by Bethany-Kris
She swallowed hard. “You’re asking me to stay in Chicago ... again.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Suggestion is enough, Beni.”
“You asked what I wanted from this, though. Why ask if you don’t want a truthful answer?”
“My life is in New—”
“And mine was in Toronto, but shit changes. That’s life.”
“I have a job there. My parents. You and Camilla ... you both think that it should be easy for someone to just uproot everything at the drop of a hat because something feels like it might be great, but that’s the thing. I don’t know that anything here will work out. The job ... you. None of it, and I am not the kind of woman who risks a sure thing on something.”
Ouch.
She hit him where it hurt.
A part of him respected it.
Another part wanted to grab that woman, drag her to him, and kiss her until she understood that nothing was ever going to feel right or good in his life again until he could see and speak to her every single day of his life. It didn’t have to be normal or make sense. It just was.
She made him crazy.
He liked that just fine.
And yet, Beni didn’t argue with her. He wasn’t going to push August into something she wasn’t ready for just because he was at a completely different place than she was. That wasn’t fair to her, and he wasn’t that type of asshole.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow ... but someday, if he did that, and forced her into a choice that she hadn’t willingly made because she wanted it too, then she would resent him. It wouldn’t be any different for Camilla, if her friend did the same.
He didn’t want that at all.
“For the record,” he said, “so it can be known it was said and all, I want you to stay here. I want you to take that job. I want you to be mine—my fucking girl, okay? But I want it to be what you want, too, and that’s what matters more.”
“Killing me here,” she murmured.
Beni shrugged. “Fair is fair, woman. You killed me from the jump.”
From second one.
First glance.
She had him caught.
Every step, each word after was just ... bonus. A lure drawing him in closer while she reeled and reeled until she had him caught in her snare.
What was he supposed to do now?
Wait her out.
August glanced back at the house before coming back to him just as fast. “It’s not a no, okay? It’s just a ... I need time. I have things to take care of back at home when my time here is done, and then I can seriously give this a shot.”
Beni nodded once. “Okay.”
He could deal with that.
“Just okay?”
“Whatever you want, woman. I am game.”
Her sweet laughter colored the driveway before she darted forward. He caught her in his embrace, their kiss a fuel to an already raging inferno. He surely didn’t need to go to work this morning with a hard-on while also thinking about the fact that all too soon, this woman was going to be even further out of his reach.
And yet, that’s exactly what he did.
• • •
August still clung heavily to the back of Beni’s mind even as he arrived at the warehouse. After parking the Ducati on the street next to the side of the place, he headed for the door he always used to enter the building to the find it was already opened.
He surveyed the broken lock on the side of the doorjamb. Shit, someone must have used a power tool to grind out the fucking lock. And given the security on the building basically boiled down to an alarm that engaged twenty seconds after someone entered the place ... well, if they knew where the panel was, and how to shut it off, no one would even know they had broken in. Not to mention, there weren’t any goddamn cameras in the place.
A made man’s paranoia, and all.
No one wanted to catch their own crimes on tape.
“Well, fuck,” Beni muttered.
“Fuck is right.”
He glanced up, standing straight to see the Capo coming his way. Jerome wore a scowl that could rival the devil’s on a bad day. Looking far more disheveled than he had ever seen the man, the Capo even had his tie loosened around his neck, had lost his standard suit jacket, and his white dress shirt was rolled up to the elbows. That was before the man’s messy hair, and the dirt smeared to the knee of his pants like he had been kneeling on the ground, or something.
“Think it’s related to the gang and the—”
“Yes,” Jerome snapped. “Because they lifted a bunch of shit out of the warehouse. And of course, because I don’t have cameras, well ... I got nothing.”
Beni nodded. “Yeah, that’s rough. What does it look like inside the place?”
Jerome sighed harshly and glanced over his shoulder. “You know what, look for yourself. I am going to run down the street, grab myself something to drink at that fucking Irish pub that stays open all hours of the day, and think about what I’m going to do next here. This is getting out of control.”
To say the least ...
He didn’t say that out loud.
“We’ll get it figured out,” Beni said, shrugging. “The fact that whoever it is, especially if we believe it’s someone inside the crew, is getting this blatant speaks of ... well, desperation. And we all know what happens when fuckers get desperate, right?”
“They make mistakes.”
“Exactly. It’s a matter of time.”
“Or I could just shut down the whole crew—clean house and be done with it.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Jerome grunted under his breath, stepping out onto the side street with a shake of his head. “No because that crew ... I have been building it for years. Never had a problem until recently. They’re a good group of guys who know what the fuck they’re supposed to be doing. And to rebuild a crew like that from the ground up? Impossible.”
“And a lot of money lost in the process.”
“Losing fucking money now.”
Point taken.
“And it’s hard on them,” the Capo added quieter, “knowing someone in their ranks is fucking them over—making it harder to work and causing me to be distrustful of them all. To make a crew work, a man needs two things. Rapport with their people, and a common reason that keeps them all wanting to work together. This is ruining what I worked for with these guys. That’s breeding a whole other problem for me here. I need this to be fixed, and soon.”
The man’s threat was clear.
“It will be,” Beni assured.
Although how, he didn’t know.
“I could clean house,” Jerome muttered, “or start picking them off one by one until I find the right fucker. But what does that do? Makes them scared of me, makes them bitter, and vengeful. Because they’re all friends, or some of them. And when you start fucking with one, you fuck with them all. They might not come back on me right now, but eventually ... and I can’t afford that risk. I know how this works. I need to find the one without hurting the others, or else they’ll make me pay for it.”
Huh.
All Beni’s life, his goal with the family business had been the position this man right here held. A Capo. He’d never looked at the boss’s seat like it was good for him, because he didn’t fit the mold of what a boss needed to be, and he wasn’t so arrogant that he couldn’t admit it. But a Capo? That felt right, and he wanted it.
It was only now that Beni realized just how complex and intricate the job of a Capo running a crew on the streets could be. They were as dependent on their men as they were on themselves, and la famiglia. To punish one, meant to screw with the others. And when one chip started to fall, the rest would soon follow.
Beni absorbed that.
He wouldn’t soon forget it.
Once the Capo had disappeared down the street, and out of sight, Beni headed inside the warehouse. Sure enough, it was a mess. Boxes overturned from the recent shipment of fake
goods that would need to be sold on the street. Some shit had been broken, a lot of it was just missing entirely.
The one car left to be chopped up, that had yet to be touched, now had dents beaten into the roof, hood, and doors. Glass from the windows sprinkled the cement floor, and slashes had been cut into the leather seats of the Benz.
Damn.
Someone had taken cans of spray paint, and went to work on the floors, walls, metal beams, and everything else they could fucking touch, by the looks of it. Gang signs had been painted on whatever they could find—ruining more shit that would need to be replaced.
Definitely connected to the rest of it, then.
Except ... this kind of confirmed it to Beni, he thought, as he lingered in the doorway of a now trashed office that belonged to the Capo. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he had zero doubt now that whoever was stealing and fucking around within the crew was working with the gang to cause the crew and Capo problems, too.
Simply because of the alarm system.
Whoever came inside here last night knew about the alarm, and likely where the panel was to shut it off, not to mention, how to shut the fucking thing down. So, someone had to have given that information to the gang or were here to do it for them.
Unless, of course, the person wanted them to believe it was the gang who did this. Beni seriously doubted that ... if only because soon enough, if it had been the gang, they would send out word about that they did. Prideful fuckers that they were wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to brag about how they fucked over a mafia Capo.
It was the whys that tripped Beni up.
Why work with a gang?
If all the fucker in the crew wanted to do was steal, and make some extra cash on the side, if that was the case ... why make it this blatant?
Because now, it meant trouble.
Now, they were looking for them.
Now, they were certain to die.
It reeked of desperation.
Again.
So, why?
What was the cause?
Beni turned to leave the doorway of the office and head further back into the warehouse to possibly begin cleaning up. Except he just made it far enough to see a bat swinging in his direction. And then all he saw was blackness.
12.
“And then after this morning, he brought me back to your place.”
Across the table, Camilla raised her brows and wagged them suggestively, all the while, keeping her to-go cup of coffee high to her lips to hide her grin. August didn’t need to see it to know—her best friend would never change, and that was a promise.
“Oh, so you just woke up and he brought you home? That’s all?”
August laughed. “Well ...”
“I knew it!”
Camilla’s crow brought the attention of several people in the café their way. The bustling business had great sandwiches, according to her friend, but they were still waiting for their order to show up on their table, so August was holding off on making any rash statements like they were the best. Some people forgot that spices and flavoring was needed and depended on only salt and pepper to do the job.
Right.
“Details, details.” Cam smacked the table with the palm of her hand. “I need them now.”
“You really are the absolute worst.”
Camilla preened. “And yet, you’re still going to give me all the details.”
Obviously.
“He certainly made my morning worth while,” August admitted, “a couple of times over.”
Camilla pressed her lips together and squealed under her breath like they were two teenage girls talking about their first time fumbling around with a boy. All she could do was shake her head and laugh along with her friend’s antics.
“You know, I honestly didn’t think someone like Beni was your type,” Camilla noted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Connected. Affiliated. You do know his father is a major crime boss in Canada, right? Gian Guzzi—has controlled Canada for years. And his mother? Sister to Tom’s father, so he comes from ... well, I mean he’s a principe, by all standards. A mafia prince. I just didn’t think you would go for a mob guy.”
Oh.
That was not what August thought her friend meant at all.
“I guess I just never thought about it.”
Camilla’s brow dipped. “Or was it that you chose to ignore it? Because even though you like to act as though you don’t know about this life, you know ... you really do, August.”
“That’s fair. And maybe, yeah. It did cross my mind, but ...”
“What?”
“I was more interested in the man than the details. He makes that really easy.”
Too easy, maybe.
“So, what you’re saying is that you like him, right?”
That question was so fucking easy to answer that it was sickening. Yes, she liked Beni. Far more than she probably should, if she were being an honest woman about it all. There was something about that man drawing her in, and the more time she spent with him, the harder his invisible hold became around her heart.
He gave a shit.
He didn’t push.
He was just the right amount of confidence mixed with sensitivity and good fucking genes. Like an all-in-one package of the perfect man. They weren’t even supposed to exist, but August was pretty sure she found one in Beni.
Her curiosity about the people who raised him, and where he came from had grown tenfold simply because she wondered ... were they the reason he was like he was? Was his family as accepting and kind as him, and yet still as enigmatic and charming, too?
He was supposed to be fun.
Something to do while she was here.
And yet, there August was, thinking about if she might someday meet his family, and if she could get in one more chance to see him before she left to go back to New York.
So, yes.
The answer was easy.
She didn’t just like that man—it was more than that. More complicated than that. A complex wrapped around a yes she was scared to say.
“Aug?”
She glanced up to meet Camilla’s stare, finding her friend looking less amused and more ... caring. “Yeah?”
“You didn’t answer me. Do you like him?”
“I do.”
“Why did it take so long to say it?”
“Because it’s not simple.”
Camilla nodded, but said nothing. August appreciated that. It was one of the things about her friend that she didn’t think a lot of people realized, honestly. Yes, Cam was a little over the top, and could be a bit much to handle at times. And then there were moments like these when her friend just knew to ... back off. No questions asked.
“I uh, didn’t tell him that my flight leaves in two days,” August added quieter.
Air hissed through Camilla’s teeth. “No?”
“Couldn’t bring myself to say it.”
“You would rather him find out when he realized you weren’t here anymore, then?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s what will happen.”
God, she knew.
She did.
Camilla shrugged, setting her cup down to the table at the same time. “Look at it like this ... if it’s something that will go somewhere, or he’s a man worth keeping—and you know I never believed in that before Tom—then he’s going to wait, or he will figure it out. You both will figure out something, or a way to make it work, no matter what. If it’s real, if he knows what he wants and so do you, then what’s meant to be will be.”
“Cheesy.”
“And?”
Yeah.
August just sighed.
The two fell into a comfortable silence as their food was finally brought to their tables. Sub sandwiches and freshly sliced fruit. A refill on their coffees, and they dug into the food. August was grateful for the lack of conversation because she wasn’t willing to face the f
act that she had yet to make a real decision on Beni, Chicago ... and well, everything else, too. Maybe because she was just scared of what it would mean, but that didn’t matter.
Right?
August had no clue.
“Cam, August, what are my chances to find you two here?”
August didn’t mean to stiffen at the sound of Alessa Conti’s voice behind her, and yet she still did. She still hadn’t told Camilla about the meeting she had with Alessa to talk about taking a job with Manic Media in Chicago, and didn’t think now would be the best time for her to figure out.
And yet, it seemed like she wasn’t going to be given a choice.
“August,” Alessa said as she came to stand next to their table, “have you given any thought to what we talked about? I hear you’re leaving soon, so I was curious.”
“What did you talk about?”
August glanced between Camilla on the other side of the table, and Alessa’s warm smile. It wasn’t anyone’s fault for this but her own, and yet ... damn.
“Uh, I have and I haven’t,” August replied.
Alessa gave her a nod. “Still trying to figure out how to justify and balance what you think you owe to what you want and know is best, hmm?”
“That, and more.”
“That’s okay. Just know that whenever you are ready, there is a job at Manic Media waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Alessa. I really appreciate it.”
“You talked to Alessa while you were here about a job?”
Ouch.
Why did Camilla’s tone sound almost accusatory?
“It was just a meeting to discuss the possibility,” August said quietly.
Camilla’s brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have been ... over the fucking moon, Aug.”
“Well—”
“Sorry to interrupt, ladies.”
Their attention swung to the familiar man approaching the table. He came to stand beside Alessa with a severe expression, and a stare locked on Camilla—his job. August didn’t even know the man’s name, honestly, but he always followed her friend around. She asked about it once, Camilla shrugged, and explained he was her enforcer.