by Lana Grayson
He liked that.
“You did well, my dear. You waited for someone to do it right.”
I’d repeat the words until the world finally stole my last breath. “It isn’t yours.”
“Deny it if you wish.” The cut on his face bled harder, faster. He couldn’t open his eye. I only wished I sliced deeper. “You know the truth.”
“It isn’t yours.”
“And he is only yours as long as he’s curled safe within your womb.” His voice snapped, another layer of chains and shackles collaring me to the Bennett Estate. “That child is a Bennett. I told you once, Sarah. You would remain with us until you were bred and bore us a son. In six months, you’ll be lucky you don’t bleed out after I slice the child from your gut.”
“You will never touch my son.” I didn’t flinch from his sneer. “Your time is running out, Darius. I have the child. I have the company.”
The threat tasted of blood and pain. I loved it.
“You will have nothing when I am done with you,” I promised. “Not even your life.”
11
Nicholas
There was a time I’d never tolerate the weight of a gun in my palm.
Now I regretted not firing.
I watched as my father escorted Sarah into the car. One bullet might have ended the horror.
And one harsh strike to her stomach would have ruined me.
My father’s guard delivered her to the agreed location—the parking garage beneath the Bennett Corporation. Reed swore the entire drive, twisting in impatient agony as the bodyguard drove professionally, cautiously. I ran a red-light to follow close.
Had Sarah not been pregnant, he would have killed her.
The exchange was quick. We pulled into the garage, and Sarah burst from the passenger seat. She didn’t run. She waited until the driver peeled away before quickening her steps.
I expected her to fall into my arms. Cuddle against my chest. Or maybe that’s what I needed.
Sarah pushed Reed and I aside and vomited behind our car—a sickness she refused to expose before my father or his guards.
She gasped from her knees. “Max? Where’s—”
“We found him,” Reed said. “He’s on his way.”
“I thought he—” She was sick again, but she didn’t let us comfort her. “I thought he was dead. They shot at us.”
Reed sighed. “Don’t worry about Max. He can take care of himself.”
“Nick, you’re covered in blood.”
I said nothing. How could I explain murdering a man with my bare hands, not just to my own sanity, but to the sweet, innocent woman carrying my child?
But maybe she wasn’t so innocent now. A new hardness edged her voice, her actions. At first, I thought it was courage.
I was wrong.
It was hatred. The same fury that strengthened me to pummel a man to death. My father—my family—corrupted Sarah. She was poisoned with rage.
And it was my fault. For the shame she suffered and the minutes she spent naked before my father.
God only knew what he did to her.
But he wouldn’t have touched her. Not if he suspected she were pregnant.
Not even he was that cruel.
Or was he?
The thought tore through my mind. She faced a monster with false bravery to shield her from his gaze, his touch, his perversions. But she hadn’t cowered or cried. I hardly recognized the little fairy I once trapped in collars and ropes. She no longer fluttered in a timid fear of my father.
I reached for her.
Sarah pulled away.
Why?
What had changed?
“Sarah,” I whispered. “Did he…?”
“I want to go home.”
I recognized her tone. Home. The only request she uttered that scared me more than when she told me no.
Home to her was no place I belonged. It existed beyond me, and nothing I ever did or said convinced her that I’d provide a warm, safe home.
Yet.
I’d give her that safety. I’d earn her trust.
I’d kill for her.
But blood ruined my suit, stained my skin. It didn’t invigorate me. Didn’t leave me craving more. I took a life, but the only ones that mattered—Sarah and my baby—waited before me, cold and trembling. Suffering.
“We’ll go to my penthouse,” I said. “I want her under my roof.”
Sarah was quiet. Reed helped her into my car. She shied away before his hands lingered too long.
My gut twisted, but comfort had to wait. First I needed to ensure her safety.
Nothing about my newly purchased penthouse fit Sarah Atwood. Or me. For too long I lived at the Bennett Estate, and it scarred me more than the visible childhood injuries inflicted by my father. I left, but I had nothing of my own. I didn’t recognize Nicholas Bennett outside of the cold stone and shadows.
Not like Sarah. She knew exactly who she was. She stood, unbroken, and faced every horror with roots she dug deep into the ground, stretching from the farm to the estate. I couldn’t rival her tenacity. Not with my arrogance mistaken for pride.
God, I envied her.
She hesitated in the unfamiliar setting of my penthouse. Reed leaned against the wall, gently touching the torn skin around his neck. Neither spoke on the ride, too proud to ask for my help.
“Your place is a little…” Sarah studied the open floor plan of untouched furniture and unconnected electronics. The lamp closest to the leather L-shaped sofa wasn’t plugged in, and the recliner was still covered in plastic from its delivery. “Sparse.”
“I haven’t had time to settle in.” I locked the door. “I was too busy searching for you.”
It wasn’t meant to hurt her. I wouldn’t regret saying it. Not when it was the truth.
A first aid kit waited under the sink. I brewed tea for Sarah and prepared alcohol swabs and dressings for my brother. He’d never tolerate them. Reed nearly scratched out the stitches earned from our father’s blade, but I wasn’t letting his neck get infected so soon after I saved it.
Both of them were asleep before I returned. Sarah curled into a small knot on the sofa. I laid a blanket over her, but she didn’t notice, too exhausted to care that I was there.
Or maybe because she knew that I watched over her.
I failed her, but even when the trust wavered, she still looked for me, felt me, wanted me close.
So why did she push me away?
I nudged Reed. He groaned, but my patience wore thin. He cleaned up in the nearest powder room, flinching as the sea-green of his left eye clouded with the burst blood vessel.
“I’m gonna scare people like this.” He rinsed his neck.
“It’ll heal.”
“Thanks for the...rescue.”
I nodded.
He washed the cloth under the faucet, but left the water on to muffle the conversation. “We gotta check on Sarah.”
She needed a moment of peace first.
“She was naked,” Reed said.
My jaw tensed. It was the only way my father had to shame her.
Reed shuddered. “Nick, something’s wrong. She won’t say it. But something happened.”
“Reed—”
“I can’t.” He pitched the bandages in the sink. “He’s trying to kill us. He kidnapped her. Now he knows about the baby.”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down?” Reed swore. The powder room echoed the profanity. “You beat a man to death with your bare hands. You had a gun pointed at your face. And now Sarah is fucked up.”
“Don’t say it.”
“She is! Whether you want to admit it or not. Dad did something to her.”
“He wouldn’t endanger the child.”
“Fuck, who know how long it took Sarah to tell him she was pregnant. Look how long it took for her to tell us!”
“Reed, getting upset won’t solve anything.”
“Then I don’t know what else to do because she won’t le
t us help!”
My phone buzzed. Max called from outside the building. I pointed to Reed.
“Watch over her. But stay calm, for her. That’s what she needs now.”
“And then what?”
My stomach twisted. “She’ll tell us what she’s been hiding.”
Reed swore. He leaned over the sink, but he pushed away to hover over Sarah as she slept.
I met Max downstairs, but I hadn’t expected a bounding Hamlet. Then again, the dog was the only one of us who could make her smile.
Max looked like he had been through hell, but that only meant the men he faced fared worse.
“What happened?” I didn’t speak until the elevator doors shut. I pointed to the security cameras wrapped within the gold and red décor of the cabin. “Do we still have visitors?”
Max nursed a black eye, fat lip, and a limp that pained me. He complained about none of it.
“I’ll head back tomorrow,” he said. “Make the beds. Give the furniture a good dusting. Leave it in the condition the Atwoods wanted.”
“Good.”
“You?”
“Watch the news tonight?”
Max smirked. “Damn biker wars. Streets aren’t safe anymore. Reed?”
“The same.”
“He wanted us gone.”
“Yeah.”
The doors opened. Max didn’t let me out.
“And Sarah?” he asked. “What happened to her?”
“We’ll find out.”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“It’s not about me now, Max,” I said. “It’s about her.”
My brother didn’t answer. I locked the door behind him. For as much as I wanted an armed guard, deadbolts, and every manner of security system, my father would try nothing else tonight.
Sarah was safe as long as she was pregnant. She’d be safer once I had him killed.
It was only a matter of time.
She stirred as we entered, twisting the blanket in her hand. “Hamlet!”
The goldendoodle bolted, launching over my brand new leather furniture in a flurry of yipping and excitement. He curled next to her, licking her face and settling his head in her lap. He rested over the softness of her stomach. He knew. Hamlet protected her better than any of us.
“Are you okay?” she asked Max. “What happened?”
“Don’t worry about me. Heard you had a rough night.”
She shrugged, stroking Hamlet’s ginger curls. She studied everything in the penthouse, but not me. I recognized her hesitance. My house was designed differently than Max’s, but the features remained the same. Balcony. Back bedrooms. Open kitchen. Bar in the corner. The best that money could buy varied the architecture, but not enough to banish the memories of another pain, another attack.
I had to know.
“Sarah, did he hurt you?” I asked.
She petted Hamlet. “No.”
“Is the baby okay?”
The thought stilled her hand. “Everything’s fine. I’m an Atwood. We’re resilient.”
Reed and Max sat across from her. She pretended not to shy from their attention, but I saw.
“Did he…” I didn’t want to say the words. “Did he touch you?”
Her silence struck us like bullets aimed for our temples.
“You’re all bleeding,” she finally said. “Nick, you’re covered in someone else’s blood. Reed, you look like death. And Max…I watched you kill a man. I nearly lost all three of you tonight. Would anybody be okay now?”
Reed shrugged. “We’re fine.”
“No. You’re not. None of us are. Why did Darius try to kill you guys?”
I exhaled. “He must have known you were pregnant.”
“Of course he knew I was pregnant. He figured that out at the art show.” She held her head in her hands. “And now he’ll kill you all because he got his heir. He doesn’t need his sons anymore.”
Reed and Max shifted. It was no secret that my father would have murdered them had I not forced them to take their turns with Sarah. They were disposable to him. Max, the cripple. Reed, too gentle for a Bennett.
But I was the eldest. I was the heir. The Bennetts didn’t skip generations. Father to son. Always. He had no cause to kill me unless he truly believed I’d let Sarah raise the baby as an Atwood and deny his true blood.
I’d be a better father than mine was, but I wasn’t a strong enough man to let her go.
“We can’t do this anymore,” Sarah said. “This is why I have to leave. He knows about the baby, and he’ll murder you all because you defied him. I won’t let my son live a life of fear.” Her voice softened. “And I won’t let Darius hurt any of you because of me.”
I frowned. “We can protect ourselves. Don’t worry about us.”
“I always worry about you!” The admission frustrated her, and she bit a profanity. “He threatened me tonight. He’ll do whatever it takes to steal this baby, even if that means killing his own children to secure his new heir.”
“He’s not taking my son,” I said. “It’s not going to happen.”
“He’s already planning it.”
“And we’re planning for the end as well.”
“He’s going to kill you. I can’t…I won’t survive that. I’ve endured so much, Nicholas Bennett, but I can’t handle the thought—”
“I won’t die. Not if I have you and the baby to live for. I don’t care how many guards I have to hire or where I’ll need to hide you, but you will be safe, and we’ll be together. We’ll be happy, Sarah. I promise you.”
Tears rolled over her cheeks. “You don’t understand. There’s never going to be a happily ever after. Not for us.”
“We love each other. We have a chance to put everything behind us and start completely new. You and me and—”
“Don’t say it!” Sarah stood, pitching the blanket away. “Don’t say it, Nick!”
“Say what?” My jaw clenched. Too hard. It ached in the quick rise of my temper. “Why are you denying me what’s mine? You have a right to hate me, but do not take my son from me.”
“Stop.”
“You can be frightened. You can be angry. You can blame my family for all this madness. But I know you love me. Why are you pushing me away?”
“Don’t you dare insinuate I owe you or your family anything—not after what you put me through. This baby is innocent, like I was before you took everything from me. Don’t tell me you have a right. This baby deserves better than the right to be a Bennett. He won’t be. I won’t let it happen.”
“Why?”
I stood in her path, but she wouldn’t escape. She had nowhere to go. Again, I trapped her within the confines of my territory, my house, my life. She wasn’t leaving this time.
I forced her to look at me. She twisted, but she was no match for my strength. Reed protested, and Max dared to touch my shoulder.
I’d break his arm before he pulled me from her. Not when I was so close.
Not when she finally looked at me—tears in her eyes.
“Let me love you, Sarah. Forgive me. Fight me. Do whatever you need to do, but don’t leave me. Not when I can promise you a family.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t take my child—”
“Goddamn it, Nick! I don’t know if it’s your baby!”
Silence.
She stepped away, covering her mouth with trembling hands.
She hadn’t meant to say it.
A chill prickled my skin.
Her voice cracked in agony.
And then I knew.
God, I knew.
Why she ran. Why she pulled away. Why she fought so hard to isolate herself.
Why she wanted to be free of us.
I knew.
She kept the secret not to protect herself, but to shield me from the truth.
“He followed you, Nick.” Her words were living nightmare. “He followed you that night.”
The world fell away and my s
oul with it. It was battered and destroyed before, but what remained shredded against the realization of what I caused.
I left her.
I led him to her.
And I wasn’t there to stop it.
“I begged you to stay,” she whispered. “I thought it was you at the door. I thought you came back for me.”
And I thought I left her in safety.
She stared at me.
I knew what she would say.
“Darius raped me.”
I didn’t flinch. Reed groaned, sinking into the couch, head in his hands. He repeated only a single, heartbreaking word.
“No, no, no.” His breath raged with a sob. “No, no, no.”
Max stormed away before shouting. The crash that followed was only the first of many. The powder room mirror shattered. His fist through the glass.
I didn’t let myself break.
Sarah needed my strength. I stayed still, motionless, a pillar of stability though my heart had long since ceased beating. I stood through sheer force of will with an unresponsive body.
She cried, but her words never stopped. “He said he’d come back for me. So I ran. I just ran. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t think. And then I realized I was…I got…” She shook her head. “He has to die, Nick. Before anything else happens. Before he hurts me, kills you, or takes…”
She hadn’t cradled her stomach before. Not in front of me, and not just because she was still flat with the secret she carried. She held herself—the baby.
My baby.
Too long she hid in her secret, protecting me from what happened. I didn’t deserve that compassion. And she never, ever should’ve suffered in such a way.
It ended now. She would never fear him again.
I cradled her in my arms, letting her rest against the sofa and pulling her into my lap where I could hold her, touch her, kiss her.
Where I whispered my love to her.
She let me, but I didn’t know how long it’d last. Just having her close eased the horror.
I would never burden her with my pain. I’d hide the black sludge of despair that clawed through my chest and tightened against my heart, my lungs, my life.
I gave it one moment, a dark second of helplessness, before banishing it.
