Collateral 2 (Debt Collection) Read online

  COLLATERAL 2

  Debt Collection #2

  By Roxie Rivera

  Copyright © 2019 Roxie Rivera

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Night Works Books

  3515-B Longmire Drive #103

  College Station, Texas 77845

  www.roxierivera.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  COLLATERAL 2/Roxie Rivera—1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-63042-034-5

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Also by Roxie Rivera

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

  With a groan, I slapped the bedside table, knocking the Series 82 study guide onto the floor as I blindly searched for my phone. When I found it, I opened one eye and turned my bleary gaze to the screen. When the buzzing sound continued, I realized it wasn’t my phone ringing. “Ben?”

  He grunted behind me and shifted closer. “Let it ring.”

  “It’s been ringing for a while.”

  With another grunt and a flex of his muscled forearm, he dragged me closer. He buried his face in my hair. “Whatever it is can wait. Go back to sleep.”

  It was easy enough with his body heat radiating through me. Safe in his arms, I dozed for a little while longer until the insistent vibrations finally cut through the sleepy haze. I shifted away from Ben, but his arm tightened. “Stay,” he all but ordered.

  “It’s almost time for my alarm.” I raised his scarred, rough hand and pressed a gentle kiss on it. “You stay. Get some more sleep.”

  Eventually, I managed to extricate myself, but not before Ben tried to coax me back with teasingly soft kisses and the slow caress of his hands. Rubbing my face, I walked around the bed and stumbled over the unexpected pile of clothes he had dropped there the night prior. With a frown, I crouched down to pick them up. We were still in the early phase of our relationship, and I didn’t want to nag about his untidy habits but…

  “Ben, there’s a hamper in the bathroom.”

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice raspy from sleep. “I was dead on my feet when I got in last night.”

  Judging by the filthy state of his clothes, he had been working hard at his shop. The pocket of his jeans started to vibrate, and I fished his phone out of it. A glance at the screen showed dozens of missed calls and texts. Concerned, I brought the phone back to the bed and gave his shoulder a little shake. “Ben? I think you need to answer this.”

  With a deep inhale, he stretched his arms overhead and groaned. Every muscle in his chest and abdomen rippled as he moved. Even after all the times I had run my greedy hands over him, I still couldn’t believe he was all mine.

  “Come here.” He grasped the front of my tee and tugged me down for a possessive kiss. “I’m sorry I’m such a slob.” His hand slid down my side until he cupped by bottom and gave it a squeeze. “The next time I make a mess you can spank me.”

  I giggled at his lascivious smile and kissed him. “Pervert.”

  “Baby, I grew up in a brothel. What do you expect?”

  “You’re terrible.” I gently swatted him. “Check your messages. I have to get ready for work.”

  “I have a better idea.” He snatched my hand. “Let’s stay in bed.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Call in sick.” He pulled me closer and started dotting ticklish kisses up my arm. “You own the place.”

  “Not exactly,” I countered, trying to ignore the flare of need that beat low in my belly. It wasn’t hard to imagine his soft mouth placing kisses somewhere else. “It’s a complex legal situation with a trust and a board and—oh!”

  He had finally reached the sensitive curve of my neck. Thankfully, I was saved from completely surrendering to his talented mouth by his phone ringing again. He growled with irritation and abandoned his attempted seduction. I kissed his cheek and backed away from the bed as he picked up his phone and swiped his thumb over the screen.

  I was standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, when I heard him shout. Wondering what was wrong, I opened the bathroom door and found him hopping back into his dirty jeans. As my toothbrush vibrated in my hand, I listened to his end of the conversation and grew increasingly worried.

  “Is he okay? Which hospital? Yeah. Yeah. I’m on my way.” He shoved his phone into his back pocket and glanced around for his shirt.

  “What happened?”

  He plopped down on the edge of the bed to put on his boots. “Two of our guys transporting the cash from a private poker game got hit last night. The car was totaled. One of them is in the hospital. The other is banged up.”

  “Was it a drunk driver?”

  He shook his head. “It was a robbery. They slammed into our guys, stole all the cash and left.”

  My stomach clenched with fear. Ben’s life as an enforcer and street soldier in the local Albanian outfit wasn’t foreign to me. It was something I had accepted about him. I didn’t like it, but I had accepted it as the price of having him in my life. “Was it a lot of money?”

  Ben looked up in surprise. “That was not the question I expected you to ask.”

  “I’m fully aware of what you do, Ben. There’s no point in me asking you not to go track down the thief and do whatever it is you do to people who steal from you.” I shrugged and jammed my toothbrush back in my mouth.

  He grinned. “You sound like an old school mob wife.”

  Laughing, I finished brushing my teeth. Thinking about the clique of beautiful mob wives who could often be found visiting the salon I loved, I joked, “Maybe I’ll get to hang out with the cool girls at Allure now.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not all friends already,” he admitted, lacing up his boots. “You went to the same prep school, right?”

  “Different years,” I explained, still standing in the doorway of the bathroom. “We’re having an alumni thing in a few months. Maybe I’ll reintroduce myself.”

  “You should. They’d be lucky to have you as a friend.”

  His sweet remark left me smiling sappily. My smile faded as he stood and crossed the distance between us. He placed his hands on my hips and nuzzled my cheek. “I really am sorry that I came home late and am already running out the door.”

  “It’s okay.” I looped my arms around his broad shoulders. “Do you think you’ll be home for dinner? Nina is cooking, remember?”

  He made a face. “She
hates me, Aston.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t know you yet.”

  “She threatened to send her nephews after me,” he retorted. “Diego? I can take him. Nate? I’ll end up in the ICU if I’m on the business end of his fists.”

  “Nate and Diego are the nicest guys. They would never beat you up!”

  “Says the girl who has never been to an underground cage fight,” he countered. “You know what they call those two? The Kings of Coronado Street. They control a huge piece of the Houston underworld. So, yeah, when she says she’ll send her nephews after me? I believe her.”

  Patting his chest, I sighed. “I’ll talk to her, but you have to make an effort. Come to dinner. Be nice. Show her all the reasons I love you.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’d have me arrested if I showed her the things you love most about me.”

  I rolled my eyes even harder. “That is not the thing I love most about you.”

  “You sure? Because last night…”

  I hushed him with a kiss and punctuated each word with one. “Go. Handle. Your. Business.”

  “I really want to handle you,” he said, his big hands cupping my backside.

  “Later.” I kissed him again. “Go.”

  “I’ll try to make it back in time for dinner. I’ll message you.”

  “Don’t forget to pick up your tux.”

  “Shit. I forgot all about the wedding.” He winced. “I’m not sure I’ll have time…”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll get it.”

  “Thank you.” He caressed my cheek before stepping away. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Be careful, Ben.”

  “I always am.” He lingered in the doorway of my bedroom. “I really do love you, Aston.”

  My heart thumped wildly. “I love you, too.”

  After he was gone, I marveled at the way his words made me feel. We were still in that period of our relationship where everything was new, bright and exciting. Things were moving fast—maybe too fast—but I couldn’t seem to pump the brakes. Everything about us worked. We had clicked on a level I had never experienced, and I couldn’t imagine not spending every free moment with him.

  But as I stepped into the shower and tried to mentally prep for the day ahead, I couldn’t shake the nagging worry that Ben was walking straight into danger.

  Chapter Two

  Ben hated hospitals. The smell, the lights, the squeaky tile floors—they brought him straight back to the worst months of his mother’s life. Watching her fight through the surgeries and the chemo and then through those last agonizing days of pain…

  Stretching his neck, he tried to push away those ugly memories. He found his way to the room where Agim was resting. He eyed the uniformed cop leaning against the nurse’s station. The cop was too busy flirting with the pretty brunette to notice him slipping into Agim’s room.

  “Ags?” Ben gently called to his friend. Agim had mostly stayed out of trouble and avoided working with the family. He’d just finished his engineering degree and was working for an oil and gas firm. Unfortunately, he had student loans and running pickups and drop-offs was the easiest way to earn extra money.

  “Ben.” Agim winced as he spoke. His mouth looked terrible, both lips were split and the skin around them was already a deep maroon with bruising. His nose was broken and one eye was swollen shut. His left arm was elevated and in a cast. “Looks worse than it is.”

  “I don’t know, Ags. It looks pretty fucking bad.” He sat in the chair next to the bed. “I won’t bother you for long. The boss wanted me to come by and see if you had any information that can help me track down the cash.”

  “I didn’t see the guys who hit us. I was driving. My focus was on traffic. I heard Aleks shout, and a second later, we were rolling. I woke up in the back of an ambulance. That’s…that’s all I remember.”

  “Aleks told the boss that he saw a red truck coming up behind you. The truck accelerated and got into the left lane to pass you.” Ben used his hands to illustrate the movements Aleks had described. “He said the guy hit you in a pit maneuver. You lost control. The car started to flip. Aleks blacked out for a minute or less. When he came around, a guy was taking the cash bag from the backseat. He didn’t see his face. The robber was wearing gloves, and he didn’t speak.” He waited a few seconds, giving Ags a chance to digest what he had described. “Did you or Aleks tell anyone about the route you were taking? Did you tell anyone you were picking up the money?”

  “No, I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “But…”

  “But?”

  “I, uh, I driver the same route every time I do the poker game pickup,” Ags admitted.

  “Ags,” Ben said and exhaled roughly. “You know the fucking rules.”

  “Yeah. I know. I know. But—m”

  “But?”

  “It’s late, and I work all day. I’m tired, you know? It’s just easier to take the same route every time.”

  “Besian is going to backhand the dog piss out of you when you get out of here,” Ben warned.

  “If I’m lucky, that’s all he’ll do.” Ags stared at his hand as if imagining it with a few less fingers. Another thought seemed to trouble him. “You think it was an inside job?”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” Ben replied.

  “I figure it was either someone who played the game and knew the location or someone who works with us or for us. How else would they know to follow me?”

  Ben had been thinking the same thing. “It could be a rival gang.”

  “Tracking that money down is going to keep you busy.”

  “That’s what the boss pays me to do.” Ben rose from his chair. “Get some rest.”

  “I will.”

  Ben hesitated by the door. “Do you have someone coming? I can send someone to sit with you.”

  “My mom is on her way,” Ags explained, looking chagrined. “She’s really pissed off.”

  “Of course, she is. How many times did she tell you not to hang out with us?”

  “Too many.”

  “She’s probably going to ground you for a month.”

  Ags coughed out a short laugh before groaning. “Get out of here. If she gets here before you leave, she’s liable to hit you with her purse.”

  Certain that Mrs. Shrkeli would beat his ass if she got hands on him, Ben hightailed it out of the hospital. Agim’s information matched what Aleks had told them, but it wasn’t helpful. A red truck? There were hundreds of those in the greater Houston area.

  While he waited for an elevator, he texted Besian asking for a meeting place. By the time he made it to his motorcycle in the nearby parking garage, he had his answer. Ben thought it was a little strange to meet the boss at a bookstore, but it definitely wasn’t the weirdest place they’d ever met. A funeral home, a garbage dump, a trap house, a meat packing plant—yeah. There had definitely been stranger places than a small, neighborhood bookstore.

  It definitely got weirder once he found the boss browsing the shelves in the nonfiction section. Always immaculately dressed in a suit and tie, Besian looked right at home in the store, but it was jarring for Ben to find one of Houston’s most ruthless mob bosses flicking through the pages of a book on feminist theory.

  Recognizing one of the books Besian held, Ben said, “You could always just borrow Aston’s copy of that one.”

  Besian narrowed his eyes, silently warning Ben not to fuck with him about the books he was buying. He added a copy of The Second Sex to his growing stack. “I like to read different subjects. I haven’t ever read any of these.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ben had a pretty good idea why Besian was suddenly so interested in this section of the store. A certain pretty little pawn shop cashier happened to have a degree in the field. “You should probably take a Xanax before you start reading those.”

  “I’m not a misogynist,” Besian insisted.

  “You should pick up a diction
ary for your stack,” Ben suggested. “Look it up. Your face is right next to it.”

  “Te qifsha.”

  Ben laughed at the rude remark and decided to be helpful. He wandered over to the right section and plucked a Virginia Woolf title from the shelves. He brought it back to Besian and handed it to him. “Here. Read this one. It’s one of Marley’s favorites.”

  “How do you know that?” Besian took the book and flipped to the back cover.

  “Because Aston has a copy in her bedroom with Marley’s handwriting that says, ‘One of my favorites,’” he explained matter-of-factly.

  Besian whacked him with the book. “How fucking nosy are you? Going through your girlfriend’s bookshelves?”

  “Jesus,” Ben hissed and rubbed at his stinging chest. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  Looking almost embarrassed, he admitted, “I’m trying to understand her.” He blew out a noisy breath. “I feel like a fucking teenager again, chasing after the pretty girl in school. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. My usual game won’t work with her.”

  “I don’t think she’s the kind of girl who wants to play games,” Ben said carefully.

  “I know,” Besian replied quietly. “I’m tired of playing games, too.”

  “Maybe I could ask Aston to set up a dinner or something?”

  “No,” Besian cut in quickly.

  “It was just an idea.”

  “Leave the ideas to me.” Besian adjusted his stack of books and asked, “How was Ags?”

  “He’s beat to hell, but he’ll be okay.”

  “Did he have any information?”

  Ben shook his head and decided not to say anything about Ags using the same route multiple times. “Nothing useful. Same thing Aleks told us. Red truck. Didn’t see the thief’s face. It’s not much to go on, boss.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m headed to a meeting with Nikolai to discuss our problem. Get out on the streets and work your contacts. Someone knows something.”

  “Of course, they do, but who the hell is going to be stupid enough to say something?”