by Lana Grayson
“I’m not fucking around.”
I had two broken ribs and not nearly enough patience for his games. “What about the plan?”
“Forget it.”
“We won’t get this chance again. Not for a while.”
“Call it off. Believe me. We might not get this chance again.”
Reed hung up. I swore again before returning to Max.
“Reed’s out,” I said.
“Should we do it alone?”
We couldn’t. I organized it for three men. Each of us had our part.
“He said to meet him at his house,” I said.
“On the coast?”
“Apparently.”
“What about Dad?”
“He said this was bigger.”
Max hesitated. “What do you think?”
No greater injustice existed than my father’s beating heart. I grunted.
“Call it off. We’ll have other opportunities.” I stared through a darkened windshield, to the private elevator to the executive floor. “He thinks he’s untouchable.”
“He is. You know the risks.”
And I was willing to bear them all. The frustration beat at me from the inside, punishing that which already bruised and bled.
It had almost been over.
And we risked it all to see it done.
But I knew what would happen as a result. The investigations. The money. The will.
The company.
We might have lost everything. I prepared to trade my freedom for hers.
If it even mattered. She was an Atwood. She probably found a way to destroy us all in her own twisted revenge.
I had trusted her. For the first time in our relationship, I trusted her.
And she betrayed me. She kept the shares. She damned me to a board that would kill me for my treachery just as they’d slit her throat.
It was becoming too difficult to keep track of the favors and excuses. She owed me an explanation. I owed her a life free from pain and suffering. One of us would break first.
“We’ll meet at Reed’s place,” I said. “And he better have a damn good excuse for ruining this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Killing Dad is the only way I can keep Sarah safe. If that doesn’t prove how much I love her, then nothing will.”
“What if she doesn’t want you?” Max asked. “What if after all this bullshit she’d decided to split, save herself, and fuck us all over?”
“It won’t happen.”
“Why?”
The simple truth heated my blood and stilled my heart.
“I will have Sarah Atwood. Not because she belongs to me, but because I cannot exist without her.”
3
Sarah
Three knocks rattled the hotel door.
Hamlet growled. He remembered what happened the last time someone came for me.
My chest squeezed. Monsters didn’t live in closets. They roamed free in the world, hunting and torturing their victims with gnarled fingers and a sing-song sickness in their voice.
But the man knocking wasn’t evil. He was the one Bennett I’d face without shattering under the weight of the truth. It wasn’t Darius’s perverted crimes that frightened me anymore. It was what they’d think of me once I faced the shame.
What Nicholas would think.
My hand trembled as I checked the peephole. I recognized the sea-green eyes, but I opened the door with the chain, just to ensure he was alone.
The baby wasn’t the only consequence of my naivety. Paranoia conquered me. And distrust.
Reed waited until the door swung wide. Then I was captured in his embrace.
“Hi, Re—”
I stuffed my tears into the roiling pit of nausea in my stomach. Reed squeezed me too hard. I dug my fingers into his shoulder and hoped I wouldn’t reveal the pregnancy in a most undignified manner.
Reed didn’t smile. He touched my face, kissed my forehead.
“Jesus Christ, Sarah, we were worried about you! Where the hell have you been?”
He didn’t release me, and I tolerated the touch, if only because the last time he held me was in a brief, horrible goodbye after my step-brothers secured a chartered flight to escape from Darius. Reed gave me five thousand dollars and broke down because he could do nothing else.
Nothing to make up for how they hurt me.
But it wasn’t his fault. Not when the gun was pointed at my head, and the bullets etched with their names. I didn’t blame them. It was all Darius. Every time. Every moment.
But even Reed’s embrace was too much, too confining. I escaped from his pinning hug. He patted Hamlet behind the ears.
“You okay?” Reed brushed my cheek.
I flinched, and he immediately apologized. The guilt and shame flushed my cheeks.
I dreaded what he’d say next. The pity. The remorse.
Instead he smiled, his dimple so teasing and playful. “Enjoying your whirlwind vacation?”
I…hadn’t expected that.
“Vacation?”
He winked. “I figured you’d get tired of us sooner or later.”
“Tired of you?”
“Nick’s been so worried, holy Christ. You ran with all those shares. Max thought you’d sell and buy a one-way ticket to some tropical island paradise.” Reed grinned. “I told him you’d use it for startup capital to develop some sort of genetically modified monster corn.”
My stomach rolled. I pushed further from Reed.
“You thought I left with the stock from the Josmik Trust,” I said. “You thought I…”
Betrayed them.
Oh, God.
They didn’t know.
Nicholas didn’t know.
Darius’s attack wasn’t the only nightmare that haunted me. I dreaded how he’d gloat, what he’d say, how he’d utterly destroy my step-brothers when he revealed just how easily he…
They didn’t know their father raped me.
My stomach heaved.
“Hold on…” I clapped a hand over my mouth and rushed to the bathroom, slamming the door as I landed on my knees.
They didn’t know.
The relief expelled every awful memory, the lingering fear, the imaginary hands gripping my hips.
Darius didn’t tell them.
And neither would I.
I had an opportunity to end the reign of a monster. If we killed Darius, they would never know, and I would be safe from harm and humiliation.
Reed rapped on the door. “Hey, Typhoid Mary. I’m glad you called, but if you get me sick…”
I washed my face. “You won’t catch it.”
“Better not.”
I edged from the bathroom with a shrug. His eyebrow rose as he cuddled with Hamlet.
“You okay?” His smile faded.
No. “Yeah.”
“You don’t look good.” He gestured around the hotel room. “And you can afford better digs.”
Not if I wanted to hide in one of the thousands of indistinguishable hotels where a billionaire would never think to search.
“It’s been fine,” I said.
Reed didn’t believe me, but he nodded. “I’m glad you’re coming back.”
He wouldn’t be, not once he learned the reasons why. He hopped from the bed to take the bag I lifted. The strap caught on the table and jostled the zipper.
The rattling bottle bounced against the floor. I dove for it, but Reed seized it first, handing it to me.
“Almost dropped your—”
The bottle clenched in his hand. He read the label. I froze.
Prenatal vitamins.
His expression shifted—a momentary confusion that cleared quickly, as if I struck him against the temple with the bottle. I met his gaze.
And pleaded in silence.
I wasn’t ready to say it.
Not yet. Not aloud. Not to anyone but Hamlet and the compassionate nurse practitioner at the free clinic who offered to help even when I wouldn’t gi
ve her my name.
I’d carried the secret for two months, and the only man who deserved to hear it was the one I was too terrified to call.
I stilled. Reed stared at me, and three, four, five agonizing seconds of silence transformed his confused frown to wide-eyed shock.
He offered to run with me once, but I thought I’d control my own fate and end it before anyone got hurt. One fluttering heartbeat changed everything.
I took the vitamins from Reed’s hand.
He exhaled. His eyebrow twitched, but whatever he prepared to say silenced between clenched teeth. Reed was as good a brother as Josiah or Mike. He nodded and clipped the leash on Hamlet.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
I would have thanked him, but it wasn’t necessary. He’d do anything for me. Reed shouldered my book bag too.
“Does he know I’m coming?” I couldn’t say his name.
“I kept it on the DL. I’ll call them from the airport and tell him to meet us at my house.”
“And it’s…” I hated the tremble in my voice. “It’ll be safe there?”
His expression darkened. Reed clenched his jaw.
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” He handed me Hamlet’s leash. “Come on. Tonight was a bad night to be wrangling you.”
“Why?”
“Just a lot happening. Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of you.”
Take care of me? They had their chance to take care of me. That time had come, gone, and was lost in blood and bruises.
Now they had one job. One promise they could finally keep, and then I’d leave forever.
Darius Bennett would die.
And my child would be safe.
“You should eat, Ms. Atwood.”
Nicholas dared to speak to me. He offered a sandwich, a bottle of water, and an apple. It wasn’t a kindness, not when he unlocked my bedroom door from the outside to deliver my first meal within the Bennett Estate.
“Go on,” he said. “It isn’t poisoned.”
As if that would reassure me, as if the trauma from a kidnapping and imprisonment would be alleviated because Nicholas Bennett offered me a ham sandwich.
“If you want your vengeance, you’ll need your strength,” he teased. The plate clattered on the nightstand. “I want a fair fight, Ms. Atwood.”
“Nothing’s fair about this.”
“No, it’s not.”
I didn’t move. Nicholas existed in a perfect, intimidating stillness, but I refused to let it frighten me.
“You haven’t won yet,” I said. “You’ve only just started a war. Whatever insanity existed between our fathers is done and buried. You’ve instigated something far worse.”
“Ms. Atwood—”
“You should consider the consequences of this kidnapping. If you succeed and a child is born?” I whispered the threat. “I will burn this prison to the ground and scorch my enemies into ash before I let you become a father to my son.”
Reed crowded my bags and dog into his rental car. I’d traveled from the Poconos west, running from Pennsylvania to Minnesota. We had to take a private plane to California.
I tried not to think of Josiah and Mike. Tried not to remember the footage of their plane crash Darius forced me to watch.
It didn’t work. Weepy and sick and exhausted, I collapsed in my seat. Reed said nothing as I darted to the bathroom twice. I curled up beside him and let the hours pass with inoffensive small-talk about Hamlet.
I couldn’t ask about Nicholas.
The plane descended into a tiny airport off the California coast. Reed lived West of San Jose, in a little ocean town known for the surfing community. He loaded me into a private car and pointed out his favorite board shop, coffee house, and the road he took to get to the Mavericks, a crazy surfing spot half a mile out into the ocean.
Reed rubbed the scar on his cheek. “You think that’s bad, you should see a twenty foot wave crashing over your head.”
Yeah, not something I would have done even before I landed in my current condition. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Sure, but that’s the fun of it. It’s an adrenaline rush. Nothing like it.”
“Not my type of adrenaline rush.”
“What’s yours?”
It used to be nights spent passed between each of my step-brothers. Now it was just nights running in fear. I was tired of that particular rush.
Reed turned from the main drag and headed up a secondary road leading away from town to the quiet hills overlooking the ocean. It was a beautiful place—peaceful, but exciting. Very Reed.
“I’m surprised you left here to live at the estate,” I said.
His fingers tightened over the wheel. “Didn’t have a choice. When Dad says come home…”
I shivered. “Right.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got security systems and everything working. It’s safer than Max’s penthouse.”
Nowhere was safe, but I appreciated his concern. We parked outside a beautiful, modern house, with more windows than walls. Hard angles and a classy, tight design blended it into the hill. The ocean was in clear view from a balcony stretching over the sloping hillside. The house rested in a forest of scrub and dark shadow.
I didn’t wait for him. I edged from the car and whistled for Hamlet. Reed followed with my bags.
“I won’t lie,” he said “They’re going to be upset.”
Not for long.
The front door creaked open. Hamlet burst inside as if he had lived there his whole life.
Max paced in the living room. Hamlet, of course, launched at his weak leg. The hulking, beast of a man crashed against the couch with a pained profanity. The fluffy goldendoodle gave him a sloppy lick.
Reed dropped my bags in the doorway. He pushed me in front of him.
Traitor.
“Look who I found,” he said.
“Jesus, fuck!” Max swore, rubbing the tension from his face with a thick hand. The muscles over his arm tensed, and the pattern of dark ink stretched tight. “Christ, am I glad to see you, baby.”
I didn’t answer.
The words refused to whisper.
He stood before the window overlooking the moon-kissed ocean, bathed in shadow and wrought with a strength I once thought would protect me from everything.
The golden halo of his eyes burned within the dimness of the house, captured in a moment’s rage and relief. The color dazzled, sharpened, and cracked as frustration trapped his expression. The rugged line of his jaw hardened, and the regal angles of his face encased him with a poised grace.
But beneath the edge of sophistication, I saw what I’d ignored for so long.
The thin curl of his lips.
The slope of his nose.
The angle of his brow, and the dark strength that held his body in perfect, disciplined ruthlessness.
Nicholas Bennett looked so much like his father.
And the words he uttered rasped with the same quick demands.
“Sarah.” He spoke my name with an unchallenged authority, as though I were just another of his billions of possessions. “Where—”
I didn’t let him finish.
I broke down and ran to him, beat against his chest. I blamed the hormones. I blamed the pregnancy. I blamed him.
For two months I fled from the secrets, the truth, and the pain.
In two seconds, I understood everything I needed to do.
Everything I had to lose, and what I had to protect.
My heart broke into pieces, a shard of regret for what I’d let happen and a splinter of what might have been.
For so long, I’d protected my captor and indulged the insanity. It was for nothing. My love for Nicholas existed in a moment of forsaken freedom. My kiss pardoned his crimes. My touch defended his abuse. And my submission damned us all.
I couldn’t imagine a life without Nicholas Bennett, but heartbreak was safer than the death throes of his ruthless family, betrayed and broken.
Nichola
s held me. I savored his embrace.
It’d be the last time I let him so close.
4
Sarah
“You know…” Reed dipped his chopsticks into my container of white rice. I slapped his hand away. “We all had our tonsils out as kids.”
Max chewed his lo mein. “What?”
“Just sayin’,” Reed shrugged at me. I smiled, but I was too exhausted to even eat, let alone decipher what the hell he was talking about. “If we’re all trying to make an heir, I mean…he’ll most likely have tonsillitis. And…” He nudged me. “Is asthma genetic?”
Probably, but I never had cause to worry about it. Now seemed an equally weird time to consider the possibilities. What I thought would be a night to celebrate my discovered inheritance of the Josmik Trust became the beginning of Nicholas’s rededicated plan to breed me.
So far, it had been a very fun plan.
Max hadn’t put a shirt on. They weren’t done with me yet. “I don’t think sore throats and inhalers are a major concern right now.”
My gaze flicked to Nicholas. He hadn’t spoken since offering me to his brothers. He simply…watched. The whole night. Enthralled. Obsessed. Unbelievably passionate when he seized me from Reed’s arms just to take me once more.
His golden eyes captured me, worshiped me, soothed me.
For the first time, my heart panged with regret for my infertility.
A baby might have inherited his eyes.
I wouldn’t let myself cry. I wouldn’t reveal what happened. Not to the men who still possessed an ounce of innocence despite their role in my captivity.
If they knew, I’d lose the calm, rational men who were capable of ending the nightmare. They’d act in bloody impulse and endanger themselves.
Max would consider it his failure to protect me.
Reed would forever view me as a victim he didn’t save.
And Nicholas?
If the baby wasn’t his…
No.
It had to be Nicholas’s.
It wasn’t time for tears. Strength was derived from opportunity. I couldn’t stop Darius when it happened, but we could end it now and save my child from a lifetime of shame.
First, I’d protect myself.
