“I-I’m not lying, sir,” Caleb stammered, looking to Garrett to save him. Garrett only stared at the wall behind me, refusing to make eye contact. I turned my gaze to Saint and Nyxin, nodding slightly to signal that they get themselves ready. Both Caleb and Garrett snapped their eyes to their burly men who positioned themselves behind them, their guns drawn and at their side. I grabbed the bolt cutters that sat on the desk before sliding off to my feet and walking over to Caleb, whose eyes widened as he looked up at me.
“You’re in charge of your little duo, right, Garrett?” I asked out loud, but I already knew the answer. “So, I want you to answer my question. Oh, and think carefully before you answer. You don’t know what information I may or may not already have.”
“I swear, Boss. The bills were all real when I put the money in the bag. I don’t know what Caleb did when I wasn’t paying attention,” he replied, his eyes watching Saint’s every move behind him.
“You’re a fucking liar, man! You know I never touched that money! You never let me touch it!” Caleb protested before looking up to me. “I swear I didn’t take anything, Boss!”
I tsked. “Strangely, I believe you, Caleb. I don’t believe you’re smart enough to try to scam someone,” I said as I grabbed his hand. “But until your partner here tells the truth, you’re gonna lose a finger every single time a lie comes out of his mouth.”
“No! No! Wait!” he exclaimed as I took the bolt cutter and put his pinky finger in between the two blades.
“You can thank your partner for this,” I said and snapped the cutters closed, taking his entire pinky off.
“FUCK! FUCK!” he screamed, jerking against Nyxin’s hold. I looked to Garrett.
“You wanna try your answer again?” I asked.
His breaths came in fast as he assessed the situation, guilt flashing across his features as he looked at his injured friend. “Okay, Caleb was right. We were robbed!” he said quickly. “I was going to work overtime to get the money back, but then you called us in here to bring you what we had before I got the chance!”
Another lie, but I wanted to see if he would continue digging his own grave. “Do you know who robbed you? How were you gonna get my money back if you didn’t have enough product to sell?”
“It was one of the local gangs that roam around that neighborhood. I was going to get it back directly from them by getting some people to help us rob them. I swear we were gonna get it back,” he said breathlessly.
I nodded. “I see. When were you robbed and why am I just now hearing about it?”
“About four days ago. I’d wanted to try to get the money back first because I didn’t want you to think we were stealing from you.”
“….so you thought putting counterfeits into the bag and lying to me was a better option?” I asked with a raised brow.
“I’m sorry, man. I just wanted to find a solution myself.”
I sighed and shook my head. “That’s…what, three lies you just told in less than three minutes? You must really not give a fuck about your friend here,” I said.
Caleb struggled against me, trying to close his hand into a tight fist, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. I pried the bloody ring finger from his fist, positioning the bolt cutters down to the first knuckle and sliced his finger off without a word. I did the same for two more fingers as Caleb wailed in pain, but Garrett didn’t seem to be moved enough.
“We’re down to one last finger on this hand. You’re running out of chances to tell me the truth,” I said. “So how about we do it this way: how about you just answer my questions I have for you. Can you do that?”
“Y-yeah,” Garrett stammered, his skin slightly turning greenish in color as he observed all the blood coming from his friend.
“Rumor on the street is that you’ve been stealing money from me and looking for a new connect so that you and your fingerless friend here can start peddling your own drugs. Anything you want to explain about that?” I asked as I moved the bolt cutter to Caleb’s thumb.
“Yes! Yes, that was the plan!” Caleb screamed, as he watched the bolt cutter with wide eyes. “Fucking tell him, Garrett!”
“That isn’t even fucking true! I wouldn’t be stupid enough to—”
But he couldn’t even get the complete lie out of his mouth before I took off Caleb’s thumb. Caleb screamed and jerked around in his chair in pain, Nyxin holding him in a headlock with a gun pointed to his temple to keep him seated. I shook my head as I looked back to Garrett.
“Five times. You’ve lied five times now. It’s like you have no regard for your friend here because you don’t give a damn as long as you’re not the one suffering the consequences. So, let’s shift the tables a bit,” I said nonchalantly, stepping away from screaming Caleb.
“No, no, no, no,” Garrett quickly said as I moved closer to him, stopping only a few feet away.
I grinned at him. “Oh, you think I’m gonna cut your fingers off?” I looked at the bloody bolt cutter in my hand. “Nah. That’s way too easy for someone who masterminded something as intricate as you.” I tossed the bloody tool onto the desk and swiped the money and drugs onto the floor with my arm. “Saint, bring him over here, please.”
Saint wasted no time roughly grabbing his arm and yanking him over to the desk. Garrett looked at me with wide eyes, following me with his gaze as I walked behind the desk and opened a drawer.
“Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Come on, man! It was an honest mistake!” he exclaimed as he eyed the sharpened cleaver I pulled out.
“An honest mistake that you keep lying about, right?” I asked as I came back around the desk.
“Okay, I’ll tell you whatever it is you wanna know!” he exclaimed.
“I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath, his chest quickly rising and falling. “Okay, so we did want to start our own thing. We weren’t trying to cheat your or anything; we were just going to—wait, wait, wait!” he screamed when I grabbed his hand and tied a piece of rope around his wrist.
“I’m losing my patience, so you better talk fast.” I wound the excess rope around my hand and grabbed the cleaver, lightly tapping it against my thigh as I waited.
“Okay, okay.” He took in a gulp of air. “You were right. W-we were trying to pull the wool over your eyes, thinking you wouldn’t notice until we were ready to leave. We were gonna just take a little off the top and then repay it when we started our own business, but then we got greedy!”
“What happened to all the drugs? There’s no way you sold all of that; otherwise, you’d have more of the real bills and not a bunch of fakes.”
“W-we exchanged it for sex with hookers,” he admitted, tears filling his eyes. “We’ll get you your money, I swear!”
I scoffed. “Considering how you’ve been lying to me since you stepped foot in here, why the fuck should I believe you now?”
“I can get you the money. I can get it for you right now—”
“Don’t worry. I already have people retrieving my money as we speak,” I said with a grin. “You know, I’ve been working really hard to build my empire. I don’t appreciate when people try to cheat me, Garrett.”
“I swear it won’t happen again, Boss.”
I gave him a soft smile. “I know it won’t, kid,” I said, lifting my arm and bringing the cleaver down on his wrist, chopping off his hand. A little blood splattered my face as he immediately fell to his knees and screamed in agony.
“FUCK!” he screamed. “My fucking hand!”
Saint wrapped his arms around Garrett’s body, pinning his arms to his side as I tied another rope to his other wrist, pulling it to straighten out his arm.
“Please, Boss! Don’t!” he screamed, but his pleas fell on unsympathetic ears. The cleaver sliced through his bone like butter, his blood quickly covering the desktop as his severed hands lay on top of it. I cracked my neck and inhaled deeply, the coppery scent of blood calming my frayed nerves.
God, that fucking felt good.
&n
bsp; Saint let go of him, watching as he crumbled to the floor screaming. It was only a matter of time before he bled out after cutting through his radial arteries. Caleb screamed in shock and horror as he watched Garrett convulse on the floor, not noticing when I gave Nyxin his signal. Without a word, Nyxin moved to stand in front of him, emptying his gun into Caleb’s chest as Saint did the same to Garrett on the floor.
I looked around at the bloody mess around us. “We probably should’ve put that plastic down,” I mused, grabbing a towel from the black bag behind the desk.
Saint chuckled. “I was gonna mention that when you started cutting off Caleb’s fingers, but I didn’t want to take you out of the zone when it’s something trivial. I’ll get a clean up crew in here to deal with it,” he said, just as my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I cleaned the blood off my hands as best as I could, rolling my eyes when I saw Gio’s name on my screen.
“Yeah?” I said upon answering, expecting more fuckery to appear tonight.
“Hey, Boss. First Lady is here. I wanted to know if you wanted us to keep an eye on her? She um…seems to be dancing with some random. Never seen him before,” he said.
I ground my teeth as renewed anger rushed my veins. It was one thing to try to piss me off for attention, but to disrespect me publicly when she was supposed to be the queen of my empire wasn’t something I would fucking stand for.
“Where is she exactly?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“Uh…” he was silent for a moment as music thumped in his background. “It looks like she’s heading either toward the VIP rooms or the bathroom.”
“Is she alone?”
“Nah, the guy is still with her. Should we escort her or have her wait for you?”
“No. I’m in the basement; I’m on my way up,” I growled and hung up.
“What’s up?” Saint asked.
I pulled my gun from my waistband. “Apparently I need to go remind my wife who the fuck I am since she forgot,” I growled. “I’ll be back.”
I wouldn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone, not even my wife. And by the time I was done with her, she’d fucking remember it.
AURORA
Gio hung up the phone and slid it into his back pocket before he nodded to me. “It’s done, boss lady.”
I grinned and took a sip of my rum and coke. “On a scale of one to ten, how angry was he?”
“Off the charts.” He frowned slightly. “You may wanna be careful, boss lady. He’s been a loose cannon lately.”
I waved him off. Bennett was the least of my worries. After everything he’d done to me since he’d been in my life, there wasn’t much left to do to me that he hadn’t already done. What was he gonna do? Kill me?
“It’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t think he’ll do anything publicly to his wife. That wouldn’t look too good if word got out,” I said with a smirk as I slid off the bar stool and quickly downed the rest of my drink for liquid courage. “Thanks for the help.”
“Of course,” he said with a slight nod before moving down to the other end of the bar to take drink orders.
I made my way through the dancing bodies with a purpose. Excitement and annoyance flowed through my veins as I headed to the back hallway that housed both the bathrooms on one end and the VIP rooms on the other one. On one hand, I knew that Bennett and I would have some kind of argument about my antics that would end in angry, mind blowing sex. But on the other hand, it was frustrating that he could make time to punish me but couldn’t make time to be a husband and father. I could sympathize with him and all the pressure he was under. Starting a new mafia family was a lot of work, even more so when he was trying to do everything himself. But he refused to find any kind of balance. For the last couple of months, I was lucky to even see him when I woke up in the morning, only hearing his voice when I’d call him. His men saw him more than I did, and I was getting pretty fed up with it.
I pushed the door open to the men’s bathroom, all heads turning to me. A couple groups of men stood around. Some of them using urinals, a group of them passing a joint around, and a couple of guys just standing against the wall looking at their phone screens. I tossed my hair over my shoulder and crossed over to the mirrors near the sinks, a couple of guys letting out a low whistle. I could feel the lust charged energy around me, the men looking as if they all wanted to pounce on me in a minute. I fought the urge to smirk as I reached into my clutch and pulled out my lipstick.
“Are you lost, sweetheart?” one man said as he licked his lips. “You’re in the wrong bathroom, beautiful.”
“Nah, she’s in the right place. I bet you’re looking for a good time, huh, baby?” someone near the door quipped.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m actually waiting for someone.”
“In the men’s bathroom?” another one said, taking a step closer to me before looking at someone over his shoulder. “Someone lock the door.”
I glanced at him in the mirror. In another life, I probably would’ve been a little nervous about what he could possibly do to me. The man was built like a tank, standing at about five-foot-ten or so and stacked with muscle. His jet black hair was damp with sweat, his honey-colored eyes filled with hunger, lust, and malice. I pulled the top off my lipstick, touching up my lips. “That’s not a good idea,” I said in a sing-song voice.
“It sure the fuck isn’t,” someone said. Three guys wearing black tailored suits pushed off the wall and forced themselves through the gathering men, menacing looks in their eyes as they approached me. One with chestnut hair slicked back with more hair gel that I’d probably used in my lifetime took my hand into his and kissed my ruby ring. “Boss lady.”
An odd sense of relief filled me as I smiled at him, looking to the two other men with him. “I can handle myself, gentlemen. Besides, Bennett will be here any moment now,” I said.
The ringleader nodded. “I know he will, but he’ll have all of our asses if something happens to you.” He turned to the large man and frowned. “Unless you have a death wish tonight, you may want to leave before he gets here.”
The man laughed heartily, playfully elbowing the guy next to him in the ribs. “You hear this punk?” he said, still chuckling. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is who she is and how much shit you’re gonna be in when her husband gets here,” the man continued.
I patted his shoulder. “I got this,” I said and looked to the burly man before me. “My husband is already pissed off because he thinks I came into the bathroom with a man. If you want to be present when a murderous mafia boss comes in here, that’s your funeral. But if you know what’s good for you, you’d leave while you—” Loud pounding sounded on the door, everyone flinching in surprise. I grinned and shrugged. “Too late.”
“Aurora! Open this fucking door!” Bennett shouted, still pounding on the door.
The burly man looked to the door and then to his friend. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he mumbled, the rest of the guys quickly following behind him. The door flew open, slamming against the wall as the men scurried out, leaving me with Bennett’s lower level men and the devil himself. His angry eyes looked to the three men.
“I need you three to get the fuck out,” he growled.
“Yes, sir,” the ringleader said, snapping his fingers to signal the other two to follow. They all murmured acknowledgements to Bennett, but he wasn’t focused on them. The moment the door closed behind the last man, he crossed the open space between us so fast that I thought he’d teleported. Pain radiated across my cheek when he slapped me. I was so shock that I froze, my brain trying to process what happened. I couldn’t even really remember the last time he’d hit me, the action completely catching me off guard. His hand was on my throat in an instant, squeezing hard as he roughly slammed me against the wall.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I exclaimed, trying to pry his hand from my neck.
“What the fuck
is wrong with you? Do you think it’s funny to fucking play with me?” he bellowed, pressing his gun against my temple.
Tears burned my eyes as I tried to push him away. “Get the fuck off of me, Bennett!”
“No, since you wanted my attention so bad, now you have it.”
“Let me go!”
“This is what you wanted, right? For me to follow you in here and fuck you as if you’re some common whore? Have you lost your fucking mind?” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth as he pressed the muzzle of his gun harder into my skin.
“Okay! I fucking get it!” I screamed back at him, my tears spilling down my cheeks. The sight of my tears must’ve snapped him out of whatever rage-induced trance he was in, his eyes softening as he released a deep sigh.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed. He let go of me and ran a frustrated hand through his dark hair as he paced the floor. “Why the fuck do you like pushing me over the edge, Aurora?”
“Because you seem to always have time to punish me,” I fired back bitterly. “I figured since you’re too busy to love me, then at least I’ll see you long enough for you to inflict pain since you’re so good at that.”
He narrowed his gaze at me and frowned. “You know what I’m fucking doing out here. I have enough stress on my plate without you fucking with me and picking fights for attention,” he snapped.
“What else am I supposed to do, Bennett? It’s not like I see you any other time to have a normal fucking conversation with you. Is it a fucking crime to want to spend time with my husband when he keeps blowing me off otherwise?” I screamed. I was so frustrated that my anger was spilling out in the form of tears. I didn’t want him to think I was crying because I missed him. I was fucking angry, even more so because he hit me. Now, I couldn’t fully blame him. If he was in the basement of the club, I knew that someone died by his hands. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to try to pull this stunt when he was already teetering on the thin line that separated sanity from madness. And as I looked into the brewing rage still swirling in his eyes as he looked at me, I realized that I couldn’t even recognize him right now.
Rules of Bennett: The Complete Collection Page 65
