Let It Go: Benny's Story Read online

  Let It Go

  Copyright 2014 DC Renee

  Published by DC Renee

  Kindle Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Other Works by DC Renee

  Excerpt from Let Me Go

  Excerpt from A Brutal Betrayal

  Coming Soon: Three Loving Words

  Connect with DC Renee

  Dedication

  To my Babulya, who is never far from my mind or heart.

  To my Deda, we miss you.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my hubby, who supports me in all that I do and loves me like no other. Thank you to my co-writer, co-creator and partner in crime – my sister. You all wouldn’t be able to read my stories without her. Thank you to my parents, who believe everything I do is magic. Thank you to all my in-laws who pimp me out like a boss.

  Thank you to Jenny Sims – best editor ever (Editing4Indies), Rebecca Marie – cover creator extraordinaire (PDP Goodies by Rebecca), Carrie Sutton – wonderful teasers (Graphics by Carrie), Tiffany Marie – endorsement whiz (Everything Marie), and Atalia Melendez & Rose Tawil – promotions specialists (FMR Book Grind). I wouldn’t be where I am without your help!

  I have the best friends and fans (in person & on-line), who help me and promote me simply because they can. A special thank you to Marina Yermolenko (your feedback is invaluable), Sheri Hursch (if I have your approval, I’m relieved), Catherine Gray (there is no better fan), Suleika Santana (your support means so much), Janett Gomez (your encouragement means a lot), Rebecca Bennett (I genuinely appreciate all that you do), Jettie Woodruff (you helped start my writing).

  A big thanks to Rachael Marquez-Landers, Nichole Hart, Elaine Hudson York, Jen Wildner, Jennifer Hagen, Lisa Pantano Kane, Tunee Harrington, Julia Katnelson, Margarita Auslander, Inessa Polushkin.

  Thank you to a bunch of blogs (I know I’m going to miss some – sorry!) who rock: All About Books, Author Groupies, A Pair of Oakies, Amazeballs Book Addicts, Just One More Page, Two ordinary girls and their books, Sinful Thoughts Book Blog, Three Chicks and Their Books, Obsessed by Books, A Dirty Book Affair, Nichole’s Sizzling Pages Book Blog, Red Cheeks Reads, Literary Love/Melt Your Heart Book Blog.

  Most importantly, thank you so much to all the readers who took a chance on me and continue to do so!

  Chapter 1

  Your brother. The words still echoed in Benny’s mind after all these years. Not like he could forget his brother, but that wasn’t what he was trying to forget. Most days he was happy...not exactly content with his life, but satisfied with where he was in relation to where he could have been. But it was days when he had to do something his not-quite hardened heart didn’t approve of that had him thinking of the words he received that day. “Benny, man, I’m sorry…your brother.” Today had been one of those shitty days.

  Only a few of Benny’s closest friends knew exactly what he had done. John, Chain, and Marco had been with him almost since the beginning. Marco was still in jail, but that was his own fault and for something that had nothing to do with Benny, so he didn’t feel bad. The guy had been having an affair with the wife of a cop. Benny had told him numerous times that it wasn’t a good idea, but the guy didn’t listen. One thing led to another and the cop found out, pulled some dirty shit, and Marco was in jail for a whole slew of crimes that he didn’t commit. However, John and Chain being behind bars was his fault. Well, not quite, but Benny had been busted with possession of a concealed and unregistered weapon. And seeing as that hadn’t been his first time or even one of the first few times, he was going behind bars for a while. John and Chain were just loyal; a few punches to defend Benny, and the next thing you know, they had assault added to a few other crimes. His time in prison was all right, though. He had met Mason, the doctor who had saved him years before. He didn’t really owe him anything when he figured out who he was and what was happening to him. After all, Mason was a doctor at the time and saving Benny was just doing his job, but something about Mason reminded him of Ethan. And that was enough to spurn Benny into action to protect him, to befriend him, and to be there for him.

  Mason was now one of his best friends, but even he wasn’t one hundred percent sure about what Benny did. He probably thought it had to do with drugs or something you’d find straight out of a mafia movie. No, it wasn’t like that at all. Benny had started with a small time gang when he was sixteen. It was not as if he lived in a bad neighborhood, not truly, or that he had a bad relationship with his parents, or even that he needed the money. His family was great, loving, cared for one another, but Benny just didn’t feel settled. He was anxious all the time and didn’t like his friends at school. In fact, he hated school. He was restless all the time and started looking for a way to feel connected to the world. At first, he became an adrenaline junkie, looking for new ways to get a momentary rush, but that always lasted only a few minutes. Then he turned to drugs, but that wasn’t what he expected, either, because when he would come down from a high, he was right back where he started. He needed to feel on top of the world, so he got in with the wrong crowd, and the next thing you knew, he was a full-fledged gang member. He hated it and loved it at the same time. He hated what he did, hated the beatings he had to give, the dealing he started doing, the way everyone always had to watch their backs, but he loved the feeling of power that came with it.

  Everything was fine for a few years or as much as it could have been. His family life had started falling apart. His parents did everything they could to get him out. They were disappointed in him, tried to make him change, and they even threatened him, but when that didn’t work, they gave up on him. They figured that he was a lost cause, but they didn’t want Ethan going down the same path. They had been right to feel that way.

  “When you start acting like the boy we raised, you can come back,” his dad had told him as his mom cried. It didn’t matter because Benny had his own place by then. Benny sort of always knew that this was a phase, one of those “typical” teenage rebellion type things, and that when he grew out of it, he assumed that he’d be able to fix his relationship with his parents. He never got that chance.

  The thing he also didn’t realize was that once you’re in, it’s really hard to get out. He was working on it, trying to figure out how to make his way back to the “good” realm of life, but he never had a chance to do it. He never had a chance to make up with his parents, and he never watched his brother become something he wasn’t.

  He had been close to Ethan, always. They had their own issues and their own fights, but at the end of the day, Benny was Ethan’s big bro
ther and watched out for him. Except when he decided to join a gang. That had been one of the most selfish moments of Benny’s life. He knew Ethan looked up to him and would want to be everything Benny was, but Benny had been too blinded by his need for power to even think about that. So, when Ethan came to Benny a couple of years later, asking to help him join, Benny should have done more. He should have figured out a way to walk away sooner, ran away even if he had to, but Benny had been in the thick of things then and had only told Ethan to stay away.

  When Ethan kept insisting that he wanted to follow in Benny’s footsteps, Benny finally had to sit down and talk with him.

  “I don’t want this life for you,” Benny had told him.

  “That’s my decision,” argued Ethan.

  “Actually, no, it’s not. If I say you’re not in, you’re not in. Got it?”

  “Why is it okay for you to be a part of it?”

  “Because I’m stupid,” Benny admitted. “Because I’m not good like you. You’re a great kid, E, and I don’t want you getting involved in this mess.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “E, you’re not fucking listening to me,” Benny had yelled. “I don’t want you to be a part of this shit. It’s not a good life; it’s not the right life. You like school, you’re getting good grades, and you’re going to do something amazing with your life.”

  “I see the way the guys look up to you, the kind of power you have over them. I want that, Benny. Why do you have to control everything? Why can’t you let me have some of that, too?”

  “You see only what you want to see!” Benny roared. “It’s not all fucking peaches and cream, E! I’m telling you, stay the fuck away from this shit! No brother of mine is going to be involved in this crap. Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me?” Benny’s voice had been so loud that he was pretty sure the entire neighborhood had heard him. But even after Ethan nodded, there was something in his eyes that made Benny think he was the only one who hadn’t heard him after all.

  He should have paid more attention to that; he should have relied on his instinct and made sure Ethan didn’t get into trouble. But once again, Benny was too consumed by the rush that he was getting with the gang.

  And then he got a call from John. “Benny, man, I’m sorry…your brother…” John’s voice had trailed off, but the pain he heard in his friend’s voice was enough to break Benny’s heart. He had known, somehow. He had known that Ethan wasn’t just in trouble or hurt; he was gone.

  It took John, Chain, and Marco to subdue him after he terrorized his place, breaking everything in sight. His fists were bleeding, his eyes stung from the unshed tears, and his heart throbbed, willing itself to explode within his body.

  Ethan had wanted to prove to Benny that he could be just like him, could make something of himself in that fashion. He thought that if Benny wasn’t going to help him, he’d figure out a way to do it on his own. He went to another smaller gang and asked to join. They laughed in his face at first, but he was persistent, something Benny had loved about him until that point. They finally agreed when they found out that Benny was a member of a rival gang and was his brother. They wanted to use Ethan to get to Benny and then to the gang that he belonged to. They sent Ethan after some drug dealer in Benny’s gang, but Ethan wasn’t cut out for that kind of life. One thing led to another and they shot Ethan, in cold blood, like he was nothing. Like his life didn’t mean anything.

  It took two bottles of vodka shared among himself and his friends to get Benny to finally calm down. It didn’t stop him from getting revenge on the assholes who not only shot his brother but the ones who set him up for failure in the first place. John, Chain, and Marco helped him dish out retribution for Ethan’s death the very next day while their minds were still fuzzy from the alcohol they had consumed the night before.

  That was the day that changed Benny. He no longer wanted to get out of the gang. He wanted to build his own and run the two who had killed his brother to the ground. He wanted the people not entirely involved to pay for his brother’s death, even though, deep down, he knew it was his fault. He, and only he, was solely responsible for putting his brother in the ground. If he hadn’t been thinking of only himself, Ethan would never have gotten into that situation. If he had stepped away sooner, Ethan wouldn’t have wanted that kind of life. It felt almost ironic that in order to get the justice he craved to tamper his own guilt, he needed to burrow deeper into the life he had wanted to get out of.

  He watched as his brother was lowered into the ground three days later, his parents an inconsolable mess. He had tried to come home and share in the sorrow and misery with his parents, but they wouldn’t let him in. He figured it was their grief preventing them from taking comfort in their only remaining son, so he gave them the space they needed, even though it cut him deeply. When he walked up to his mother at Ethan’s graveside, his assumptions were proven wrong.

  “You’re a murderer!” his mother screamed. “My baby is dead because of you!”

  He was speechless, shocked into silence. She was right, but he didn’t expect her to believe it, too. He was her son, after all.

  “You don’t deserve to grieve his death the way we do,” she choked on her sobs. “We warned you, but you didn’t care. You did this,” she hissed. “You threw away our love, you threw away your family, and now you have no one left.” Her words were said with a bitter edge that cut right through Benny. “Leave!” she screamed. “I don’t know you anymore; you’re not my son! My only son is dead, and you…you’re nothing.”

  “I think it’s best if you left,” his dad added, pity marring his features. That broke Benny in a way that he couldn’t describe. He had lost both his beloved brother and his parents in one day. And he had no one to blame but himself.

  With nothing left to lose, his blood boiling for redemption and his life in shambles, Benny built his empire, so to speak, very quickly. His heart had found walls around itself where there used to be none, and he took no mercy when taking his opposition out. That was not to say that he hadn’t had his fair share of punches. He had been in the hospital with knife wounds, gunshot wounds, and a number of other issues over the years. Ironically, the worst injury inflicted on him was a wrong place, wrong time situation. He had been leaving a club and managed to walk out right when some guy pulled a gun on a different guy he had been fighting with. Benny’s arrival surprised the guy, who clearly hadn’t ever used a gun before, and he shot him in the stomach instead of the would-be victim. That was when Mason had saved his life.

  It wasn’t until he became friends with Mason, the guy needing guidance and someone to be a friend and brother to him, that his walls started to come down and the man he once was started poking through. He had been trying to get his life straightened out ever since, but it was a difficult road to travel. Today was a perfect example. He wanted to buy a bar that needed fixing up and new management, but the owner was an older guy who had sworn the bar had been in his family for years. He needed to sell it because he had no one to pass it off to, but when he saw Benny and his many tattoos and hardened edge, he laughed at him.

  “No way,” the guy sneered at Benny. “My family didn’t build this up so that it could become some place to sell drugs.” The fact that Benny no longer sold drugs didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to change this guy’s mind without some kind of coercion, and he couldn’t do that anymore. He just couldn’t. It did, however, serve to remind Benny of the kind of life he’d been living, the kind of life he got into, and the price of it. Ethan. That was the price of his life. And it had never been worth it. Too bad he had been too late in realizing it. The price of Ethan’s life was never worth any of this, ever.

  Chapter 2

  “Hey, Kitty Kat,” Benny answered when he saw Kat calling, a smile instantly forming on his lips. He had hated her for a while after Mason had told him that she had accused him of rape and ruined his life. He had even helped Mason plan out his revenge scheme. It didn’t take long for both
Mason and Benny to develop a soft spot for her, even when they still both thought she was behind Mason’s demise. She had wormed her way into his heart, behind the fragile walls, and he felt more human with her than he had in a long time. Her outlook on her situation, her cheery disposition, and her overall personality was a welcome distraction from the issues that he was going through while trying to clean up his act after prison. He had never viewed her as more than a friend. Not that he was blind; he knew just how beautiful she was, but he knew instantly that she was meant for Mason and him for her.

  It had been almost four years since Kat and Mason had learned the truth, gotten their act together, and became a family. He loved them both like family and was incredibly touched when they named their little boy after him. When he saw the spitting image of Mason in his arms the first time, he vowed that he’d help protect this little boy the way he couldn’t with Ethan.

  “Hey, Benny,” Kat’s singsong voice floated through the phone and instantly turned Benny’s crappy day into something much brighter.

  “How are my niece and nephew doing?” he asked, truly considering them his family.

  “Those two little monsters are doing great, crawling everywhere and getting into everything. I swear I lost five pounds just this week following them around as they explore everything they find.” Kat laughed as if she remembered something.

  “Bring them over and I’ll give you a break.” Those two had him wrapped around his finger. They called Katherine Katy so as not to confuse her with Kat and they called Benjamin Benji so they could tell between him and Benny. When Kat and Mason were trying to figure out nicknames, Benny had suggested BJ for Benny Junior, but they didn’t find it as funny as he did. He did watch them often, though, seeing as they, along with John and Chain, were his only family, if not by blood, then through love.

  “Thanks, Benny!” Kat exclaimed like he had given her the world, which was also why he loved offering to watch Katy and Benji.