Chapter 1

Chapter One

Benny

Another day, another beat down.

That’s actually my nickname. Benny “Beat Down” O’Casey.

I’ve been doling out concussions and sending men to the emergency room for so long that I’ve forgotten what life was like before. They don’t pay their debts to my boss and I come knocking, leaving a few of their teeth on the floor and collecting promises to pay soon—or else.

I hate it when they don’t keep those promises.

It happens more often than I care to remember.

These men who warrant a visit from me…it’s because they can’t stop gambling. It’s a compulsion. A sickness. No matter how badly it affects their life, their family, it’s in their blood. There is a devil on their shoulder whispering in their ear that next time, next time they will win it all back. But they don’t. They lose Frank’s money—and that’s when I show up at their door, forced to collect a pound of flesh instead of cash.

Today’s victim lives way out in the bayou. So deep in the swampy heat and murky water that I have to take a boat. One of my associates, Grim, steers us through crocodile-infested backwaters and low-hanging trees, slapping at mosquitos on his neck. They are biting me, too, but I don’t bother shooing them away because I don’t feel the bites. I don’t feel anything anymore. It’s a necessity in this job. To be cold and ruthless and hard-hearted. To not be swayed by the pleading of desperate men, I’ve had to retreat into a less human part of my mind and stay there, allowing myself to be sent to the next job. The next.

More blood, more screaming, more bones being broken.

We stop at a log cabin that is nestled into the trees. Smoke curls from the chimney, empty liquor bottles decorate the front yard—if that’s what you can even call it. Mostly the house is surrounded by mud and trash. The eaves above the porch hang down, ready to fall at any second. A window upstairs is broken.

Sighing, I stand up carefully and get ready to climb out of the boat. It’s easier said than done, though, considering I’m a lumbering six foot nine. Grim is watching me nervously and I glare at him until he turns away. Only then do I throw one foot out onto the bank of the swamp, the boat teetering and creaking ominously beneath me. Somehow I manage to keep my balance and reach the shore without gravity working against me.

See, I was destined for this job the day my mother gave birth to me, a fourteen-pound baby. An ugly as sin child that she couldn’t bear to look at past my fifteenth birthday. That’s when I left home and went to work for Frank, a man who had use for someone like me, unlike everyone else. I’m valuable to a man whose profession is loaning out money and killing anyone who doesn’t pay it back. My meaty arms and barrel chest are an asset to him.

As they will be today.

I let out another sigh and climb the porch steps, raising my hand to knock before I can talk myself out of it. It’s just a job. Don’t think about it.

The cold locks over my limbs like body armor. Footsteps on the other side of the door signal the approach of my victim. Mentally, I force myself to check out. The only time I’m present and minorly happy is when I’m with my animals. But this? It’s just a job that needs to be handled. And I don’t have a choice but to make this man sorry for taking a twenty-thousand-dollar loan from Frank and gambling it all away on cock fights and horse races.

The door opens slowly—and there it is. The smell of fear. It’s sharp and foul, like the rest of the house behind my victim, so he definitely doesn’t have Frank’s money, even though it was due back today, with interest. The victim’s mouth is moving, but I’m hearing none of it. I don’t need to hear him beg. All begging sounds the same.

Empty promises, apologies, please please please.

I pick him up by the throat and throw him across the room. His scrawny, sweaty body hits the wall and drops to the floor like a sack of flour, crying. Babbling. Asking me for mercy.

There is none to be had.

In the first year of this job, I was tempted every single time to give my victim the benefit of the doubt. Men make mistakes. Men can be redeemed. That’s what I’d been taught in church every Sunday growing up in Baton Rouge. But after I gave two victims a pass, trusting them to have the money the following week, I quickly learned that some men can’t change. Especially when they’re in the grip of a gambling addiction and there’s no one to help them. In the bayou, where a lot of poor folks reside, the temptation to lay down a bet is everywhere. With so little in a man’s pocket, might as well try and double it. Triple it.

It’s a never-ending cycle and there’s never a winner. Not for long.

“Please.” The man’s voice momentarily breaks through my shield. “Please, I just need one more week, Beat Down. I swear to God, I’m coming in to some money from a…a…my grandmother. She passed away, God rest her soul. Just waiting on the inheritance.”

“Bullshit,” I say, opening one of the kitchen drawers. Selecting a knife from the collection of crude utensils. “No one in their right mind would leave you a cent.”

“Oh, come on. Please.” He starts to cry in earnest, the acrid aroma of fear nearly making my eyes water now. “What about some collateral? I’ve got that boat out front. You could ask Frank to hold it until I come up the twenty large.”

“That’s a nice offer. But that boat isn’t worth dick and neither are you.” I flip the knife over in my hands, letting the numbness steal over me. It’s just a job. I’m not suited for anything else. When God made me this huge and hulking and horrifying, this is what he had in mind for me. I’m the muscle. I’m the last thing a lot of men see before they draw their last breath and it’s all I’ll ever be. “If Frank started making exceptions, he’d lose respect in the parish and you damn well know it. Time to pay up the only way you can.”

“Take my daughter,” blurts my victim, throwing up his hands to guard his face.

My knife stops in the middle of slicing through the air in a downward arc.

“She’s in the basement. Please!” screams the man. “Take her until I can give back the money. I’ll have it in a week. I swear to God. Would I sacrifice my own daughter if I didn’t mean what I’m saying?”

Daughter.

In the basement.

I wasn’t aware this man had any family. This information is only a distraction and I should continue with my task of ending his pathetic life. When I linger too long over a job, the violence starts to eat at me. Get it over with.

“She’s trash, just like her mother was.” With a venomous look in his eye, my victim spits on the floor in front of him. “Have to keep her downstairs or she’d be running off with the first man she laid eyes on. A curse—that’s what she is. I can’t have her leaving the house looking like she does or she’d wind up pregnant. It’s hard enough feeding two mouths, let alone three.”

“She’s that pretty, is she?” Grim asks, skeptically. Although, it’s easy to see his interest has been piqued. “Maybe we should at least have a look-see, Beat Down?”

“No. Let’s finish this and leave.”

But I make no move to lift the knife again. What does my victim mean when he says he has to “keep her downstairs”? Is she locked up or something? My stomach gurgles over the possibility of that. It’s one thing to hurt men who make promises they can’t keep and get in over their heads. A woman who did none of the stealing from Frank doesn’t deserve any of the punishment. If I kill her father and leave here…and she is, in fact, trapped in the basement, she could starve to death. Apparently I’m not numb enough to let that happen.

“Stay here,” I growl at Grim, shoving the knife into his hand.

“Let me know if she’s worth a look,” calls my associate after me as I stride to the back of the shack, throwing open two doors before finding the stairs leading to the basement. I duck down under the frame and descend into the near darkness, the stairs groaning in protest of my weight. “Hello?” I rumble. “Is someone down here?”

There’s a scraping sound and then a tentative, “Yes.”

That whispering voice, that single word, plows straight into my chest. The air locks tight around me, seizing my muscles and I can hear my pulse firing, booming in my ears. Have I been drugged? What is going on here? My feet move by themselves, carrying me down the rest of the staircase, eager to find the owner of that voice. I haven’t been to church since I was a boy, but that word—yes—was like the opening notes of “Amazing Grace.” I’m teeming with anticipation. And hunger. I’m getting hard and I haven’t even seen her yet.

“Where are you?”

“Over in the corner.” A rattle of chains. The sound is like hands wrapping around my throat. “C-can you please let me out, sir? The key is hanging on a nail by the boiler.”

My vision doubles thanks to the sheer enormity of blood rushing to my cock. I’m ashamed of myself. I’ve just found a woman—young, by the sound of her—chained in a basement and I’m aroused. This never happens to me. I don’t let myself get erect for women. If there is ever one around, in the store or on the street, I keep my gaze on the ground so I don’t scare them. I don’t look at the opposite sex. Ever. No point in wanting something I can never have as a big, ugly son of a bitch.

But this girl…somehow I know if we crossed paths in town, I would look. I would fall to my knees and look. I would beg her to speak, so I could hear her voice.

Breath rattling in my lungs, I slide the key off its nail and cut through the dim basement, my heart pounding with more insistence the closer I come. Needing desperately to see her face, I take my phone out of my pocket and open the flashlight, slowly letting the beam illuminate her.

The moment I see her face, I drop the phone.

No.

Jesus.There is no way she’s real.

She’s nothing short of an angel. Delicate, hair the color of sunlight, golden eyes. No, all of her is golden. Glowing and soft and young. Oh God, so young. Not a day over eighteen or nineteen if I’m not mistaken. What the hell am I going to do?

Every once in a while, the pressure in my balls gets too intense and I have to beat off in the shower of my apartment. I never picture anything or anyone. I don’t need to. A few strokes of my oversized fist and my spend spews everywhere, the misery in my stomach finally abating in a way that’s worth the mess I have to clean up.

From this day forward, I’ll never see anything but her mouth.

Thought of those bee-stung lips might plague me so often, I won’t be able to leave the house or sleep or do my job. I have the shameful urge to unzip my pants and rub my hard cock side to side against that mouth. To watch the white milk come out and drip off her tongue.

“Please, sir? Can you unlock the shackles?”

My God, how long have I been standing here, stupefied by one little peek at her face?

Horrified at myself, I fumble for the key and kneel down, feeling for the shackle. Along the way, my hands graze her soft legs and I start to pant. I’m a bad man. I’m a nightmare for a lot of people. But I’m not a man who throws a young woman down on her back in a filthy basement and ruts her without permission. No, that would push me over the line from unredeemable to full-on monster. If she’s locked up in the basement with my victim for a father, she’s been through terrible times. Terrible. I won’t be another one for her.

Somehow, even though my hands are shaking, I manage to get the padlock sprung open and she sobs as the chains fall away.

And then…

She throws herself into my arms. Wraps her legs around my waist, face buried in my neck. “Thank you.” She scoots closer and for the first time in my life, I feel the press of warm pussy in my lap. That tiniest hint of friction causes my mouth to fall open, no sound coming out. Oh my God. How did this little angel end up in my arms? Am I having a dream? “Please, please. Take me away from here. Don’t let him lock me up again.”

Reality drops like a curtain.

Her father has been keeping her down here like a prisoner.

She’s scared.

“Never,” I growl, standing up with the girl clinging to me. “You’re safe now. And I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“No,” she whispers, take hold of the sides of my face. All I can do is stand there, swaying, totally arrested by the sensation of her breath on my mouth. Can’t she feel the shape of my dick? Why isn’t she terrified? I’d rip this tiny girl in two. “No, you’re not going to kill him. That’s not you. You’re a good man.”

I swallow, dread pooling in my belly. “Have you mistaken me for someone else, girl?”

“No.” She scrubs her fingertips through my beard stubble. Did her thighs just squeeze my waist. Oh fuck. I’m so hard, I can’t breathe. “I know who you are,” she says softly into my ear. “You’re my rescuer.”

“Yes,” I blurt raggedly. “I’m anything you want.”

Her face nuzzles itself into my neck. “What is your name?”

“Benny.” I wish I had a better name. Something more worth of a girl this perfect and sweet and angelic. Something like Francisco or Lancelot. “Benny O’Casey.”

“Hello, Benny. I’m Fawn.” Her fingers slide up into my hair and electricity flares in my bloodstream, my balls tightening painfully. “I belong to you now.”

Even as I ache like hell to believe those incredible, unbelievable words, I know there has to be some mistake. She hasn’t seen me in the light yet. I shined the flashlight at her, but not at myself. As soon as we’re upstairs, she is going to scream and possibly faint at the sight of me. I’ve only held her in my arms for a minute, yet her horror at my appearance is going to rip the heart straight out of my chest.

I better get it over with now.

Before I start to think of her as mine.

It’s too late.

With a mounting dense of doom, I carry the angel toward the stairs, feeling as though I’m a pallbearer at my own funeral. I should count myself lucky for having the privilege of holding her for even a minute, though.

Gratitude. I hold on to it on my way up toward the light.