by Lana Grayson
Now was the fruition of whatever deviancy he planned.
And the room cheered for him. Shook his hand. Spoke compliments and wished him well on his upcoming retirement.
They praised a hero.
I didn’t cower in the shadow of my rapist.
And neither did my step-brothers.
“Darius!” One of the Bennett division presidents called to him, breaking through a conversation to pat his shoulder. “Didn’t figure on you joining us! Thought you’d be pleasure cruising somewhere in the Bahamas by now.”
“Please, Kevin. I’m retired…not dead.”
And I regretted that every minute of the day.
Darius drew to his full height, an inch shorter than Nicholas. Reed and Max pulled me closer, but I didn’t need their help. I straightened if only to ensure Darius saw the visible bump and realized he could do nothing to me. A shielding as strong as Kelvar protected me, offered by the most innocent and vulnerable.
He salivated pure venom. Had anyone seen, if anyone had ever thought to listen for my silent screams, they never would have let my step-father look upon me with such pleasure.
“I wouldn’t miss this event for the world,” Darius said. “Such a lovely party, such a happy occasion. And just look at my beautiful daughter.” He drew closer, waiting for his sons to intervene and cause a scene. They didn’t, and I stilled as he laid a hand over my belly and squeezed. “Hello, my dear. You’re looking absolutely radiant.”
I’d be sick.
Vile, crawling shivers pierced my spine.
His touch was an infection, a sickness of hatred and vile intentions. He meant to watch me squirm, to claim that part of me which wasn’t his, had never been his, and would never, ever belong to him.
I swallowed the bile and accepted the brush of his lips against my cheek in greeting. As long as it wasn’t his sickening, fat tongue in my ear again, I’d endure it. Nicholas forced himself between us, crushing his father’s hand in a stiff grip.
“Glad you made it,” Nicholas said. “You should be here to share in this momentous event.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it, son. Especially the announcement about the newest addition to our family.”
“Sarah and I are very excited.”
“As am I. Proud as can be.” The words coiled over my throat. “If only her family were here as well. I’m sure Mark would be thrilled about our little Bennett. And Josiah and Michael…” He didn’t deserve to speak their names, not after the hell he put me through in watching their fatal crash over and over. “Such a shame their lives ended before they became uncles...isn’t that right, Max?”
Max?
I glanced at my step-brother, but he didn’t answer. Nicholas pulled Darius from the gathered audience. His voice lowered, a lethal growl.
“What do you want?”
“A moment with my daughter.”
“No.”
“Then we can speak here.” His gaze fixated on my belly. “Though I doubt this is a conversation which should pass beyond family.”
His tone was the striking of a match in room filled with explosives. I didn’t trust it. I was certain he aimed a gun, but I didn’t know which of my step-brothers would suffer the bullet. It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. I nodded to Nicholas.
Five minutes in the shadow of the demon was five minutes I’d forever lose to nightmare and shame. I’d ensure it was the last time I spoke with him.
That anyone spoke with him.
Nicholas led us to an unoccupied storage room, a small area muffled from the party by the humming of the florescent lights. The door closed behind us, and my step-brothers stood between me and the monster who had yet to make his move.
“A stirring speech, Nicholas,” Darius said. “Though you really must annunciate more. Do this family some justice and use a bit of bravado.”
“What do you want?” Nicholas asked.
“Am I not permitted to attend my own son’s celebration? You’ve done it, Nicholas. Secured the Bennett Corporation for yourself. Bloodied your fists and earned your keep.” He snorted. “I should think I’m entitled to a bit of caviar for giving you this opportunity.”
“You’ve given me nothing.”
“I gave you a name. A purpose. A legacy.” Darius tilted his head. “And you ruined it. You’ve tarnished our family with this union. The girl is your whore, not someone deserving of quarter of the company. And still you parade her around, free, as if the child is yours.”
“It is.”
“And I’ll permit you to take credit for the heir, if only because the world would not understand my coupling with Sarah.”
“Coupling?” I refused to avert my gaze. “You raped me.”
“Many times, my dear. Many times.”
“And yet, here I stand. I’ve taken your family. I’ve stolen your company.” I raised my chin. “Hard to be ashamed of a little coupling when I’ve conquered the only things that ever gave you pride.”
“When the bastard is born, I will be bursting with pride.”
“It isn’t your child.”
“Call it father’s intuition,” he sighed. “Call it probability. Why lie? Why stand there and blush and giggle and whisper all those sweet nothings into Nicholas’s ear when you know the truth? They had three months to take you, rape you, force a child into that womb.” He extended his arms. “Tell them how long it took me to mount you, how long it took me to create our child—”
Nicholas rushed forward, striking his father and slamming him into the wall. His voice grated with rage.
“She isn’t yours!”
My hand reflexively twisted over my belly.
Oh no.
“Sarah isn’t yours,” Nicholas grunted. His forearm pressed into Darius’s neck. “The baby is my son.”
No. His reaction was too violent, too visceral, too quick.
Darius’s eyebrow perked just as Nicholas corrected himself.
Darius glanced to me, as though looking upon my body would reveal everything we hid about Bumper. My heart thudded, wracking against lungs that threatened to collapse in a breathless scream.
“Leave,” Nicholas rasped. “While I still give you the chance.”
“I never thought I’d see the day when my son defended an Atwood.”
“I said leave.”
“After all these years, after all these tragedies.”
Nicholas tensed. He looked to Reed and Max. “Take Sarah home.”
“The blood has always been bad between our families, particularly since her father attempted to murder you and your brothers. A shame he succeeded in only killing your mother.”
Reed took my arm. Darius called to me.
“All this ugliness worked out for the best, don’t you think, Sarah? Now you have a new lover and a little bundle of joy on the way. How fortunate your father succumbed to cancer so we could steal you.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered. Reed ushered me to the door.
Darius’s voice rose, calling to me, taunting me.
“If we knew you’d be so amenable to this arrangement, we wouldn’t have waited to murder your brothers.”
The room spun.
Murder.
A sickness churned in my belly, frozen by the chill piercing my spine. I turned, slowly, every movement an ache against the crushing agony of that memory, that horrible vision of flames and metal and my brothers’ last moments.
“What did you say?” I whispered.
Reed tugged on my hand. “Sarah, let’s go.”
“What did you say about my brothers?”
Darius’s grin spread with vile delight. “Josiah and Michael would have been great leaders for Atwood Industries. They certainly would never have sold a multi-billion dollar research idea to us, and their children would have kept the company protected within the Atwood line. Not like you, my dear.”
“Tell me about my brothers!”
“What did you think happened, Sarah? They impeded our takeover.”
“You’re lying.”
“Pilot error. Mechanical error. It’s fortunate the investigators couldn’t scrape up what bits remained of your brothers to identify the true cause of their deaths. Hard to have a homicide investigation if there’s nothing left but ash.”
“You’re fucking lying!”
“If it’s any consolation, it was much quicker and far less harrowing than putting a bullet in their brains. Your mother wouldn’t have survived her sons’ murders. A one-in-a-million tragedy was cruel, but less damaging to her fragile health.”
My chest ached in a pained gasp.
I’d never take a full breath again.
“It isn’t true,” I whispered.
“Max can tell you exactly how he did it,” Darius said. He nodded. “Go on, son. Tell your little sister how proud I was of you…that crash was one of the few times you didn’t disappoint me.”
I’d scream if I didn’t fear the sickness rising.
Max didn’t meet my eye.
It couldn’t have been true.
It wasn’t.
I looked to Reed. He no longer reached for my hand.
No.
Not now. Not after everything. Not this.
“Nick?” I begged him. “Nick, please. Tell me he’s lying.”
His silence was a knife to the heart.
I should have known. I should have protected myself. I should have run when I had the chance.
The Bennetts lived only to cause me suffering and betrayal.
And now they had everything. My child. My family’s empire. My research.
My pride.
My heart.
I had nothing left for them to destroy.
22
Sarah
They knew.
The whole time. Since my brothers’ deaths. Since they first captured me. Hurt me.
Bred me.
Darius. Reed. Nicholas.
They knew.
Max murdered my brothers, and they never told me.
Because they knew what I would do.
The limo delivered me to the penthouse, but I only made it as far as the farm-themed nursery. My purse dropped as my lungs tightened, the sickness rose, and everything hurt.
Too much.
My inhaler eased some of the pressure, but this wasn’t a pain caused from troublesome lungs or shock.
This was misery.
Darius forced me to endure Josiah and Mike’s deaths, binding me to a chair and replaying the video and cockpit recordings of their screams over and over until my mind shattered. I tried to kill him, but the slice was too far from his heart.
I might have ended it then.
I might have stopped the lies. Saved my body. Prevented the rape.
But nothing I did would have saved my brothers. Not from the plans Dad had for them and not from the Bennetts. Darius plotted their deaths from the instant Dad announced his cancer. Their fate sealed when they formed the Josmik Trust.
And then I let my brothers’ murderers kidnap me. Take me. Befriend me.
Love me.
Nicholas promised we’d be a family.
Reed cherished me like his own sister.
And Max?
Fury stole my thoughts. I clutched the little bump as I sat, rocking as if to the cradle the life that was yet to be born.
No one was left to cradle me.
The sharpness scared me more than anything, and I could no longer tell what was me, what was Bumper, and what was the sorrow.
It wasn’t worth the risk to run. I didn’t want to threaten what was already in such danger.
I waited, tears on my cheeks, as the minutes passed. I didn’t know what else to do, how else to make the pain stop. My voice wavered as I sang a little song to the baby.
It didn’t seem to help.
I repeated the second verse of the gentle nursery rhyme my mom used to sing to me when I was young. The door opened.
I expected Nicholas.
Max loomed instead.
Everything about him turned dark and rough. He stood as an unrecognizable blur of my own tears and his forlorn grief.
He waited before me, but I didn’t stop my song, not even to curse him, to scream for him to leave me alone.
My voice weakened over the melody as I forgot the words and repeated lines I already sang. Twice I hummed, looping over the song. My hands cradled my tummy.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
The first real words he spoke to me, and he barked them. As though Max had no idea how to hold a real conversation. How to be a gentle man. How to treat the one he hurt the most.
Just like he had warned so many times in the past.
Max refused to look at me. I didn’t dishonor my brothers by averting my gaze, no matter how much I needed a moment away from the darkness.
I hated to answer him.
I hated more the rage swelling in me. It wasn’t good for me or Bumper.
“Bumper usually bumps more than this,” I said. “Stress is bad for the baby, and...she hasn’t kicked for a long time. Singing is supposed to be soothing since she can hear my voice.”
“Did you call Nick?”
As if he deserved to be with me. I had no one else to call. No one else who would understand why I crumbled in such grief.
“He’s coming with the doctor. He was stuck in traffic.”
“Okay.”
I said nothing, resuming the song, murmuring over the words I forgot and replacing them with silly rhymes and promises of love and warmth and everything I had lost since the nightmare began.
Since I met the Bennetts.
Since I lost my family.
Since…ever.
Max swore. He wove his hand through his hair, but without making a fist and slamming someone’s skull, he had no idea how to react to those who needed a kind word. Violence was a natural to Max as cruelty to Darius and mourning to me.
I said nothing. Only sang.
Just waited for that little kick that would tell me everything would be okay.
“Sarah…” Max dropped to his knees. His eyes dulled, dark and expressionless. I didn’t recognize him anymore. I didn’t want to. “I didn’t know it was their plane.”
I shook my head and sang. Hearing excuses would only hurt us more. Nothing he said would bring back Josiah or Mike, and that made him worthless to me.
“My father said he had a job for me. I didn’t ask. I never asked. I just did it.” His breathing labored. “Do you understand why?”
I sang louder. I’d never understand anything about the Bennetts. I wouldn’t want to try anymore.
“I wanted my Dad’s respect, and I never got it. It didn’t matter that he was a monster. Or that he asked me to hurt people who opposed him. He was my father. That meant something to me. I wanted to make him proud, and he never gave me that chance. You know how that feels.”
It wasn’t the same as me and Dad. Max couldn’t equate it. Not when Dad shoved me away from the company and hid my asthma, and Darius Bennett forced his crippled middle son to hurt and murder.
“Sarah, I had no fucking idea that was your brothers’ plane.”
“And yet you still did it?”
Max looked away. Question answered.
“You’re a monster.” I whispered before singing once more.
“I didn’t…fuck, Sarah. I couldn’t tell you. Not after I saw how much you endured to protect your father’s name. I was scared of how you’d react.”
Foolishly. Recklessly. I misdirected my anger then. I sacrificed my life, my body, for a father who never cared for me, never trusted me.
But Josiah and Mike did trust me.
And they knew what was likely to happen to them. That’s why I was named in their trust. They picked me to inherit the Bennett shares if they died.
And what did I do with that gift?
I betrayed my own family. I caused more destruction to our name than if Darius had taken a match to our cornfields. I gave them e
verything.
I gave them Bumper.
I just needed her to kick.
Just one little bump in exchange for another silly verse of the song, and my heart would stop breaking.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Max whispered. “I regret every fucking pain I’ve caused you. The beatings. The rape. The grief. I knew the instant I met you the mistake I made. I fucking begged Nicholas to never tell you the truth. But we couldn’t hide it. And now everything is so…”
He reached for me. His hand trembled over the baby.
He hadn’t voluntarily touched me for months. Tears streamed over his cheeks, silent and wet. His hand stretched over the entirety of my tummy, and the tattoos on his forearms flexed and tightened as he broke down, hiding his eyes and letting the sobs wrack his shoulders.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
I sang because I didn’t know what else to do. My own tears brushed my cheeks.
Was this how it would always be? Would this blistering agony always punish us?
I loved these men, and I hated these men, and yet I froze as I watched a man as strong, as intimidating as Max weep over the bump of an unborn child.
I envied my baby’s innocence, and I’d do anything to keep her that way. Safe and untouched by this heartache. I had the money, the power, and the name to give this child anything she could ever dream.
But I couldn’t give her family.
Not if there was none to give.
My song faded as my tears choked over the melody, and we hurt together in grieving silence.
I just needed a kick.
Why wouldn’t she kick?
Max curled onto the sofa. He didn’t ask, only moved, settling his head in my lap. And as much as I longed to push him away, to hit him, to scream at him, his deep baritone picked up the same nursery rhyme I could no longer remember.
Max sang to the baby.
And his heartfelt, perfect melody strengthened with every passing moment. I wept, holding him close to my tummy.
His words warmed over my skin, and I let my fingers dance through his hair, over his shoulders, closer to me than he’d been in weeks.
Too little, too late.
He came to apologize when he should have said goodbye.
His song filled the nursery. I never knew he sang so well. I doubted he did either. Every note, every soulful beat emerged from a dark, lost place within him. I longed to search more of that hidden secret. It might have explained more, might have protected us from the lies and pain, might have promised redemption in a man I once trusted and understood.
