by Kelex
“Yeah. I saw a crew over at that old dive bar around the corner from Thunderbolts. Looked to be Gino’s regular construction team. I paused to take a peek around, and I’m pretty sure they’re revving to re-open the place. I stopped by downtown and checked the records. Gino scooped up the property a couple of months ago, it seems.”
“Any idea what they’re opening up?” Benny asked.
“All I know for sure is they’re applied for a liquor license.”
Lane walked closer before leaning on the table with one hip. “After he already opened up a place around the corner from Magenta’s? Pretty ballsy.”
“I think Gino and I need another conversation,” Benny said. “He apparently didn’t get the gist of our last one. I might need you there at my side, Kai.”
“Just tell me when,” Kai said.
“Now,” Benny said, rising to his full height. “Let’s get this motherfucker straight. And then we can stop and get something to eat for lunch.” Benny patted his slight paunch. “I’m feeling cheesesteak.”
“Do you even know where Gino is?”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “He’s almost always sitting his ass in a booth at his club on Dresden. Even if he’s not, one call and I’ll know exactly where he is.”
Kai eyed Lane, lifting a brow.
Lane shrugged.
“When I get back, we can sit down and look at those invoices,” Benny said to Lane. “Gimme a few hours, eh?”
“You got it,” Lane said before backing away from the table.
Kai watched him go with as an apologetic look as he could give. He mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Lane nodded softly before he turned and disappeared through the open doors.
“Let’s get going. I’m starving,” Benny said as he headed out.
Kai followed the man to the elevator and slipped in before the doors began to close on them.
“I might need to get tough on Gino. You ready for that?”
Kai side-eyed his uncle. “Tough? What we talking?”
Benny turned to face Kai. “This motherfucker thinks he can come in and try to steal my business. I’ve put too much time, effort, and sweat into building my empire. I won’t have Gino coming in and trying to take what’s mine.”
“It’s a free country. He can open up any business, anywhere. Free market economy, you know?”
“I knew I’d regret sending your ass to college.” Benny chuckled. “Look… when I came out here, the titty show business was in decline. The bars were seedy, covered in cum, and the women were all used up. No one was putting any money into them, and it showed. I changed that. I opened clean, safe clubs where the women were looked after. I made them high end and a place where men wanted to come visit. A place a halfway nice girl wouldn’t mind working in. An adventure. Theme parks for men with hard dicks. Now… years later… Gino thinks he can come in, use my formula, and steal from me? Not only that—he’s opening these places in walking distance from my existing clubs? I don’t think so.” Benny cracked his neck. “Free market economy my ass.”
Kai nodded, knowing there was no way to talk Benny out of anything once he had his mind set. He leaned back against the rear of the elevator and stared up at the numbers.
“Something else on your mind?”
Kai shook his head. “Nope.”
“You didn’t get a call about Gregor’s statue being erected in the center of the new city center?”
Kai turned his head. “How did you know?”
“I might not have lived there in nearly forty years, but I’ve got connections. I hear things.” The elevator stopped at the parking level, and the doors opened. Benny began walking out, but turned inside the opening. “It seems you did get a call.”
Benny spun before getting an answer and stalked toward his big, black Escalade parked nearby. His driver was already inside with the motor warming.
Kai raced to the other side and climbed in behind the driver. Once they were shut inside, he turned to his uncle. “Declan called this morning. Left me a voicemail.”
“You didn’t answer?”
“Nope,” Kai said.
“Where to, boss?” the driver, Keir, asked.
“Gino Minelli’s bar over on Dresden,” Benny said before angling his head to look at Kai. “When’s the last time you talked to your brother?”
The Escalade moved through the parking garage and barreled toward the street.
“It’s been awhile,” Kai murmured.
“How long?”
Kai sighed. “Ten years or so.”
Benny chuckled. “You haven’t talked to him since you came here, have you?”
“I did talk to him—once—asking if we could come home. I was homesick as hell. Declan gave me the runaround about coming home, so I hung up.”
“Declan did call about you guys coming back home. He called me, too. I told him it was your choice.”
“He did call. LJ talked to him. Not me.” That call had come a few years too late. A short stay with Benny had suddenly turned into a much longer affair. After three years, they’d made a new home—one Benny had been more than kind enough to share. “By that time, we were working for you and you’d make it clear we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted. I didn’t think we’d have that same welcome in Bear Mountain.”
“You wouldn’t,” Benny said, sighing. “Declan would only see you and LJ as threats, even more so now that you’re men and not boys. He’s gotten his taste of power and won’t relinquish it, no matter what.” Benny shook his head. “Gregor was the same way. Made it hard for us to stay close after the exile. It’s likely best you stay here. Make your own way in the world and not stand in Declan’s shadow.”
Kai clammed up at the comment about his father. Benny rarely brought up Gregor, and the few times he did, it usually wasn’t complimentary. Luckily, Benny pulled out his cell phone and shifted his focus back onto Gino.
After a quick call, his uncle turned to him. “Right where I expected him to be.”
Moments later, they pulled up to Gino’s Dresden St. club. Kai followed Benny inside, along with their driver. Half-naked girls spun on poles to shitty rap music, and the smell of stale beer, mildew, and cum filled Kai’s nose. It was dark as night. Good thing he had shifter sight and could easily see to avoid the worst of it. But then, perhaps that was a bad thing, too. The place was a rat hole, nothing like Benny’s places.
Benny sidled up to Gino’s table. The portly balding man looked up from his plate of pasta and glared before eyeing a couple of muscle-bound freaks at the bar. The muscle rose, but moved no closer.
He turned back to Kai’s uncle. “What’chu want, Benny? I don’t have time for a bunch of shit today.”
Benny took a seat beside Gino in the half-moon booth and smiled. “Opening another strip joint, are ya?”
Gino’s face went blank. “We had those plans in the mix before you and I talked, Benny. I can’t just stop forward momentum.”
The two guys at the bar took a couple of steps closer.
“Around the corner from my top business, too,” Benny said before taking Gino’s fork from him.
The muscle heads walked closer, and Kai turned so he could see both them and the booth. Both guys gave him the once over, apparently calculating their odds. He knew he was intimidating. As a shifter, he was a good head taller than the humans. While leaner, he knew he was likely twice as strong.
But cracking skulls for Benny wasn’t his thing.
Benny took a bite from Gino’s plate before spitting it back out into a spare napkin. “This the kind of food you serve in your shitty clubs?”
“My mama made that.”
“That’s a shame,” Benny answered before driving the fork through the back of Gino’s hand and into the surface of the table.
Gino screamed. The muscle leapt into action and so did Kai and the driver. They both quickly got the two humans under control, easily getting them into headlocks—Keir was also a shifter, as were most of the men in Benny’s em
ploy. The muscle-bound freaks continued to battle, but it was one they wouldn’t win.
Once Gino’s screams subsided a little, Benny began to speak.
“I told you the last time that I wouldn’t put up with this kind of behavior. You want to open up clubs, you go for it, but you stay… the fuck… out of my neighborhoods. Do you understand me?”
Gino only whimpered and sniveled until Benny moved the fork some. He let out a scream before speaking. “I understand, I understand!”
Benny took a glance around at them, a smug smile on his face. “So this new club of yours?”
“Bar!” Gino shouted. “A bar only. No strippers. I promise.”
Benny smiled. “Good choice. And if that changes between here and opening, I’m coming for you and I’m going to stick the next fork somewhere a lot more precious to you than this flabby hand.”
Gino eyed Benny, sweat dripping down his bald head. “Got it.”
Benny ripped out the bloody fork before tossing it back on the pasta. “Give your mama my regards.”
Gino glared, his mouth clenched in a tight little pucker that looked more like an asshole than lips in Kai’s opinion. Benny didn’t seem to pay the man much mind. He slid out of the booth and headed for the door.
Kai eyed Keir and then the pair of them let go. The humans turned, swinging, and both got a fist to their jaw and landed in a pile at the edge of Gino’s table. The human still sat there, gawking at them and clutching his hand.
Benny spun and walked quickly to the door, and Kai turned to do the same, hearing Gino mumbling under his breath about worthless muscle and that fucking Benny.
Once outside, Kai slipped into the backseat of the Escalade beside Benny.
“On to Ronaldo’s, Keir. I’m craving pasta now,” Benny said before grinning at Kai.
Kai sat there, anger simmering. He held it all in, hoping he didn’t explode. Finally, it got the better of him.
“What was that, Benny?”
“Whadaya mean?”
“We’re now using muscle to push others out?”
Benny cocked his head over and glared. “We do what we must do to survive, Kai.”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t sign up to be your henchman.”
Benny twisted in his seat to face Kai. “I thought of all my kin, you would be the one with the stomach for this.” Benny eyed him. “This is the way I’ve done business for a long, long time. It’s how I took nothing and made it into something. If you don’t throw your weight around on occasion, the vultures will come and rip the meat right off your bones.”
Kai was silent.
“My boys… my street stupid gammas… their mama and daddy sent them off to fancy finishing schools and Harvard, trying to lift them up out of the muck. In doing so, I’ve got two fancy pants boys who can’t get their hands dirty. Lane, while I love your brother bear to death, he’s not got it in him. He’s just too nice. So’s LJ. Chase might have potential, but I can’t get more than five words out of him at a time. So I set my sights on you. You’re the kind of man I need going into the next generation of my company. Someone who can get things done—get his hands dirty—and make sure my legacy survives.”
Kai stared at his uncle. “I’m not that man.”
Benny smiled, looking too damned smug. “You’re not? As soon as I swung that fork, who was the first one to jump in and protect me?”
He looked away.
“You were. It’s that protective instinct you’ve got in you, boy. The alpha instinct—the same as me. You knew exactly what needed to happen, and you made sure it did.”
Kai remained silent.
“The world doesn’t have enough men like us, Kai.” Benny slapped his knees with one large hand. “You’ll see. It’s the way it needs to be.”
Kai looked out the window, watching the city speed past.
“This is all gonna be yours someday,” Benny said. “I wanna make you my heir.”
Kai’s head spun to face his uncle.
“But I need to know you’ve got the right stuff.”
He didn’t want it. In that very instant, he knew he didn’t want what Benny was offering. This wasn’t his future. He’d already seen that in the stars.
But what was to come? He didn’t know…
“I’ve only scratched the surface in showing you what I do to lead this empire,” Benny said. “In time, I’ll show you everything. And if you’re strong enough, I’ll give you the world.”
Kai held his uncle’s stare, his stomach twisting into a knot.
No.
But after all the years Benny had given them… how in the hell did he say no?
Benny smiled, appearing to take his silence as surprise. He patted Kai’s thigh again before chuckling. “I know it’s a lot to take in. But I know you’re the one, Kai. You are the man to succeed me. We’re too much alike, you and I.”
Kai looked back out the window, hoping like hell that wasn’t true.
Chapter Four
That can’t be right.
Lane compared the invoices for two of their bars and saw the discrepancy. Searching through, he saw it pop up over and over again. An overcharge. A serious overcharge. But only for the one location.
What in the hell? How did I miss that all these months?
Lane still stared over the piles of invoices as he heard his cell ringing. He had to search through the piles to find it and was able to click in just before it went to voicemail.
“Hey,” Lane murmured with a smile.
“How are you?” Lane’s father Ivan asked from the other end.
Lane sat back in his chair. “Busy, tired. Same old. You?”
“I was hoping I might’ve heard from you about coming home,” his father said. “Your papa has been driving me nuts about this ceremony.”
“What ceremony?” Lane asked.
“Declan said he was going to call Kai and invite you all to the christening of Gregor’s monument in the new downtown area.”
Lane sighed. “If he did, Kai hasn’t said a word.”
“You have to come home sometime,” Ivan said. “We miss you.”
“You were here a few months ago,” Lane answered, knowing full well that Kai would dig his heels in about going home.
“A few months ago? It was before last Christmas.”
Lane sat up straighter. “Yeah. I guess it has been a while.”
Ivan was quiet a moment. “Look, I know how you feel about leaving your brother bear—and the gods help you—I get it. I wouldn’t want to leave Terrance or Marshall, either. But we’re your family, too. And we miss you. I’m tired of having to drag two old men to Chicago just to see you.”
Lane chuckled. “Papa and father would kick your ass if they heard you call them old.” His bear fathers barely looked older than he did. Shifters didn’t age as quickly. The same couldn’t be said for his human papa. He was getting older and on their last visit, Lane had been shocked at how much age had crept up.
“I’m an old man, too,” his dad said. “And tired, too. I want my son home where he belongs so I can stop worrying so damned much.”
“I don’t think Kai is ever going to want to come home. That’s the problem.”
Ivan exhaled. “Convince him. This ceremony in honor of Gregor is the best damned reason he’s had since you left. He has to face the past at some point. You all belong at home. Here. In the valley.”
Lane pinched his nose, fatigue hitting him. “Yeah. I’ll try. But I can’t promise more than that.”
“Maybe you should come without him if he says no. You can be apart for a week or two. I swear.”
“Maybe,” Lane said looking across the desk filled with work. “We’ll see. But I’ve got a pile of work I’m facing right now.”
“Lane,” Ivan said. “You need to come home.”
Lane noticed the hint of emotion that seemed to whisper in that tone. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to tell you this… and your papa will kill me…”
>
Dread clawed at Lane. “What is it?”
“Your papa isn’t doing well. You need to come, with Kai or without. And you need to spend some time with your papa. Before time gets away from us all.”
He froze for a moment, an icy shiver racing up his spine. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Cancer,” Ivan murmured.
Lane closed his eyes, a cold sweat hitting him. His heartbeat quickened in his ears.
“The docs are doing everything they can… but he’s not a young man anymore. He’s fighting, but the battle…” His dad paused. “It’s already taken a massive toll.”
All the years away… and now they might not have the time he thought was always going to be there.
Later.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Seems your papa ignored some of the signs, assuming it was a bug. Once your father and I realized something was wrong, we got him right in to see the docs. We were waiting for a diagnosis at first… we wanted answers before we talked to you. And then your papa wanted to wait to see how he reacted to treatment before getting you worried.” His dad grew quiet a moment. “And it’s just… it’s just hit him so fast. One day he was himself and the next… he was a shadow.”
Dear gods…
“I’ll convince Kai. And if he refuses, I’ll come. I just need to get some things in line,” he said, trying to remain strong.
Lane could almost sense a change in his dad’s mood at his words.
“Good. Call me with an update when you can.”
“I will once we’re on the road. Give papa a hug for me,” Lane said before ending the call.
He stared at the phone a moment, an icy chill enveloping him, before pulling up Kai’s number. Kai picked up on the second ring.
“Meet me at home. There’s an emergency.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Kai asked, worry in his tone.
“I’m not okay. I’ll explain more once we’re home.”
“I’m with Benny, we’re headed to the office.” Kai paused, and Lane heard muffled voices in the background. “Never mind. Benny’s going to drop me off at our place. I’ll see you when you get there.”