Captive Beauty

“What are you doing in my office?” But I know when I watch him slip the thing he’s holding into his pocket.

“I told you they’d come after me,” he says.

When he talks, I notice one of his front teeth is broken.

“I fucking told you!” he yells.

“What did you put in your pocket, Ben?”

He’s jittery. Anxious. His eyes wide. I can’t tell if he’s stoned or scared. Maybe both.

“Nothing,” he says.

He’s a bad liar. “Put the gun down. You don’t want to hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you. You’re not the only one who knows how to use a goddamned gun.”

I take another step. I need to disarm this fool before he does something stupid. “Put the fucking gun down, Ben.”

“Don’t you mean Benji?” he spits. “I’m tired of you and your goon calling me that.”

“Jesus Christ.” I shake my head, walk to the bar, get a bottle of whiskey.

“Don’t fucking move!”

Ignoring him, I pour a tumbler. Turn to face him. Drink a sip before setting it down. I’ve got another pistol stashed behind the bar, but if things go that far, this will be the last night of Benji’s life, and that’s not what I want.

“I’m going to ask you nicely one more time to put the gun down.” The sound of Cilla coming over and over again is gnawing at me. “And turn that off.”

He grins, cocks his head to the side. “What? You got a soft spot for Jones’s sister.”

I take two steps. He takes a small one back, but the chair is behind him so he’s trapped between it and my desk and his eyes are bouncing between the elevator door and the locked one to the stairwell.

“Turn. It. Off.” I squint to get a better look at him. I’m blocking his way to either exit—he won’t be leaving here until I get what he put in his pocket back. “Antonino’s men do that to you?” I ask, not that I give a fuck, although I realize he’s never been properly beaten before. My bad. I should have taken Hugo’s advice and done it years ago. I’ve been coddling him and he’s taken that for weakness. I made a fucking traitor out of him.

“They’re not done with me.”

“What did you put in your pocket, Ben?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you agree to the beating? Make this look more real in case I walked in on you? Or is that a sample of what they’ll do to you if you don’t give them what you’re stealing from me?”

He starts fidgeting, shifting his weight.

“Are you stoned, Ben?”

He cocks the gun.

I take a deep breath in, exhale slowly, watch him. “Turn that off, put the gun down and we’ll talk. Last chance.”

He gives me a nervous chuckle. “I’m the one holding the fucking—”

I lunge at him, ducking down as I do so when he pulls the trigger, the bullet flies over my head and shatters a bottle of something before lodging into the wall. Knocking Ben down isn’t hard. He’s not a big guy and liquor has only weakened him. We knock the chair over on its side as I take him to the ground, wrestle the gun from him, and slide it across the floor.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask again, taking him by the collar and dragging him up as I rise to my feet. I sit his ass down on the couch, pick up the pistol and set it on the corner of my desk, then turn my attention to the computer. I find the file that contains the recording of Cilla and hit delete.

From the corner of my eye, I see Ben rise to his feet, take a step toward the bar.

I turn to him. “Sit your ass back down.”

He looks at me, fear in his bloodshot eyes. He sits.

I fold my arms across my chest. “What do you think you’re doing here? In my office, behind my desk, on my computer. Aiming my own gun at me?”

He scratches his head, shifts his gaze to the glass of whiskey I’d just poured that’s still sitting on the bar. The bottle is what shattered. It was nearly full and fucking expensive.

“Last chance to tell me what you put in your pocket.”

“I told you they’d come after me,” he says again.

“Antonino?”

He nods.

I hold out my hand. “Give me what you took and I’ll protect you.”

His eyes narrow. “You weren’t supposed to record it, were you?”

He’s talking about the meeting. He knew all along what was going down tonight. And no, I wasn’t supposed to record it, but fuck that. This is my club. My rules. No exceptions.

“I just don’t get one thing. Are you working for Antonino or are you really scared?” I ask.

“Fuck you,” he says, and bolts up, tries to dash past me. I grab him easily, hold him by the throat and dig out the thumb drive from his pocket. Tossing him back on the couch as I slip it into my pocket.