by Sosie Frost
“And that’s why we’ll help her.” I lifted Sarah into my arms and ordered my brother to the helicopter. “I’ll make Dad understand.”
Sarah didn’t struggle. Either she understood I meant to help or she was in that much pain.
Or she was dying.
I wouldn’t tolerate innocent blood on my hands.
The girl wasn’t just a beautiful creature of fire and passion. She was an heir to a fortune and the key to the Bennetts acquiring a company that would preserve our name, wealth, and status for generations, despite the challenges facing us.
My motivations were selfish, vile, and cruel.
But that was business.
And losing our greatest asset to a secret illness wasn’t an option.
I was the better pilot, but I wasn’t releasing Sarah from my arms. Reed followed with bottles of water and warm compresses. She wheezed against my chest. I braced her for Max’s flight.
Reed shouted what I didn’t have the courage to ask.
“Is she conscious?” He fit a pair of sound-muffling headphones over her ears. They tumbled off until I held them against her. “Christ, Nick. She’s gonna die.”
Not if I prevented it.
Reed sunk into the seat, head in his hands. “This was fucked from the start.”
“Stop panicking.” Max shouted as he kicked the throttle and propelled the helicopter over the estate and to the east, toward the closest hospital in San Jose. Not necessarily the best, but we weren’t in a position to research any pulmonary specialists of Northern California. “We’ll be there in twenty. Keep her alive.”
Twenty minutes.
Sarah’s head lulled into my chest.
Did she even have twenty minutes?
I patted her cheek. She jerked away. Her frustration relieved me. At least she was still awake enough to realize a Bennett held her. Then again, she’d fight us until that last breath.
A shadow of blue faded over her lips. I felt her heart rate flutter, beating in terror and pain.
I was helpless while she was conscious, but I was terrified when she collapsed—when her chest ceased struggling and her body fell limp.
“Max!” I shouted. “Fucking land!”
The helicopter rumbled over the skyscrapers, and Reed stole the radio from Max. Swearing rarely earned landing clearance in private airfields, but the hospital made an exception. We touched down, and I leapt from the doors before we cut the engine. A handful of nurses and a concerned doctor waited for us at the roof access. I rushed Sarah inside.
“How old is she?” The stocky, balding doctor fitted a stethoscope over his ears.
“Twenty.”
“Asthma attack?”
Apparently. “Yes.”
“When did it begin?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“Emergency medications?”
Jesus Christ, if I knew all this information when we stole her from the cornfield, I wouldn’t have left her in the care of frantic nurses, shoving her onto a gurney while fitting an oxygen mask over her face.
“She had none to take.” It wasn’t a lie.
The doctor squeezed into the elevator with two nurses as a third prevented me from following. “What’s your relation to the patient?”
My turn to cough. “I’m her…brother.”
The nurse took my information and pointed to the stairwell. “To the waiting room, Mr. Bennett.”
I wasn’t leaving Sarah in the hands of strangers, not when I couldn’t trust a word from her lips.
Not when I feared abandoning her, frightened and alone in the hospital.
I pushed past the nurse to the elevator. Reed grasped my shoulder, preventing me from making a mistake.
“Come on,” he said. “Max is taking care of the helicopter. They warned we might get into trouble.”
Trouble?
Someone dared to question me for saving a life?
And not just any life—a woman who belonged to us.
To me.
Whether Sarah Atwood believed it or not, whether she consented to it, understood it, or even realized the full extent of our ownership of her, she was mine.
It might have horrified me a week ago, but that was before I found her. Held her.
Before I kissed her.
A single taste of her pouty, peppermint pink lips, and she sealed her own fate. Her innocence teased me, and her strength challenged me. No other woman ever excited me into such carnal instinct. Pinning her against the tree? Holding her against her will as I kissed her? Nearly exploding when her body warmed and pressed into mine and bared her own simmering desperation?
She was pure temptation—a mistake, a crime, a sin.
I nearly let her die.
The memory of her kiss shredded me, filling me with the horrible, spine-chilling rasp of her broken breaths.
If she was still breathing.
The nurse led us to a sterile waiting room with pasty white walls and mottled blue carpets. Nothing changed in hospitals. No matter the cleanliness or order, each waiting room suffered through a depressing haze. It was too familiar, even after seventeen years of healing.
The last time I waited in a hospital, it was to say goodbye to our mother. Her heart failed before my father heard about the accident. Reed rested in the ICU. Max was taken to his second surgery.
Back then, the car crash rendered me helpless. I was twelve years old when my mother was murdered and my brothers injured. I had no means to help. But now I was a man, and I was responsible for Sarah’s wellbeing. I had no excuse—not for my behavior and not for my inability to protect the one woman vital to my family’s financial security.
The woman who enthralled me into sin.
An hour passed.
Then another.
And finally a third.
I didn’t question where Reed found five pounds of chocolate. He offered me a soda, presenting a half dozen alternative flavors when I refused the first. He set his stash upon the table and sunk into a bag of corn chips.
“You okay?” The bag crumbled in his grip. “She looked bad.”
“It was my fault.” I knew why the phone buzzed in my pocket with the telltale persistence of a dozen hornets. I didn’t answer. “I should have realized she was sick.”
“She shouldn’t have hidden it.”
“She shouldn’t have thought to hide it. The last thing I wanted was for her to get hurt.”
Reed snorted, spilling half his chips. “Jesus Christ, Nick. Sarah was always going to get hurt. If it wasn’t asthma, it was Dad’s foot imbedded in her skull. Or a belt wrapped around her neck. Or, shit, I don’t know. Internal injuries from when we fuck her half to death.”
“Enough.”
“This wasn’t ending without her getting bloody.” He tossed the snacks away. “This girl won’t submit. She threw one of our dining room chairs through a goddamned window to escape.”
And I caught her.
I had liked the chase.
“She’s fighting for her life,” Reed said. “And either she’s going to lose hers, or we’ll spend the rest of ours in prison. Those are the only possibilities.”
No. Not the only possibilities.
Sarah’s death would be nothing compared to the consequences for my brothers if she didn’t comply, surrender, and ultimately conceive from our crimes. My father would murder his own flesh and blood if it meant securing something more valuable to him than our sacrifice.
His sons were pawns to achieve whatever success he envisioned.
The company was his real legacy.
Shouting echoed from the nurses’ station. Reed swore, but he unwrapped a candy bar instead of moving. It wasn’t as though my father would listen to him even if he’d decided to intervene. That task was left to me.
I buttoned my jacket as I approached the arguing nurses barricading themselves from my father with only the benefit of a half door between them.
“My daughter in is one of these rooms!” He pounded agains
t the counter. “I demand to see her.”
A redheaded nurse tried her best and failed. “Sir, I’m sorry, but the doctors are stabilizing her. She’s resting now, but you’ll be permitted to visit her shortly—”
“Unacceptable. The Bennetts own a wing in this hospital. I sat on the Board of Directors for three years. Bring out your supervisor, immediately.”
I eased between my father and the irritated nurses and smiled.
He seethed. I pitied the poor nurses and doubted they’d have jobs once their shifts ended. I encouraged him to give me a moment with the women.
“Nicholas Bennett.” I introduced myself and offered a business card with my credentials and a written cellphone number scrawled on the front. “Did I hear you correctly? Sarah is stabilized?”
The stocky head nurse took the card, but she fanned herself with it as she searched me over. She was twenty years too old for me and brandished pictures of her kids pinned to the corkboard behind her computer, but I wasn’t above seizing an opportunity when it presented itself.
“She’s stable, but she’s weak and on oxygen. She’ll need to rest.”
“Oh, of course.” The charm chipped away some of the nurse’s ice. “She’s a fighter.”
“That she is.”
“The thing is...” I lowered my voice. The nurse leaned closer. “My sister’s asthma is very private. She doesn’t like doctors or hospitals—they scare her, what with the history of her condition. She would rest better, and frankly, so would I, if I might be permitted to stay at her side. I’d hate for her to panic and trigger another attack.”
The nurse perked an eyebrow.
“I’ll keep out of the way. You won’t notice I’m there. Sarah will thank you for it.”
After a long pause, she sighed. “She’ll be moved to a regular room in a few minutes. You can join her then.” She fiddled under the desk and slid a “Care Partner” badge to me.
“Only you,” she warned, nodding to my father.
Perfect.
“I understand, thank you.” I tucked the badge in my pocket. “I’ll let the rest of the family know she’s doing well.”
My father rushed me when I returned to the waiting room. He gripped my shoulder and hauled me into the wall. Reed didn’t move.
“You listen to me, Nicholas.” He edged close, sneering as his eyes flicked up to meet mine. I straightened, rising higher if only to irritate him. “I told you not to bring her to the hospital.”
“She would have died.”
“What do you think will happen if she breathes a word of this to the doctors?”
Reed should have known not to speak. “She can’t breathe.”
My father ground his teeth. “She can write. Text.”
“She won’t,” I said.
My father over-annunciated when angry. He released me when a group of nurses crossed for the break room. “If she even hints to what’s happened—”
“She knows better.”
“You hope. Get in that room and remind her of what will happen if she displeases us. She doesn’t speak. She isn’t left alone.” He pulled his cell. “I’ll call Doctor Rimes and transfer her care into his custody. We’ll take her to the estate to recover.”
Reed tossed his food to the table. “She’s sick, Dad. She shouldn’t leave the hospital. What if she has another attack?”
“Then the little bitch will have learned her lesson.”
I didn’t like his tone. “Did you know she had asthma?”
My father snorted. “Of course. I had her emergency inhaler.”
“What?”
“It was in her purse. Max picked it up after she eluded him and his crippled leg.”
“You could have stopped this.”
“And now she knows. We feed her, clothe her if we so choose, and we’ll administer her medications. If she defies us, we’ll take any combination of our generosity away.”
“And if she still fights?”
My father waved a dismissive hand. “I disciplined my sons. Why should my daughter fare any differently?”
I said nothing. She wasn’t his daughter, not truly, and she wasn’t as resilient as us. Sarah wouldn’t survive the belts, lashes, burns, and running mile after mile on treadmills. He’d have her sleeping without a mattress or going hungry while writing thousands of lines to apologize for a trivial mistake.
Sarah didn’t deserve my father’s brand of discipline.
“Let me speak with her,” I said. “I’ll control her behavior. It won’t be a concern.”
“And yours?”
“Excuse me?”
My father hissed his words through clenched teeth. “I will not be defied by my own son. You’ll obey me when I give an order. That girl is not to leave our estate—not until she is fucked, bred, and your son is swaddled in her arms, do you understand?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
I turned, but my father caught my elbow. Squeezed. It didn’t hurt, and I didn’t react.
“That isn’t what I asked.” He growled. “Do you understand, Nicholas?”
I understood my father’s madness. That wasn’t a lie.
“I’ll protect the family,” I said. “You have my word.”
My father released me. I left him with Reed and charmed a nurse to lead me to Sarah.
He would keep her prisoner, and he expected me to silence her cries before she had the breath to scream. And I would—only because I couldn’t have her spoiling the Bennett name.
He’d secure our future through the suffering of the girl. I had a better plan. My phone chimed with two new voicemails from perspective stock holders sensitive to my vision for the company.
I didn’t need an illegitimate heir to claim what would be mine.
The stock ticked into my favor. Ten percent, twenty percent, thirty-five percent of the holders. Allied to me. Respecting me. Offering me their allegiance in a fight to save the Bennett Corporation from the madness risking our future wealth.
My step-sister would be tamed, and she would return to the estate under my control.
A single word from her would bring down my family’s empire.
No one would stop me from taking what was mine.
And Sarah Atwood was mine.
10
Sarah
I hated hospitals.
I hated hospital beds and their paper thin blankets. I hated the hospital’s noise and beeping machinery. I hated hospital doctors with their cold hands and colder stethoscopes and the lies they spouted over and over.
I’d be fine.
Just breathe.
I was safe now.
They’d help me.
I wouldn’t be safe or helped. I was hopelessly alone. Everything I had done was to preserve my company and maintain a sense of decorum and strength. Now? I fought for my life—both literally and for the freedom I couldn’t earn even outside the estate.
Nicholas Bennett sat at my bedside, checking emails on his phone while I’d slept. My monitors chimed, and the air tickled my nose dry.
Oxygen. They only gave me oxygen when I was really sick.
Last thing I remembered was falling to my knees and begging Nicholas for help. That stung more than the ill-placed IV.
“How do you feel?” Nicholas didn’t look up from his phone.
Awful. Horrible. Like someone kicked me in the ribs during an asthma attack.
“Fine.”
“You’re in the hospital,” he said.
“You don’t say.”
“You didn’t give us much choice. I thought you were going to die.”
Yeah, I did that a lot. I eased onto the pillows. My body grumbled from a few hours in the lumpy bed.
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to rest.”
It was the same response my father always gave.
“Ask a stupid question, Sprout.” He checked his watch and rapped on the room’s door. “Where the hell is your mother?”
“I’
m okay, Dad.” My words mumbled. It hurt to talk. I peeked under the hospital gown.
My chest covered in bruises!
“Oh no.”
Dad frowned. “It’s from the CPR. You have a few broken ribs. Sit still.”
Good thing I was flat as a board or the doctors would have pounded me down. Was I supposed to feel so horrible? This wasn’t like a normal attack.
“Nurse!” He called to a passing woman. “My daughter needs a sedative.”
“But, Dad, I’m okay?”
“I can’t wait for your mother anymore. There’s ten million dollars riding on a deal at the ranch, I have to get back.”
“But—”
“This nice lady is going to give you something to help you sleep.” Dad patted the nurse. “Your mom will be here when you wake up.”
My lip trembled. The tears fell. I wiped them away in case he thought I was being weak, but moving was pure agony. I cried harder, losing my breath to sobs and then crumpling in more pain when my chest tightened over the whimpers.
“Sarah, you’re hysterical. This will help.”
The nurse injected the medicine into my IV. I shook my head, but Dad rubbed my foot as my vision faded.
“I’ll call later. Sleep tight, Sprout.”
Dad hated hospitals as much as I did. He was always making excuses to leave.
The oxygen dried my mouth. I reached for the bedside pitcher of water but the finger monitor and wires bumped over the tray. Nicholas pocketed his phone and poured a glass. I pulled the tubes off my face before drinking.
“The doctors said you’d make a full recovery.”
I nodded. “That’s what they say every time.”
“It looked bad.”
It always did. I sipped again. The water didn’t dilute the antiseptic bitterness on my tongue.
The doctors had me inhale more drugs and mists and steroids than I remembered from my past attacks. My chest hurt, but I could breathe. I suffered only from exhaustion now.
Josiah and Mike never understood that I was okay once I had the medicines and examinations. An attack scared them witless and usually filled my room with more provisions from home than the nurses felt sanitary.
This time, I had only one gift.
