Page 76 of Beni

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.