by Lana Grayson
The same evil in him lurked in me.
I denied that calling, but the darkness crept in my soul and ached to possess Sarah Atwood in complete and utter dominance.
But I wouldn’t become my father.
The day I surrendered to that beast was the day I damned Sarah to a true hell.
“You will fuck her,” he said. “Each of you. Again and again until we are certain the fertility drugs were not a waste of my time. I don’t care if she cries or begs or screams.” He considered it with a leering amusement. “In fact, I’d prefer it.”
“Holy Christ, you’re fucked up.”
Reed had too much time to think while bound within his room, and his thoughts were not ones he should have voiced in my father’s presence.
“What happens if we do get her pregnant?” He struggled forward, but Max and I prevented him from making a worse mistake. “What happens when her step-brothers knock her up? You expect her to bargain the company for her baby?”
“The heir is the only matter of consequence to us.”
“It’s not a matter or consequence! It’s a child.”
“Reed, I no longer believe you have our family’s best interests at heart.”
The crop cracked over my shoulders.
I didn’t groan. It made Dad proud, but it wasn’t enough to dull the pain.
Across the room, Max stuck out his tongue. This was his stupid fault. He was the one who snuck into Dad’s office. And it was his idea to use Reed to scout. The baby couldn’t do anything right.
Three strikes of the crop and Max had cried.
I lasted five.
“Bring the boy over,” Dad said.
“Darius, no.” Mom held Reed close. “He’s only four.”
“He’s old enough to learn.” The crop pointed at me. “And Nicholas is old enough to realize his brothers’ behavior is his responsibility.”
Dad took off Reed’s shirt. He faced my little brother toward me.
Reed thought it was a game. I didn’t warn him.
Dad forced me to watch.
“Next time, Nicholas, maybe you’ll remember to keep him out of trouble.”
The crop lashed down.
Reed would never stop screaming.
My father taught us to prioritize two things in life—family and power.
Our greatest sin wasn’t kidnapping, torturing, and breeding Sarah Atwood.
It was dishonoring the family.
Disobeying my father.
Placing another’s needs before the success, wealth, and bond of our name.
“This Atwood whore has confused you, Reed,” my father said. “You’ve forgotten who you are. What you represent.”
“We’re wasting time.” I drew his stare. “Sarah escaped hours ago. Let’s go and find her before she gets farther away. Who knows where she is now.”
My father folded his arms. “What did she tell you, Reed?”
“Nothing.”
“You were with her last.”
“Yeah, we don’t do a lot of talking when I’m…” He took a breath. “She’s not all that good for conversation.”
A lie. My father chuckled.
“She’s not meant for conversation. She’s meant for fucking.”
“Haven’t I done that?”
“Have you?” My father’s tone shifted—wild and accusatory. “You are Reed Bennett. My son. You were born to represent me.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I made you to empower this family. Our wealth, our company, it means nothing if the world doesn’t know our name and understand we are meant to own them.”
Reed shrugged. “What if I want something different?”
My father turned, stalking to his desk. “That right is not yours. Not if you wish to wield the Bennett name. Not if you expect your billions, your power.”
“All our money didn’t prevent Mark Atwood from stealing our investors. Our power did nothing to keep Sarah Atwood under control.”
Fuel on the fire. I wished my father’s punch had knocked Reed out.
“Our name didn’t do shit for us,” Reed said. “And the only Bennett people will ever remember is the one Sarah is forced to conceive. I take no pride in that.”
“Our name is the only reason you and Max are standing here today.”
My father’s sneer was meant to insult them.
It worked.
“When that car crashed, do you think the doctors would have worked as hard to scrape your skin from the asphalt if your name wasn’t Bennett?” He pointed to Reed’s face. “No other family would have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sew your face back on your skull. They would have let you live, scarred and ugly, without any hope of a decent life.”
“It wasn’t my injury that scarred this family,” Reed said. “The only reason you tortured me with those surgeries was so you looked good. So you wouldn’t be ashamed of your deformed youngest son and his crippled brother.”
“Reed, enough.” I didn’t trust the vein in my father’s forehead, the one even Sarah Atwood hadn’t managed to throb. “This isn’t helping us find the girl. We’ll deal with this later.”
My father stilled.
“No. We’ll deal with this now. Bring your brother to me.”
Neither Max nor I moved. My father pulled a knife from the desk. Reed swore.
“What are you doing?” I threaded my voice with weary impatience, not the gut-punching fear that summoned the adrenaline. “I’ll take the helicopter to Cherrywood Valley and see if she’s at the farm. Max and Reed can search San Jose on their motorcycles. We’ll find her—”
“We don’t have to search.” My father pointed the blade at Reed. “He knows where she is.”
“Why the fuck would I know?” Reed asked.
“Because you’re friends with the little whore. You helped her. Comforted her. Your baby sister told you where she was going, and now you’ll tell me.”
Reed stayed silent.
My brother knew.
Sarah told him about the board, about Wescott, about everything. My father was right. And if Reed spoke even a word of it, Sarah would die.
Reed played dumb. “I have no idea. She said she wanted to see her mom. Check with Bethany.”
My father didn’t believe the lie. He called to me.
“Bring him here.”
I delayed as long as I could, staring at the knife in his hand. “Let’s just find Sarah—”
“I said bring him here.”
No. Even his cruelty had limits. I would not allow my father to harm my brother.
“If Reed sees no benefit to being a Bennett, if this family is so scarred, then why hide what nature intended?” My father’s shrugged. “Or, what that little whore’s father intended.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Max said. “What are you going to do?”
The knife flashed. Reed said nothing.
“He either tells me where the Atwood bitch has gone, or I’ll earn back the thousands of dollars I wasted giving him a chance to honor the Bennett name.”
He was insane. He threatened to cut Reed’s face, to etch away the years of plastic surgery and reveal the ugly scars underneath.
He would maim his own son.
And, in his madness, he expected us to help him do it.
“Where is she, Reed?” My father asked. “Last chance.”
I had to find another way, some possible chance to spare my brother pain and save Sarah. I pushed him behind me.
But my brother fought my arm. He snarled at me, his words as certain as a slam to the gut.
“She made her choice, Nick.”
The madness would take us all.
Reed thought he was protecting her.
He wouldn’t tell my father, even if the consequences would forever scar him.
I couldn’t let this happen, but time slivered against the edge of my father’s knife. I had no options. I couldn’t spare my brother his pain and save the life of the woman I loved.
&n
bsp; But Reed would do it for me.
“Sarah left.” Reed shrugged. “I don’t know where she went.”
My father tapped the blade in his hand. “I’m disappointed in you, son.”
“Aren’t you always?”
“Hold him down.”
Max refused. I forced Reed forward instead. He swore, though the word aimed for both me and our bastard of a father.
I deserved more than his profanity.
I deserved more than my brother’s ire, Sarah’s distrust, and my father’s gratitude for pinning my youngest brother to the desk as the knife raised.
I deserved the tearing slice to my face.
Reed screamed.
I’d remember that sound too.
And I’d ensure it was the last pain my father ever caused.
13
Sarah
“Mom!”
The front door slammed behind me. I let Reed’s car idle in the driveway, practically steaming from the three hour speed run from San Jose.
I made a two-hundred and fifty mile detour before my meeting with Roman Wescott.
I hoped it’d be worth it.
“Mom?” I sprinted through the halls. “It’s Sprout! Where are you?”
The patio door opened. Mom brushed the dirt from her hands and dropped the garden trowel in the coffee can tucked in the corner.
“Sarah, no yelling in the house. I heard you all the way in my flower garden.”
Her voice slurred, and an orange pill bottle jingled out of her pocket, but I didn’t care. I wrapped her in our first honest hug in three months, our first real embrace since Josiah and Mike’s deaths.
It was our first touch which didn’t mourn a lost husband, father, or hope.
“Sarah, what’s gotten into you? Is Darius here?”
I shuddered. “No. Look, Mom. I can’t stay long.”
“You haven’t stayed long in months.”
Her disappointment chided me. A sharp pang of sorrow struck me to the core.
“Mom…I haven’t been living here.”
“Right, right.” She waved a hand. “So kind of Darius to offer to take you in.”
Kind was not the word I would have picked, but it wasn’t the time to argue. I herded Mom into the master bedroom and opened the closet. The clothes piled high, but she had always bribed a farmhand to help her fold the laundry.
“Mom, pack a bag. You have to stay with Aunt Sharidan for a while.”
“Shari?” Mom made a face. “Oh no. I haven’t seen my sister since the wedding, and even then I had two glasses of wine too few to deal with her.”
But Aunt Sharidan was the closest relative I could think to take her in, though San Francisco would plop into the bay once they started to fight.
“Why are you running around?” She asked, “Honestly. Put my bag down.”
The clock on the wall ticked entirely too fast for me to pack more than a few pairs of jeans, a couple shirts, and a random assortment of her toiletries.
“Sprout, stop. What are you doing?”
“Mom, I need you to go visit Aunt Shari. Don’t argue with me, please. I can’t explain now, but I will later. I promise. Just…go get your shoes on.”
“I’m wearing shoes.”
I glanced down. “Mom…two of the same shoe.”
Mom held out her foot, cackling as she realized her mistake. “Oh, look at that. Serves me right for not wearing my glasses.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Her bag zipped tight. I’d call Aunt Sharidan from the car. It’d take a bribe to keep Mom there, especially since her relationship with her sister only worsened with age, but I’d sell half the corn fields if it meant Mom could be safe.
If only for a little while. If only so Darius wouldn’t be able to hurt her for what I was going to do.
I sighed. It was stupid to even return to Cherrywood Valley. Stupid and reckless and utterly selfish.
I meant to drive straight to Roman Wescott’s office, plead my case, and convince him to amend the agreement. I planned to collect my trust and find a way to defend myself from Darius.
But I didn’t make it close to San Jose.
I left the estate and immediately headed south. Toward home. Back to Mom.
A desperate part of me needed to sink in her arms and cry, to reveal everything horrible and frightening and disgusting that had happened at the Bennett Estate. I wanted to beg for Mom to be my mother again.
We’d hire security, find a safer home, and then finalize her divorce.
Darius would slit her throat if I so much as whispered about his treatment, but if she were free of him, we could try to rebuild our life and farm.
Maybe then we’d be safe. I would inherit my trust. I’d help Nicholas depose his father.
And then?
I searched the house to find her cellphone charger. My steps slowed in the kitchen.
There was no more then.
I was an idiot. Idealistic fool.
A little girl who denied that anything was wrong in the storybook fantasy of her family.
The pilot light flickered on the stove with no pots or dishes near.
“Mom?” I called. “Are you making tea or something?”
Mom followed, still fretting about my rampage through her drawers.
“No. Why?”
I didn’t answer. Mom brushed her hands.
“Where did all this dirt come from? Heavens.” She tisked her tongue. “Did you want tea, Sarah? Good gracious, you come bursting in here shouting all manner of nonsense, trying to get me to visit Shari of all people, and now you want tea. I swear, sometimes I think you are just a clone of Mark.”
I flicked the knob on the stove. “You…left the stove on.”
“Oh. Whoops!”
Whoops? She might have set the house on fire, and all she could say was whoops?
My stomach dropped. She hadn’t been the most level-headed woman since the funerals, but I thought it was the depression. The medications.
Darius was right.
She fluttered to the cabinet. “Well, now I’m tasting tea anyway. Put some water on, Sprout.”
I hesitated, but Mom flipped a towel at my behind. She laughed as I visibly flinched against even the smallest nip of the cloth. She didn’t ask why I feared a strike. I wouldn’t have told her anyway.
I filled the kettle. Mom set tea bags and sugar on the table. She hummed as she worked.
When was the last time she hummed?
Three months ago, Mom could hardly get out of bed, torn between the excitement for her new marriage and the crushing despair of her mourning. The pills helped, until they didn’t. They stole the once vibrant and vivacious woman who was my only companion in the family.
A family that didn’t want me.
No.
My father didn’t want me.
Josiah and Mike loved me. They were older and far busier with Dad, but they snuck me sweets when I was sick and let me sleep in their rooms if I had nightmares of earthquakes.
I hadn’t visited their graves since they died, not after Mom took the razor to her wrists just as the funeral procession arrived at the plot in our far field where they’d rest next to Dad.
I hadn’t visited Dad either, not that he deserved it.
My chest tightened.
Coming here was a mistake.
It’d be the first place Darius would look, and Mom the first person he’d hurt. I tried to defend my family, but at my first opportunity, I lured danger to it.
We weren’t going anywhere. I couldn’t trust Mom to go anywhere.
She offered me a fruit salad wrapped from the fridge.
“Fresh from the garden.” She pushed the fork toward me. “Bet you miss that. Darius doesn’t appreciate good fruits and vegetables.”
Neither did his carnivore sons.
Sons who would be on their way to find me. To capture me. To imprison me with him again.
I had no idea what would await me when I returned or how an
gry Nicholas would be.
I savored a bite of the watermelon and aimed for the honeydew immediately after.
“Sprout, tell me why you’re so worked up?” Mom spun her spoon in her tea. “You aren’t yourself.”
I didn’t even know who myself would be anymore.
I left the Bennett Estate terrified and enraged, but the revenge I sought wasn’t as righteous as before. I demanded blood, not for the sin perpetrated against my family but the darkness Darius forced me to endure.
Did that make me as ruthless as Reed thought?
The way he looked at me crushed my heart in mounting guilt. I never meant to hurt him. I’d probably hurt them all before it was done.
Except they hurt me first.
What was I supposed to do?
Mom hovered. “Looks like you could use a treat too.”
She tucked a plate of chocolate chip cookies under my nose. I abandoned the fruit.
“Your father loved those cookies,” Mom said. “They were the only compliment he’d ever give.”
The cookie fell to the plate. Almost a year of mourning, and she never once said anything disparaging about Dad.
I tried my hardest to remember anything she ever said bad about Dad. I couldn’t. Then again, until a few weeks ago, I had nothing negative to say either.
I blinked away a damning tear.
“You never told me what a monster Dad was.”
Mom’s teacup lowered. She hesitated.
“He wasn’t a monster.”
I nibbled the cookie. “Helena Bennett?”
“So you’ve spoken with Darius.”
“Nick.”
“It was a long time ago, Sprout.”
“That doesn’t forgive what he did,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “But Mark never asked for forgiveness.”
“You never said anything.”
“No.”
“Did Josiah and Mike know?”
Talking about Dad no longer weakened her, but her voice slipped when I mentioned my brothers.
“Yes, I suppose they did.”
I hated to think it. “Didn’t they care?”
“You know your brothers.” She trembled. “Knew. They thought they’d change the world.”
