Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
A savage growl ripped from Kai. “Get her out of here!” he barked at his men.
“No! She’s your woman, yes?”
There was no response. Two of the guards moved toward me, but I held them off. Shaking my head, I stood too. My legs were weak, but I wanted to see this. I didn’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want to be the one cowering in the back? Maybe I didn’t want to put my head in the sand, knowing what was going to happen but letting Kai shield me from it?
I stepped out, putting a hand up as another of the guards tried to block me. “No. I want to give the man what he wants. We all know what’s going to happen anyway.”
He wouldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t. Kai wouldn’t let that happen.
Something whispered to me in the back of my mind. I should stop this. I should try to help him. He was sick—that was obvious—but I remembered waking up to his screams. I remembered the flight attendant. I remembered the other two times Kai had spoken about.
Even Jonah, even Brooke. They wouldn’t have fought for this man again.
They were Bennetts, like Tanner said. It blazed inside of me now.
Kai was a Bennett. Kai was the leader of the Bennetts. He would not let this happen again, and because of that, I said, “Let him see me. Please, Kai.”
The last guard moved aside, so I stood a few feet behind Kai. The man shifted to the side to see me around him.
I was a ball of writhing nerves.
There’s a feeling in the air when you’re about to see someone die. Your gut clenches, and what’s about to happen, you know is wrong. But thinking about it in that brief moment, I couldn’t think of a time when someone’s death had felt right. Maybe if life has been lived to its fullest or the person is crippled in pain with no hope…but I’d never seen that happen.
However, in this moment, I knew the wrong feeling wasn’t about him dying. The wrong was about how he had lived, the pain and anger that must’ve been with him.
I was guessing because as I stared into that man’s eyes, I only saw death. Whether it was his, his wife’s, his child’s, I didn’t know. But I saw blackness, and I felt a cold emptiness creep into me. This man’s look of death was different than Kai’s, and maybe I’d think on that later.
He gave one last strangled scream, launching himself at me, and Kai shot him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I sat in the back of an SUV, a blanket around me, and I was…calm.
I shouldn’t have been calm, but I was.
When we landed, the authorities were en route. Kai’s men bundled me off the plane and had me in the SUV by the time anyone from the government showed up. The pilot had called in a distress signal. I still wasn’t sure what happened. We should’ve gone through customs. I’d been stressing about a passport at one point on the plane. But Kai had it covered. He seemed to have everything covered.
I figured they’d tell the police it had been self-defense. But Kai had on the guy’s jacket. He’d shot him in such close quarters that it could’ve also been argued as a self-inflicted shot to the head. A suicide.
Kai spoke to a police detective as the body was carried off the plane on a stretcher. No one took photographs or collected forensic evidence. It was wrong, but this was how the underbelly lived. And in some cases, thrived. Kai was thriving.
That man would be shuffled into a pile of paperwork. Maybe he would be mislabeled at the morgue. Maybe he’d be cremated sooner than normal.
Kai would make this go away.
He nodded to the detective, who put her notepad away. She spoke into her phone like a radio and moved past the stretcher into another vehicle. Kai talked to a few other men, some who had met us on the tarmac. They nodded and shook hands, and Kai turned toward the SUV.
A guard opened the door. Kai got inside, and as usual, it wasn’t long before the guards got in and our caravan of three vehicles departed.
Kai only glanced once at me before settling back in his seat, taking his phone out.
We didn’t talk until thirty minutes in, as our vehicles sped down the highway.
“You didn’t eat on the plane,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
My stomach dipped, but not because of that.
“You murdered him,” I said quietly.
He put his phone away and turned to face me. “If I let him live—”
“I know.” I just felt sad. “I heard. He didn’t deny.”
Neither of us mentioned that according to mafia law, the man should’ve been killed the first time. No exceptions. Kai had given him two. That was more than enough.