Rules of Bennett: The Complete Collection

by Ember Michaels

“I’ll kill you when I see you,” Bennett growled upon answering.

  Wilson only chuckled, as if he didn’t take Bennett seriously. “Well, today’s your lucky day. I’m downstairs with your wife and it’s not looking too good,” he said and tsked.

  “Bennett, he’s just trying to lure you down here. I’m fine,” I called out. The last thing I needed was for him to come down here and get himself killed as soon as he opened the door.

  Wilson pointed the gun at me and fired it, hitting me in the arm. I cried out and clutched my wound, the burning sensation going all the way down to my fingers.

  “She’s not fine anymore,” Wilson growled.

  “I swear to fucking god—”

  “Come down here alone. I have my own men at the base of your stairs down here that will pick everybody off that isn’t you. And then, they’re gonna go visit those precious children that you don’t think I can reach,” he growled. My heart dropped at his words. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that he’d been able to get into the Retribution room with his own fingerprint instead of Bennett’s. There was nothing stopping him from going on the other side of that dead-end wall and killing the children.

  “Who’s to say he hasn’t already?” the voice asked.

  Knowing Wilson, I wouldn’t be surprised if he already had.

  In less than two minutes, the door to the Retribution opened and Bennett stood in the doorway, his shirt and hands now stained with Saint’s blood. He glared at Wilson as he walked in.

  “Don’t move a single step toward her,” Wilson growled. Bennett frowned and continued walking over to me anyway, pushing me to stand behind him.

  “You can’t give me instructions in my own house,” he said. “And you damn sure can’t tell me that I can’t protect my wife.”

  “Once I’m done here, your ‘wife’ is going to be a big slut on the black-market livestreams,” Wilson said and chuckled. “I already have a list of clients ready to fuck her until she miscarries.”

  My eyes widened and I fought the urge to whimper. He knew about the baby after all.

  As if reading Bennett’s and my expression, he grinned. “Hacked the doctor’s records to see why he was here so often. I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me the good news,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Why the fuck would I tell you anything? We’re no longer family,” Bennett growled.

  “We’ll always be family, Bennett,” Wilson said and pointed his gun at the both of us. “But sometimes you have to punish family that’ve wronged you.”

  Bennett was quick when the gun went off, turning and knocking me to the ground as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. He growled in pain as he grabbed his gun on his good arm and fired twice, taking out Wilson’s legs. Wilson bellowed in agony and fired again, the bullet ricocheting only centimeters from Bennett’s head.

  “I should’ve killed you the night I had Stephanie killed,” Wilson ground out. “What kind of person turns on their own family?”

  “I should ask you the same,” Bennett snapped back before firing his weapon again. He hit Wilson in the wrist, causing him to drop his gun. It slid a couple of feet away from him, leaving him defenseless. Bennett raised his gun to fire again, but I stopped him.

  “No,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes at me and frowned. “What the fuck do you mean no? You wanted him dead.”

  “I know and I do. But not like this.” I looked over to Wilson as he lay on the blood bleeding, anger and hatred still blazing in his eyes. “A bullet would be too easy for him.”

  Bennett winced and passed me the gun, using his now free hand to clutch his shoulder. “Go hit the red button on the wall,” he panted. I jumped to my feet, pain radiating down my arm when I moved it. I grabbed Wilson’s gun just as he reached for it and kicked him in the face before running over to the wall. An alarm went off when I slapped the button and I went back over to Bennett, who was losing way too much blood. His skin looked a bit pale as he laid there with his eyes closed and I could only hope a major artery wasn’t hit when he was shot.

  “Remember what I said,” he forced out, finally opening his eyes.

  “About what?” I asked, panic starting to settle in at the severity of his situation.

  “If anything happens to me, you leave.” He winced. “Bruce has copies of my cards and anything you’ll ever need. He has orders to give those to you if you decide to go.”

  “You’ll be fine, Bennett,” I whispered, confused as to why tears burned my eyes. I shouldn’t be sad about the idea of Bennett dying. He’d put me through hell from the moment he stepped foot into my life. He’d taken so much from me and broke me in ways that I’d never be able to fix, so he didn’t deserve my sadness. But it didn’t stop the tears from falling as I looked down at him. “You’ll be fine and one day you’ll be able to tell our kid how you took a bullet for me.”

  He gave me a weak smile, but it faded just as soon as it appeared. “Just in case I’m not around to be able to tell them that, tell them about the man I tried to be for them. For you.” His eyes glassed over as he looked at me. “I really fucking tried, Aurora.”

  “I know you did,” I said, my vision blurring as tears burned my eyes. “I know.”

  Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Bennett’s men swarmed the room. Someone lifted me to my feet as a couple of people in white coats rushed over to me and Bennett. I couldn’t register everything people were shouting, as if I were underwater. Wilson’s yelling cut through the fog, Bennett’s men dragging him out of the room. Despite his injury, Bennett was still giving orders as he was put on a makeshift stretcher, his blood loss making him too unsteady on his feet.

  “He has to go to the hospital,” Bruce told me, his voice registering in my mind.

  “Then I want to go with him,” I protested.

  “We need to get you cleaned up, ma’am,” a woman in a white coat said.

  “I need to go with him,” I said breathlessly, but they wouldn’t let me. All I could do was watch him leave and pray that he made it out of this alive.

  I looked around the room. “Where are they taking Wilson?” I asked.

  “Probably in another room to finish him off,” Bruce said with a shrug. I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “He’s not dead because I don’t want him dead that easily. He doesn’t deserve something as simple as a bullet.”

  “Well, look at you. The dark princess is more like her husband than she cares to admit,” Bruce said with a chuckle. “What do you have in mind, boss?”

  “Boss?” I asked.

  He nodded. “As queen, you’re second in command when the top boss isn’t here. Until Bennett returns, everyone answers to you. So, what do you have in mind, boss?”

  It felt odd having control over an entire organization that I didn’t even know how to run. If something were to happen to Bennett, I wouldn’t know the first thing about being the head of a mafia family. But looking at the men that now surrounded me with their guns drawn to protect me, I knew that no matter what, they’d have my back.

  I straightened my posture as I clutched my wound a little tighter. “Have the doctor patch Wilson up for now, as I don’t want him bleeding all over the place. I need him to stay alive long enough for him to take a trip down my memory lane.”

  BENNETT

  I looked around to see that I was in my bedroom, everything decorated as it was when Stephanie was alive. A fire crackled softly in the fireplace, light humming coming from the closet. My hand went to grab my gun from my waist, but it wasn’t there. I was only dressed in silk pajama pants, but my shoulder was no longer injured.

  “What the fuck?” I murmured, walking over to the mirror to look at myself. I could see the small bullet hole in my skin, but I didn’t feel any pain.

  “What do you think?” a soft voice asked.

  I turned and my heart nearly stopped when I saw Stephanie standing in the doorway of the closet, holding up a dress. This wasn’t real. This cou
ldn’t be real. She was dead and yet here she was, standing before me, waiting on my approval for the dress she held.

  “Am I dead?” I asked.

  She gave me a soft smile and shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

  “Then what is this place?”

  “Limbo,” she said, putting the dress down and walking over to me. I ran a hand through my hair in confusion as I thought of everything that’d happened. I cringed when I remembered that Wilson wasn’t dead. If I was here, that means I’d left Aurora with him.

  A wave of guilt hit me square in the chest. Now I knew why this was limbo. I was at a crossroads right now. Every night I prayed for a chance to be with Stephanie, whether in my dreams or in death, and here she was. But on the other side of this thin line was my pregnant wife and a potential future. To stay with Stephanie would be to die and leave the last of my family that I had left. And to live would mean letting go of Stephanie forever.

  Stephanie cupped my cheek, her touch cool against my skin. “It’s been so long,” she murmured.

  “This doesn’t feel real,” I said, shaking my head. I reached out to touch her arm, my fingers lightly brushing against her cool skin. Her eyes followed my hand as it moved up to touch her face, nuzzling my palm when I touched her.

  “It’s real for now,” she said and kissed my palm before taking my hand from her face. She looked down at my attire and smirked at me. “You need to hurry and get dressed. We’re going to be late.”

  “Late? Late for what?”

  “Our last date,” she said and went back over to the closet and picked up the dress. “So, what do you think about this one?”

  It was just a simple black dress, but she could make anything look amazing. “It’s perfect,” I finally responded.

  She smiled. “Good. Well, I’ll go get ready. You should go do the same.”

  I watched her as she disappeared into the bathroom and looked around. This was fucking weird. Even seeing Stephanie now, it didn’t feel as I thought it would. Maybe it was because I was still in shock from everything that’d happened leading up to me being here with her. I didn’t even want to begin considering the second possibility.

  “Ready!” Stephanie exclaimed after a few moments. She hadn’t even been gone for more than two minutes and she was all dolled up as she usually was. Her eyes softened as she looked at me, smiling. “And you look handsome as usual.”

  I looked down to see that my pajama pants had been replaced with a tailored suit despite the fact that I hadn’t moved from the spot I’d been standing in. The black dress shoes on my feet were so shiny that I could almost see my reflection in them. Stephanie walked over to me and took my hand, leading me out of the bedroom. The house was quiet as we made our way down the stairs, all the furniture in the living room gone. Music began to play out of nowhere as she wrapped her arms around my neck, swaying to the music.

  “You should see the look on your face,” she said and giggled.

  “What look?”

  “Utter confusion.” She stared at me thoughtfully, her hand idly stroking the back of my neck as she used to do. “You’ve always been a confident, sure man. It’s different seeing you so confused.”

  I looked down at her blue eyes and stroked her cheek, smirking at her. “Well, you’d be confused to when you end up here and a bunch of weird shit is happening.” I sighed. “You’re dead.”

  “I am. But let’s not talk about what we both already know,” she said. “Tell me about your life with her.”

  “It’s been a struggle,” I admitted. “I can’t undo what I’ve done to her.”

  “But why’d you do it in the first place?” she asked. She didn’t make it sound as if she was accusing me, only waiting for me to speak.

  “I thought I needed to in order to distance myself from her,” I stated. “I thought if I hurt her and made me hate her, it would break whatever pull she had on me.”

  She giggled and shook her head. “That didn’t work too well, now did it?”

  “No,” I murmured. “Now she hates me and will probably leave at the first chance that I give her.”

  The thought of her leaving made my chest hurt. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. I knew I wasn’t in love with her, but it was hard to not care about her. I wanted to eventually get to a point where our feelings were real and mutual. She deserved to be free, and I knew that we could never get to a point of having a real relationship unless I gave her a choice to choose where she wanted to be. And giving her a chance to reject me was fucking terrifying.

  “I hated you when I first met you,” she reminded me. “Look how beautiful we were able to make our relationship.”

  “But I’m not that man anymore,” I murmured. “The man that Aurora knows isn’t the same man that loved you.”

  “He’s in there somewhere. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be thinking about getting back to her and your baby,” she said with a small, sad smile.

  I exhaled deeply and rested my forehead against hers. “It should’ve been you, you know,” I whispered. She looked up at me with sad eyes, a slight frown on her pouty lips.

  “Bennett, you have to let go,” she murmured. “You have to forgive yourself and let go.”

  “But it’s so fucking hard.”

  “I know. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it is for you, but you have to let me go. I’m gone, but you’re not. Everyone responsible will have paid for their part and you’re gonna need to start living your life. You have a wife and you’re about to become a dad. Look at this as your new beginning where you can do things right.”

  “I keep telling you I’m not that man anymore,” I ground out, but my growing annoyance didn’t faze her.

  “You don’t have to be the same person you used to be in order to learn to love someone,” she responded. “Aurora isn’t the same person either. I think you both just need to learn each other because you still don’t know much about her.”

  “I know enough.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Do you know her favorite color?” she asked. I opened my mouth to answer, but then closed it. I didn’t know her favorite color; she only wore things that she thought I would like, not things she’d choose for herself. “What about her favorite food?”

  “She likes…” I trailed, but I didn’t know that either. She’d only eaten what was provided for her. She never requested anything specific and always just went with the flow of the house. “So, I guess I don’t know her the way I thought I did.”

  “She doesn’t know you either,” Stephanie said. “She only knows what you’ve shown her. She doesn’t know about the man that likes his hold his woman at night when he’s had a long day.”

  Memories of that filtered through my mind. Coming home every night to Stephanie was what’d kept me grounded. I didn’t even have to say a word to her; she’d just wrap her arms around me and stroke my hair until we either had sex or I fell asleep against her.

  “She doesn’t know the man who will move heaven and earth to make this woman happy,” Stephanie continued. “Or the man who will be the best father to a very lucky child because you love children.”

  “How can I be the best father when I don’t have a clue how to be?” I asked, my insecurities coming back to the surface.

  Stephanie smiled. “Because you’ll love and protect that child with every part of you. Underneath all of the bad that you like to cover yourself with, there’s still a really good guy in there that wants what we used to have again. You just have to stop convincing yourself that you don’t deserve it.”

  When I’d first started with the mafia, I used to always ask my dad how one could find love when it was hard to find a woman that was accepting of this life. He hadn’t dated or remarried after my mom was murdered, which made me wonder if I was destined to be alone like he was.

  “Bad guys don’t get happy endings,” was the only thing he’d said in response to that. But when I got with Stephanie, she proved that to be wrong. Everything had
been perfect for a couple of years and then I got a taste of what my father had been saying for years. After doing so much bad shit, Stephanie was finally taken away from me, solidifying that bad guys didn’t get happy endings.

  As if reading my mind, Stephanie smoothed her hands down the front of my suit jacket. “You’re not a bad guy, Bennett,” she murmured. “You’re just a guy who has done bad things.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  She shook her head. “You still have a conscience. That’s why you’re trying to be better for her. It’s why you protect her the way that you do.” She met my gaze. “It’s why you made her your queen.”

  “I don’t know what to do when it comes to her,” I said with a sigh. “It doesn’t help that I’ve fucked up with her again.”

  “Start with forgiving yourself for what you’ve done and then give her the choice to stay or leave. If she chooses to stay, then you love her with everything in you until she has no choice but to see and understand that you’re being genuine.”

  “But what if she decides not to stay?” I murmured, the thought hard to think about.

  Stephanie gave me a small smile. “Then let her go,” she said. “There’s always that possibility that she’ll come back.”

  “If she leaves, I’ll never see her or my kid again,” I ground out.

  “And if it’s meant to be, you will.” She took my hands into hers. “That’s enough talking about it for now. You need to go live your life now and try to do the right thing.”

  “So, this is it, huh?” I forced myself to commit every detail to memory as I looked at her. Her beautiful blue eyes, wavy blonde hair, her gorgeous smile that lit up her face, and her pouty lips that I used to kiss every chance I got. I knew when I woke up from whatever this was, I’d have to let her go in order to allow myself to love Aurora the way I’d need to if I wanted to be serious with her.

  “I think it is, but it’s okay,” she said and smiled. “You’re getting a second chance, love. Don’t mess it up by being stuck in your own head.”

  “I won’t,” I said and took her into my arms, hugging her tight. “I love you, Steph. Always.”