by Lana Grayson
They aimed for me.
I kicked the nearest table and dove behind it as the quiet morning bled into sudden war. Gunfire roared over the street, tearing every umbrella and fancy table-scape into a ragged, decimated scene of destruction. I covered my head from a shower of broken glass spilling into the intersection. Women screamed. Men shouted.
Somewhere, a baby cried.
And the little one’s terrified shriek tore through my mind.
It might have been my child terrified and endangered.
Fear turned to nausea and then blinding anger.
I stood once the gunfire stopped and the rumble of bikes peeled away from the intersection, scattering as a siren blared in the distance.
I knew what insignia they wore on their jackets before I checked.
Temple MC.
Son of a bitch.
Enough history existed between the Bennetts and that degenerate organization. My grandfather’s few favors and my father’s tolerance of their criminal and despicable behavior hadn’t endangered us before. Hell, the president was Reed’s godfather.
This favor cost my father more than money.
He’d lose his soul in attempting to murder his eldest child.
And Reed. Wherever Reed was, his call had disconnected. Dread churned in my gut.
I hadn’t heard from Max.
Where was Sarah?
I sprinted from the café, but Bryant wasn’t in the huddled mass of people shrieking inside. I rushed to the street and hauled my driver out of the car, stealing the keys and ordering him to escape the scene before the police started asking for witnesses.
I wasn’t involving the authorities in this. Too much time already wasted, and I’d spill far too much blood to tolerate investigations and procedure.
I jammed the accelerator and tore through the streets, escaping the crowded intersection before the first responders closed the fastest route to the Bennett Headquarters. I wouldn’t find my father there, but I prayed I’d find my brother alive.
The ten minute drive took only four as I shot through red lights and nearly sideswiped a car failing to parallel park. The headquarters housed the offices for our charity foundation on the third floor. I ignored the chronically slow elevators and slammed through the stairwell, rushing the steps two at a time and knocking a path through employees who hadn’t the courage to complain.
Reed’s office was locked. I sprinted at it full-speed, shouldering the door with the force of my weight and crashing it open.
A man cloaked in black and hiding in a ski mask wrapped a length of rope around Reed’s neck and squeezed. His face turned purple and a blood vessel popped in his left eye. My brother fell to his knees.
I leapt at his attacker, my fists connecting with his face and crushing the fragile bones that made him recognizable as a human.
Punch after punch until the bastard fell.
I kicked.
Pounded.
Brutalized.
My fists dripped with blood, mine and his, my knuckles cut against the few teeth that remained in his broken jaw.
My father hired men to kill us.
This man would have murdered my little brother.
Who knew what had happened to Max.
And Sarah?
My father would never kill Sarah. Not yet. Not while her womb was still of use to him.
He’d hurt her. He’d make her suffer.
And if Sarah didn’t tell him about the baby, his sadistic revenge would kill my unborn child.
I roared, destroying the limp and broken man beneath my bruised fists. I punched as the regions I hit softened into crimson putty. The pulp of his skin slid from my hands.
I didn’t stop. Not until Reed shouted.
Not until the terror in his voice called to me.
“He’s dead, Nick! Fuck, stop! He’s dead!”
I panted, sweated, and shook with chills. The beaten mass beneath me hadn’t moved or fought. I don’t remember if he ever had, or if my first crunch against his temple killed him.
I didn’t recognize my voice.
“He has Sarah.”
Reed’s hand curled over my shoulder, pulling me beyond the spread of blood.
“Then we gotta go get him,” Reed said. “Going wild won’t save her.”
No. It wouldn’t.
I had never lost control before. Never abandoned myself in feral, unbridled rage that demanded such base and horrific punishments.
I’d never killed a man before.
I’d stared at the body upon the ground.
I had kidnapped. Raped. Corrupted.
Never murder.
This wouldn’t be my last.
My father was a fiend, but even he hired others or sent Max. He never murdered.
“Don’t tell her I did this.” My voice dropped. “Don’t ever tell her.”
“Yeah.” Reed swallowed. “Believe me, I’m not telling anyone about this. Who the fuck is he?”
“A gift from Dad.” I had nothing to wash the blood from my hands. Reed straightened, rubbing the raw flesh on his neck. “He targeted me as well. Had Temple MC do a drive-by.”
“Temple?” Reed’s expression flashed with a new pain. “Toviel Aren is my godfather. He’s not doing hits for Dad.”
“He is now, or Temple’s elected a new president.”
“Fuck.”
“Lock the office. I’ll hire someone to take care of this later. We have to find Sarah.”
“Where’s Max?”
The thought pierced me like I had been shot and only now suffered from the bullet burrowing through my chest. Reed swore.
“Does Dad know she’s pregnant?”
I stood, not waiting for Reed to follow. Blood dried on my hands, my suit.
“It doesn’t matter.” I wouldn’t cleanse the filth from my palms until another’s blood stained them. “I’ll kill him before he hurts Sarah or my son.”
I woke only to return to nightmare.
I rested upon Darius Bennett’s bed.
I wouldn’t endure his sin twice. I tensed to fight.
Darius watched as I slid against the mattress, edging into the pillows. I blinked through the haze and swallowed against the parched chemical dryness in my throat.
I feared I’d vomit, but I refused my body that relief. That weakness would remain hidden.
The darkness crept within the room, soundless and invasive. It’d swallow these crimes and trap me between memory and reality once more. His eyes pinned me. I imagined them a dark and dank pit that stole my virtue, innocence, and dignity.
And once more I’d climb from that hole.
When would it become a grave?
Darius claimed the wingback before the fireplace. He sat as if it were a throne, surveying the kingdom of hell resting between sheets that would be torn and tangled, bloodied and dampened with his sweat and my tears.
I wouldn’t let him do it again.
He promised to hurt me. He had. He lusted for my pride. He took it. He desired my heir.
He made it.
And I denied it. I hated myself for even considering it.
But I no longer remembered my passionate, loving, unifying embrace with Nicholas. That night crippled me with darkness, the utter helplessness when all control, power, and dignity were stripped from me in the pounded pleasure of a man who lusted for my cries.
I wanted the baby to belong to Nicholas.
But I feared Darius’s determination.
I’d be damned if either Bennett caused my son harm. I fed off the surge of adrenaline, of my fierce devotion to the idea of the child. I once warned Nicholas how dangerous I’d become if they succeeded. And now they’d see it. True wrath. Absolute rage.
Righteous bloodshed.
A mother protecting her child.
A woman defending her honor.
A soul seeking revenge.
Darius expected me to cower. I expected him to bleed.
“Remove your clothes, my dear.”
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“No.”
He tolerated my resistance. I anticipated his lust.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“And I’m telling you no.”
“It isn’t wise to disobey your father,” he warned.
“And it’s equally dangerous to touch me.”
“Then run, little one. Run and cry for help. It won’t take me long to find you again, and you’ll regret every second of your disobedience.”
That I believed.
Darius sat entirely too still, as stone-faced and imposing as Nicholas. His suit jacket removed, but he hadn’t unbuttoned his cuffs. Not yet. Not while he crossed his legs and talked to me about his desires. But his palms folded. An impatient gesture, but hardly the crack against the cheek I’d earned before.
He’d punish me emotionally, cripple me mentally, or abuse me in sick and perverted ways. I once thought him insane. That was wrong. Darius Bennett controlled his every action. What he did to me, he planned. Rigorously. Deliberately. Almost…religiously.
Now I understood him, but realizing his thoughts, urges, and animalistic perversions disgusted me more than his hands over my bare flesh.
“What do you want?” I dug my fingers into the comforter.
Dark sheets.
Just like Nicholas.
Not like Nicholas.
“I thought it would be obvious?”
“You’re not raping me again.”
“I had hoped it would be more pleasant this time.”
“You’re a monster.”
“The tired insults wear on me. I won’t ask you again.”
“You won’t rape me.”
“Clothes off, Sarah.”
“No.”
What should have screamed, proud and vindicated, sneered through a long-festering anger. I faced a demon without a cross, and I had no more prayers to save me from the evil that already invaded my core. The devil desired a second indulgence.
If he hurt me, hit me, raped me, I didn’t know what would happen. I endured it before, but I wasn’t as weak then. Not as tired, not as…fragile.
I didn’t fear for me, and that made it worse. I had to protect the baby.
“You try my patience,” Darius said.
“Get used to it.”
“You’ve always been a trial of my tolerance. I don’t allow my children to misbehave.”
“I’m not your child.”
“Regardless of what you believe, of what Nicholas has told you, I’ve laid more a claim to you than any of my sons. You belong to me now, Sarah. I will not be spoken to with such disrespect.”
“Fuck. You.”
The words twitched his eyebrow as though I were the first to dare insult his pride with such vulgarity. He stood to unbutton his cuffs.
It didn’t worry me as much as the belt he unraveled from his trousers. He hadn’t swung the leather, only looped it within his hands.
“Stand up,” he ordered.
“And you were so eager to hold me down before.”
“Don’t test me, my dear.”
“If you think I would willingly surrender to you—”
“I do think it.”
He moved quickly, gripping my arm and lurching me to my feet. The sudden rise nauseated me. He’d deserve it if I threw up on him.
But it’d only get me hit.
The belt tightened in his grip. It didn’t strike.
“Remove your clothing.”
He didn’t hit me.
He didn’t hurt me.
He threatened me, but after months of his abuses, words weren’t as frightening as his punishments. My pulse quickened.
I was right. He suspected the pregnancy.
Somehow, someway, he read it in my escape, saw it in my behavior at the art gallery.
But he hadn’t said it, and I hadn’t admitted it.
He had no proof, only a hunch that stilled his hand when it would have otherwise struck.
Darius Bennett could do nothing to me but force me to admit I carried a child.
He wouldn’t earn that victory. If I had it my way, Darius would go to his grave with the mystery burning his soul, and the truth would die with him. I’d forever swear the child belonged to Nicholas—even if I lied to myself until the day I died.
I had nothing to use as a weapon in his bedroom, but I remembered the nooks and crannies of the estate. Knives in the kitchen, hunting guns in the basement game room. First I’d find a weapon…and then?
I had just witnessed the murders of two men. The blood of two human beings had been spilled at my feet. Murder disgusted me—especially as my life wavered so often on a hitched breath and the mercy of modern medicine. Dad was a horrid man, but he taught me to defend the name I bore. My honor.
My family.
I would kill Darius Bennett, without hesitation this time. Without remorse.
The belt rose. I met his gaze.
“Go on. Hit me.”
He didn’t, but he reached for me, twisting me against his body. The belt rose high into the air.
He aimed for my stomach.
We both tensed.
“Daddy’s waiting, Sarah.”
For me to strip or confess? One was easier than the other, but not by much. I didn’t want to cower from the belt, but my hands accidentally covered my belly.
His eyebrow arched.
It was too much of a tell.
Now I had no choice.
Nicholas taught me the value of a concession to an enemy. I curled my fingers in my shirt. Better to delay him than tempt him to strike.
The shirt landed on the bed. My sports bra hardly contained my swelling chest. Goosebumps prickled my skin.
“And the pants,” he said.
They were only pajamas. I wore nothing underneath. I hesitated.
“Come now, Sarah. There’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
It was true, and it only made me hate him more. He had seen and touched and tasted me. What difference did it make now?
I kicked the pants away and stared him in the eye.
“Don’t be difficult,” he said. “The brassiere as well.”
The elastic dug into my skin, too small for how my body changed after twelve weeks of pregnancy. My tummy looked no different—still naturally thin, especially as my meals had yet to stay down.
But my chest?
My breasts were bigger. I pulled the bra off. Though my slit was bared for his inspection once more, my breasts were the part of me I wanted to hide.
I saw the differences, small as they were. The size. The shape. Even how my once pink nipples began to darken, richer and a bit swollen.
He last saw them in the dark, grabbed them not to feel but to hurt and reposition me. In the mirror, my body changed. But before Darius? I was just as tiny, frail, and completely immovable as ever.
I hoped he didn’t notice the changes.
The belt lowered. He relaxed—too distracted by the sight of his naked step-daughter to realize he shifted close to the bedside lamp. One smash against his head wouldn’t bring the monster down, but it’d give me time to run, hide, find a weapon.
End it.
And if I did it naked, so be it. It was better than any of the sundresses Darius laid out for me to wear.
“Now what?” I asked. “Are you going to rape me again? Hurt me some more? Humiliate me?”
“I do prefer it when you beg.”
“Never again.”
“A hard promise to keep.” He tilted his head. “Or perhaps it isn’t necessary to degrade ourselves this time.”
“Like it was necessary the first time?”
“Of course it was. Nicholas thought to hide my daughter from me. You thought you’d escape with all our stock, our future, and our empire in your hands.”
“You hurt me, and I still have all those things,” I said. “I bet that eats you up inside. I bet you can’t sleep at night knowing the damage I might cause to the Bennett Corporation and name.”
“
I sleep quite well,” Darius leaned too close. “Your warmth satisfied me in many ways, my dear. That memory is a particular favorite.”
“You’re sick.”
“And you’re the perfect little whore, aren’t you?”
I edged away, as if to squirm and not reach for the lamp.
“I told you I would return for you.” His words menaced, luring me into a time I battled to forget. “You promised you’d be a good girl and wait for me.”
I would have promised him anything to get free, to push his weight off of me.
“You should have killed me,” I said.
“That wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“Doubtful. In fact, I am eager to try once more. I’ve thought of nothing but our time together since you dared to leave me.” He nuzzled my cheek. “I feared I hurt you, my dear.”
“You did.”
His sneer ached deep inside me. “Then you’ve learned not to struggle.”
“You won’t touch me.”
Darius unbuttoned his shirt. “I’ll do far more than touch.”
I believed him. My heart thudded too hard against my ribs, and the fear bound me in the thick slowness of a nightmare, wading through the possibilities and terror, endless pain and forsaken happiness.
I couldn’t let him hurt the baby.
I had to tell him. Even if he reveled in the victory of his abuses, what was one moment of humiliation now to spare me the horror of his touch once more?
But what would he do once he learned I was pregnant? What would he do to his sons? The men he hired to ransack my beach house aimed for Max. They tried to kill him.
The truth terrified me. Darius no longer cared about his own children. Not if he believed he had a new son, a more important son. A child that would inherit everything.
The security systems blared. Darius swore, distracted. He looked to the bedroom door. It was my only chance. I seized the antique lamp and cracked him over the head, shattering the glass fragments. Darius roared as a gush of blood spurted from his brow.
It didn’t thrill me. The surge of adrenaline and nausea poisoned me. I ran—naked and terrified—sprinting from the demon’s lair and through the halls of the familiar prison.
Nicholas shouted from the entry.
Reed echoed.
I didn’t hear Max.
Oh God. What’d happened to Max?
