by Lana Grayson
That, I understood.
“In.”
Max’s order wasn’t soft, and he didn’t offer it with a Baby.
I squeezed past Nicholas and Reed and shuffled in the entry, rubbing the cut on my neck as the door locked behind us. I didn’t know if I should have thanked Max for taking me in, or if my reaction was just another mistake in a line of fuck-ups that would make our lives miserable. I waited in awkward silence instead.
His penthouse was dark and industrial and every bit as intimidating as him. He decorated it cold and sparse. A bachelor pad for the bachelor who hardly lived there.
Max pointed over the open floor plan. “Bedrooms. Bathrooms. Living room.” He headed to the corner, flipping on the lights over an array of bottles and shakers. “Bar.”
Reed spoke for the first time in hours. “I don’t care what you make. I’ll have two.”
His stitches flashed. He shouldn’t have ridden his bike such a long distance. The helmet pressed his cheek, and the cut oozed. I didn’t know how badly he hurt, and the mountainous back roads and dark turns were dangerous even for someone who wasn’t…maimed.
Reed knocked open a pill bottle from his pocket, swallowed too many, and followed it with a splash of offered whiskey.
He didn’t smile.
He couldn’t, not without hurting his injury.
My chest seized. I wasn’t the one who made the slice, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t responsible for his pain. All of their pain.
Was it worth it?
I left Roman Wescott’s office without an agreement, unable to close the deal. Darius was right, he just didn’t understand why. If I wanted to destroy him, I’d first have to betray Nicholas. I would steal everything from him—everything he worked for, everything that was promised to him, everything he planned for so long to change and improve.
And now, Darius knew about our fucking alliance. What I spat in hatred and anger damned me to the Bennett Corporation. Was I still worth more pregnant than dead?
I needed a drink too.
Maybe the whole bottle.
Hell, just the glass pushed against my throat to finish what Darius had threatened.
Nicholas guided me to the couch. I followed, but my steps tripped. I gripped the dark sofa just to stay standing.
“Reed…”
All three of my step-brothers frowned. Individually, I could handle the intensity of Max’s gaze or the unfamiliar scowl touching Reed’s lips. But collectively? Even the gold of Nicholas’s eyes obscured into a muddied amber.
I already said enough tonight.
They didn’t want to hear anymore.
I quieted, slipping onto the couch to cradle my legs to my chest. I still had Reed’s jacket tucked over my shoulders. He hadn’t asked me to return it. Yet. I clutched the leather, held it against me with the same ferocity I clung to Mike and Josiah’s pillows after the news of their crash.
I’d lost two brothers already.
I couldn’t lose these men.
Not my gentle Reed who’d just as eagerly toss me in a pool or carry me away from danger. Not my Max, the one who understood the frustration when the world used our illnesses and injuries to define us.
Not Nicholas.
My Nicholas.
My chest ached. Tears slipped before I could stop them.
The fear returned.
So much fear, an endless barrage of thoughts that needled my chest with consequences that gutted me as though the knife had actually struck.
Now that I admitted it, I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been afraid—even before the Bennetts. Mom’s breakdown. My brothers’ deaths. Dad’s cancer.
I rubbed my cheeks with the backs of my hands, cleansing the tears. The San Jose skyline filled the floor to ceiling windows. Despite the flashy lights of downtown, the night seeped into the penthouse.
In the distance, the Bennett Corporation headquarters glowed, framed against the mountains.
We weren’t far enough away.
I didn’t know where we could go. Even if I went home, I ran from the man who sent his sons to chase me on bikes and pluck me from my own cornfields. If my step-brothers took me, Darius could do the same.
If he came after me.
When he came after me.
My step-brothers revealed nothing beyond their own exhausted silences. I assumed they relived their side of the events. They’d finally escaped their father, though I hadn’t given them a choice. They opposed a man more violent and brutal than any of us believed. At least, for them, it was over.
But they hadn’t been trapped under him.
They hadn’t heard the disgusting rasp in his voice.
His threats weren’t meant to scare me. His hiss, the words he spoke, the futures he imagined, what he intended to do.
Darius was desperate to punish and claim me. If he had his way, he’d make me suffer in humiliated agony—
“Sarah.” Reed’s voice lured me from the darkness. He offered a drink. “You could use it.”
My hands trembled as I grasped the glass. I sniffed it, and the alcohol burned more than my tears.
“Not supposed to,” I said.
Max tossed me a blanket. “Don’t think that matters much anymore.”
“I guess not.”
I took the shot, grimacing as the liquid set my mouth on fire. I didn’t need any more heat rushing to my head. I handed the glass to Nicholas. He shot the rest.
“Guess you can sleep here.” Max poured a second drink and gestured to the kitchen. “There might be a frozen pizza in the freezer. Haven’t been here for a while to check.”
My voice hushed. “I don’t think I can eat.”
Reed snorted. “Make it. Getting your face cleaved works up an appetite.”
What did they want from me?
An apology? More tears? A plea for forgiveness?
I pushed away from Nicholas and threw Reed his jacket. He hissed as the sleeve swept against his cheek. He deserved it.
Or maybe he didn’t.
Hell if I knew.
“I panicked.” I thought I’d scream. My voice trembled instead. “I tried to sleep, and all I heard, all I saw was that video. Over and over, hours of my brothers dying!”
Nicholas waved his brothers away. “Sarah.”
“I snapped! Everything is just this horrible blur. The footage. You guys finding me. I thought I was in the theater, and then I woke up in the bathtub with you, and then I don’t know what happened afterwards. I couldn’t think. I just…acted. And then Darius…he tried…”
“You should rest,” Nicholas said. “You’re tired.”
“She’s not tired.” Max slammed the pizza in the oven. “She’s traumatized! Jesus fucking Christ, he knew exactly what he was doing making her watch that shit.”
Nicholas exhaled. “I’ll handle it, Max.”
“Did you know he had that footage?” He asked. “That was the black box recording. Where the fuck did he get that?”
Reed’s voice hardened. “Of course he had it. He probably had it all along. You know he wanted to hear what was on that tape.”
Max swore again, slamming his drink into the sink. It shattered on impact.
“What the fuck did he tell you, Sarah?”
I swallowed. I couldn’t think about it anymore. Didn’t he realize? Couldn’t he tell? I shook my head. Max didn’t care. He pushed every limit I had, fed off of every pain inflicted on others and, for some reason, wished it on himself.
Including this one.
But he couldn’t protect me from this punishment. None of them could.
“Sarah!” Max’s order verged on threat. “What did he say?”
“It’s fine,” Nicholas said. “Sarah, you don’t have to think about it.”
Max’s voice darkened. “He might have told her anything.”
“He didn’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We’d know.”
Nicholas’s voice had yet to
melt back into the caramel steadiness. The calm was gone. A razor’s warning remained. I didn’t recognize it. His stillness wasn’t patience, it was…predatory. A rage-fueled awareness, a deadly trap set with no escape.
His hug shadowed me in a false peace. “Forget what you saw, Sarah. And what you heard. Consider it a nightmare.”
“A home movie.”
“What?”
“He called it a home movie. Said I didn’t have to go home to see my family.” My heart ached for my lost brothers. “I didn’t know how much I missed them until…”
“Holy fuck.” Reed collapsed in the chair by the window. He looked out, away from us. “Goddamned lunatic.”
I swallowed. “Reed…”
“Don’t.”
“But, I have to—”
“I said don’t.” He stretched his neck as best he could, wincing as the stitches tightened. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. I could feel it—a tension that wasn’t there before. I hated whatever walls suddenly separated us, but I wouldn’t rest until I ripped them down and begged Reed to forgive me.
“I thought I’d return quicker.” The explanation was weak. “But after what you said…I wanted to get to my mom. I tried to get her away from Darius. I didn’t know—”
“Jesus, Sarah. What do you want from me?” Reed swallowed another pill. “I kept my mouth shut about where you went. I didn’t tell him a goddamned thing you didn’t just fucking shout right back at him. But you got what you were after. You had your vengeance. It’s done. What happened, happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
Reed sighed, meeting my gaze. He offered a simple smile. A momentary truce. I’d take it.
“I’m fine. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t true. I didn’t feel safe. He didn’t seem fine.
For months I planned, schemed, and fought for a way to escape from the Bennetts, but none of my imagined scenarios hurt this badly.
I lost Reed. I was losing Max.
And Nicholas?
Our relationship balanced between secrets, lies, and a fragile trust that crumbled and rebuilt every passing day. Loving him was a constant fatigue but also a healing thrill. I wouldn’t let him slip away too.
The pizza bubbled in the oven. Max limped to the kitchen to shut off the timer and dropped an iPad in my lap.
“Here.”
I bit my lip. It was the first piece of technology with access to the internet they gave me in months. “What do I do with this?”
“Whatever you want,” Max said.
Nicholas sat too close, watched too intently. I didn’t trust my voice.
“Are you sure?”
The gold would burn me, scald me with a solemn authority. “Yes.”
“Are you…are you freeing me?”
“Yes.”
“Forever?” I touched the collar over my neck. “You’re letting me go?”
What a horrible question to ask the man I loved. Yet I asked it, and he answered, and my heart fluttered with the same joy as when he admitted his feelings for the first time.
Nicholas leaned close, his hands warm and fingers quick as he unfastened the leather from my throat. He tossed the damned thing to the table and rubbed the redness from my skin.
“We don’t need a collar anymore.” His touch chased my trembling away. “I don’t need this anymore.”
“You never did.”
“I wanted to keep you mine, in all ways.”
“I’ve always been.” I held him close in a breathless gratitude as his touch warmed my cheek, my blood, and the thoughts frozen in such horrible memories. “We belong to each other. I’m forever yours, Nicholas Bennett, whether you hold me with chains or a whisper. Loving you isn’t surrender. It’s the only thing I’m meant to do.”
He beckoned me to his side and cradled me against his chest. The blanket pulled over us. He gently stroked my hair as Max stormed in the kitchen and Reed chewed too many pain-killers with his drink. Nicholas’s steady heartbeat dulled the echoing hell screaming in my mind. I slept against him, clutching him, seizing a moment of safety and peace I never thought I’d experience within a Bennett’s arms.
One moment was all I earned.
One precious moment when the world stilled, Nicholas was mine, and my step-brothers shared a cautious laugh over Hamlet’s desperation for a piece of pepperoni from their pizza.
That peace was too fragile.
The security an illusion.
And my freedom?
Lost the instant the Bennetts decided I would be theirs.
The gunshot jolted me awake.
Nicholas swore, pushing me to the ground. Reed dove over me, but the shot didn’t aim for us, only the lock on the door. Hamlet burst from the living room to hide in the bedroom. My step-brothers shouted for me to follow.
I didn’t make it in time.
The penthouse door splintered and slammed against the wall.
I should have known better. I should have expected it.
I never should have let my step-brothers stop running.
I longed for the bullet.
Darius Bennett aimed for my step-brothers instead.
“I’ve taken a few hours to consider your proposal, Nicholas.” Darius stepped into the penthouse. The gun didn’t waver. “Your terms are unacceptable. I’ve come to renegotiate.”
Max rushed forward. Darius fired, aiming for the window overlooking the city. The sliding glass door shattered.
It was our first warning.
“Where is she?” Darius said. “Sarah, stand up.”
Reed’s knee pushed into my back, pinning me against the ground. He perched over me, and Nicholas answered in my stead.
“We have nothing to discuss.” Nicholas faced his father without fear. “Sarah is mine. The company is hers. You have no recourse. Leave before you hurt someone.”
Darius exhaled, as though he mourned for the son before him, or maybe he mourned that he still lived.
“Nicholas, I raised you better than this. I groomed you for excellence. You wore the mantle of our name with pride. I trusted you. I wanted you to succeed.”
How could a man so deranged sound so…sane?
Calm?
Normal?
Darius wielded a gun as though he held a cigar, and addressed his son as though he wouldn’t inevitably turn the barrel on me and end the madness we thought we’d escaped.
“I taught you nothing was more important than family,” Darius said. “Max understood it. He knew what had to be done to protect our interests.”
“Fuck you,” Max hissed.
“He blames me, of course,” Darius said. “Each of you blame me, but it’s the father’s role to guide his sons, whether or not they understand the need for disciplines, the denials, and expectations.” He paused. “I had hoped you would learn with a son of your own.”
My stomach rolled. Reed forced me down.
The gun raised. “Let me see my daughter. Bring her to me.”
“No.”
“Do you understand what will happen if she assumes leadership of our company? If it isn’t a Bennett son who ultimately grows in her womb?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’ll lose everything, Nicholas. And not just the money and the power and company.” His voice lowered. “You’ll lose your little whore too.”
I fought against Reed, but I couldn’t free myself of his grip. Nicholas said nothing. Darius chuckled.
“You surprised me. Truly. The takeover attempt? Then, I didn’t understand it. It felt too early for you to test your power. But now, I see.”
I doubted that he did. Darius reached for the collar on the table. He ran his fingers over the leather.
“You betrayed your family, company, and future for a moment of pleasure. You trusted an Atwood whore with your life. And now? You’ve squandered the wealth this family inherited and every future cent we might have acquired. All because of her.”
Ni
cholas didn’t flinch. “This isn’t about Sarah.”
“Yes, it is.”
The gun pointed too close to Nicholas’s temple. I pushed Reed away and crawled to my feet, despite Nicholas’s insistence to stay behind. My step-brothers tried, but they couldn’t protect me from Darius’s stare.
Hungry.
Insistent.
Victorious.
Darius meant to kill someone tonight.
“Even though my loyal sons, my own flesh and blood, have forsaken this family, I have not.” He looked to each of my step-brothers, demanding their full attention. “I propose two solutions to this problem. And because I am a fair man and father, I will let my sons decide the fate of this family.”
It wasn’t fate, it was judgment. Whatever solution he offered and decision they made would ultimately end in blood.
“Proposition one,” Darius said. “I kill Sarah and end the threat of her takeover in one painless shot.”
“No.” Nicholas didn’t hesitate.
“Then I kill all three of my sons.”
My chest tightened.
All three? I didn’t doubt his cruelty, but Darius wouldn’t dare. Not if it left him without an heir.
Unless he already planned for his next son.
“I will not tolerate this disloyalty,” he said. “Not when I am presented with a beautiful alternative, just waiting for someone to do it right.”
He leered, and I understood exactly what he wanted to do.
“I’ll take Sarah for myself. Fuck her. Impregnate her. And our heir?” His eyes pierced through me, as violating as any touch. “Our son will possess the future of both the Bennett and Atwood families.”
“You’re insane,” I whispered.
“Hush, now. Daddy’s talking.”
“You won’t touch her.” Nicholas wasn’t intimidated. “If you want to kill us, try. You don’t have enough bullets to stop me before I rip your goddamned head off.”
“Let’s find out.”
The gun rose, but Max leapt first, diving at his father with a knife stolen from the kitchen. Darius expected it. He slammed the butt of the gun against Max’s nose and kicked, aiming solely for the weakest part of his leg. Max crumpled to the ground, slicing, but catching only Darius’s suit jacket with the blade.
