eyes as I fought the urge to cringe. As much as I supported him, the sauce was horrible. Too salty with burnt bits mixed into it, not to mention the ingredients didn’t mesh well at all.

  “What kind of sauce is this?” I asked as I grabbed my water bottle and took a gulp from it.

  “You hate it,” he said, his tone flat in defeat.

  “I don’t hate it,” I quickly said, putting my hand on his. “It just…needs some work.”

  He tasted the remaining sauce on the spoon and shrugged. “It tastes fine to me though,” he said.

  “Heath, you have the worst palate ever. You think gas station food is five-star quality. Sometimes it surprises me that you’re a cook,” I said with a chuckle, my eyes drifting back to my computer. “It’s way too salty, and it tastes like you burnt it. Do you think you’re ready for a head chef position?”

  “Seriously?” he exclaimed.

  I shrugged sheepishly. “Babe, that position is a huge responsibility. I don’t want you to embarrass yourself—”

  “And now I’m an embarrassment,” he said with a scoff, throwing his hands in the air.

  I stood from my desk and moved to stand in front of him, snaking my arms around his waist. “You’re not, babe. I’m just saying that maybe you need more practice, and there’s nothing wrong with that. One day, you’re going to be the world’s greatest chef who makes a sauce so delicious the consumers are going to demand that it be sold in a bottle,” I said, standing on my tip toes to plant a kiss on his lips, but he didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t even wrap his arms around me to hold me closer to him as he usually did.

  “Well, thanks for your vote of confidence,” he mumbled, prying my arms from around his waist.

  I looked at him with a raised brow. “I was trying to be helpful—”

  “You know, I’ve supported you from day one,” he interrupted as he shook his head in disbelief. “Even when I thought the idea of you starting a company selling products you don’t even wear was ridiculous, I still supported you because I love you. I didn’t want to crush your excitement with my own doubts because if it made you happy, that was all that mattered.” He sighed. “I just wish I could get the same from you sometimes.”

  “But I do support you though—”

  “By telling me I’m not ready to be a head chef over a single batch of bad sauce?” he countered.

  I sighed. He wasn’t a bad cook. He’d been a sous chef for the last two years, and every day he came home from work and boasted about his dreams of being head chef one day.

  But he was right.

  He’d always been so supportive of me, never questioning my ideas or my desires, but I didn’t really reciprocate that to him. When I was knee deep in work and he’d ask me to try things, I’d shoo him away or take a rain check. When he came home and proudly shared that a dish he made ended up on the menu as a special, I didn’t share his enthusiasm.

  “Never mind. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m meant to be a sous chef for the rest of my life,” he mumbled and turned to leave. “I’ll order pizza for dinner tonight.”

  We only ordered pizza when we were fighting. I didn’t want him to be angry, but I couldn’t lie to him either.

  “Heath,” I started, but he only closed my office door behind him.

  He remained in the kitchen, even long after I’d gone to bed. I looked at the clock on my nightstand, seeing it was 2:47 in the morning and he still wasn’t in bed. I threw the heavy comforter from my body and got out of bed, making my way out of our bedroom. The living room was dark, but the light in the kitchen was on, the sound of running water drifting in my direction.

  The kitchen looked like a war zone with dirty pots and pans on almost every surface. Heath reached over to turn the sink off while still stirring the sauce pan on the stove.

  “Still working?” I asked, moving closer to him.

  He briefly glanced at me before turning his attention back to the stove.

  “Yeah,” he said, his tone short and clipped.

  I stood next to him, watching the plum sauce bubble in the pot. “The smell woke me up,” I said, though it wasn’t really true since I hadn’t fallen asleep.

  “I don’t know if that’s good or bad coming from you,” he mumbled before turning the stove off and moving the pot over to a cool burner.

  “Heath, I’m sorry.” I touched his arm. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I could’ve said things a lot better than I did, and I wasn’t being supportive. You didn’t deserve that, and I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for the truth,” he said with a sigh. “Look, I need to perfect this before work this morning. I don’t really need any distractions right now.” He moved away from me, signaling the conversation was done. I watched him for a few moments before I finally turned and headed back to bed alone.

  I opened my eyes, a few tears slipping down my cheeks. At the time, I didn’t see it as selfish; I thought I was being helpful by being honest with him. I didn’t know I’d broken his spirit and was unnecessarily critical and unsupportive of his dreams.

  Perhaps Bennett’s plan wasn’t to mentally destroy me. Maybe he wanted to force me to face my own demons and finally see myself for who I truly was. In this case, I was almost no better than him. The only advantage he had over me was that he was upfront and honest about who he was and what he was capable of. I was the equivalent of throwing a rock at a glass house and hiding my hand, taking no blame in anything I’d done while watching someone else suffer the consequences of it. If anything, I was worse than he was.

  “Just kill me already and get it over with!” I screamed out into the room, my head on a swivel as I looked for the cameras. “I’m sick of playing your bullshit games! Just end it already!”

  I would even surrender myself to his asshole father if it meant my death would come quicker, but I knew neither of them would do it. Keeping me alive to torture me was all a part of their sick game that I was forced to play.

  Even when I tried to end my own life, Bennett made it very clear I’d never get rid of him until he was ready to let me go. It was still hard to believe my life was nothing more than being someone’s prisoner. The thing that sucked the most was there was no way I could escape it. My parents and Heath were dead, Savannah was in the same predicament I was in—if she wasn’t already dead—and Kandace probably tried to live her life as best as she could in order to remain safe.

  My eyes drifted up to the large clock over the top of the door, the faint ticking of the second hand seeming so loud I nearly winced as it moved. I watched in a trance as seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours.

  Even though I tried to keep my mind blank, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of the many times I’d put myself before others or hurt them with my actions, no matter how unintentional.

  My friendship with Savannah wasn’t the strongest, even more so after I’d started my makeup company. Being a makeup mogul was her dream, not really mine. The only reason why I’d succeeded and she didn’t was because I had the money to do so.

  I should’ve noticed the sadness in her eyes when my company exploded to the heights it did. I should have seen how she always told me that she wished she’d been able to do the same. And after practically stealing the life that she’d wanted for herself, I managed to drag her into my personal hell that had been assigned to me since birth.

  Some friend I was.

  I wiggled around in my chair as the urge to pee suddenly came on. The second hand on the clock moved agonizingly slow, torturing me to no end. I wasn’t sure how long Bennett planned to keep me in here, but I was bound to make a bigger mess in his stupid torture room.

  “Hello?” I called out. “If you don’t want more bodily fluids on the floor, I’d advise someone to come in here to let me go to the bathroom!”

  Five minutes turned into ten, then twenty until I lost count. I bit my bottom lip and tried to squeeze my thighs together, already feeling myself losing an impossible battle.


  “Bennett, you dick! I have to go to the bathroom!” I screamed, tears burning my eyes. Was this what it would come down to? Humiliating me and making me sit in my own waste as a part of my punishment? “If someone doesn’t get in here in the next three minutes, I'll piss all over this fucking floor!”

  Those three minutes passed just as the last few hours had, no one coming to my aid. Angry tears rolled down my cheeks, and I forced myself to continue to hold my bladder. I could imagine him watching me on the camera and laughing with his asshole employees as I struggled in here. He rejoiced in my misery, even more so in my shame and humiliation.

  After a while, I couldn’t hold it any longer. I sobbed as I relieved myself. I felt like a caged animal, forced to sit in my own waste. That was its own kind of punishment. Between the stomach acid I threw up earlier, blood, and now urine, the smell was enough to make me gag after sitting in it for a while.

  I didn’t bother holding it in when I had to go again. Bennett made no effort to come in here after the first time, so I took the hint that I’d be in here for a long time. The nightgown stuck to the back of my legs, making me cringe every time I moved. I’d pissed so many times that it pooled under my chair, making its way to my feet. Fucking hell. I had to get out of here.

  The door to the Retribution room finally burst open, and Bennett stood in the doorway, his face blank of any emotion. Relief flooded through me. I needed a serious shower and something to drink. My mouth was so dry that my tongue felt like thick sandpaper in my mouth. Bennett held a single bottle of water in his hand, and had my mouth not been so dry, I would’ve salivated at the sight of it.

  “Ready to get out of here?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Please,” I replied.

  Bruce and another man I wasn’t familiar with entered the room before him, moving over to retrieve Jess and clean up the mess. Bennett pushed off the doorframe and slowly made his way over to me. His cologne swirled around my head as he stopped in front of me.