by Lana Grayson
“Know what else babies do? They shit. Everywhere. She was a mess.”
“So change her diaper.”
Fuck. I counted to ten. Didn’t help. Silver wiggled, and I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t scare her.
“There aren’t any diapers,” I said.
Alexis rolled her eyes. Twice. She knew there wasn’t a goddamned thing I’d do to teach her any fucking respect. A good backhand solved most problems, but I wouldn’t hit the mother of my child.
What a time for restraint.
“Why don’t you go buy some?” Alexis sneered at me. “Do something around here for fuckin’ once.”
“Why didn’t you get diapers? You were watching her!”
“Yeah, I was here watching our baby. What the hell did you expect me to do?”
I gestured to Silver’s room, with the empty cabinets and mess. “Go to the store? Do some laundry?”
“Because it’s that fucking easy. You have no idea the work it takes to keep this family functioning.”
I just hauled a truck filled with smuggled cigs halfway through the desert to trade for a couple thousand in profit for the club. Then I nearly got my ass run off the road in a goddamned downpour when a half dozen rejects from Anathema’s split charter, The Coup, decided to fuck on our side of the river. I still made it home in time to bathe and feed the miserable baby.
Yeah. I had a good idea how to keep the family functioning.
“Why is the water shut off?” Stupid question. Alexis shrugged. “I gave you cash to pay the bill. You were supposed to go to the office yesterday.”
She didn’t answer. Never had an answer. She tried to cover the track mark on her arm, like it’d make a goddamned difference.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said. The kid was nearly done with her bottle. When was the last time she ate? “For fuck’s sake, the baby was covered in shit, didn’t have water for a bath, and she’s crying like she’s starving. I was gone for two days. You can’t take care of your own daughter for two days?”
“I took care of her!” Alexis grabbed a pair of jean shorts from the floor. She wrenched them over her legs. “You come waltzing in the house, take one glance around, and think you know everything that happened while you were gone. Well, guess what, Gold? You don’t know shit.”
“I know you didn’t pay the water bill. I know you didn’t do laundry. I know you shot up like a fucking junkie instead of taking care of your kid.”
“You have no idea the pressure I’m under!”
“Yeah.” I snorted. The bottle was empty. Silver needed more, but I had nothing else. Maybe she’d sleep instead. “It’s so stressful to buy some diapers and make sure the kid doesn’t starve. God forbid you take twenty minutes to run up the road and pay a water bill.”
“Why don’t you pay the water bill?”
“With what money? I gave you two hundred for it. I gave you one hundred for groceries. Where did it all go?”
“This is bullshit, Gold. You’re supposed to provide for your daughter.”
Yeah. For my daughter. Not for some whore’s drug habit.
The anger seized my throat and pierced my brain. Slamming my head against the wall was more productive than dealing with Alexis’s drug-hazed shit. I took the kid to her room. The crib was a mess. I’d need to hose the damn thing down. I stuffed the baby in her car-seat carrier instead. At least then I could move her to the living room, out of the smell and dark.
And Silver fucking smiled, just grateful to be warm and fed and clean.
Jesus, the very basic of human needs, and the kid was happy. It didn’t take much. Silver giggled and babbled and loved tickles. I wasn’t always around to give them.
And now I didn’t trust Alexis to do it either.
I set Silver on the couch. Big fucking mistake.
The carrier rested next to a scorched mark the size of a dinner plate. Alexis’s cigs and ashtray piled full on the end table.
That was it.
“Alexis!” I saw red and hoped it was an aneurysm. “Jesus fuck, did you set fire to the couch?”
Alexis padded into the kitchen. She ignored the dirty dishes and bills, moldy bread on the counter and water from where Silver dripped.
“Accident.” Alexis mumbled into the fridge, grabbing a beer. “Fell asleep.”
Jesus. I just earned all my money doing a run for the fucking things, and now a cig would be what burned the house down. Alexis nearly caused a fire. Nearly torched the living room.
My chest squeezed so hard I thought I inhaled the hypothetical flames. Deserved them too.
Silver might have been trapped in it. She might have…
I reached to pull my baby from the carrier, just to hold the squirmy little kid, just to have her close so I knew she wasn’t incinerated in a fucking drug-addled inferno.
My fingers grazed something slimy under the couch.
I pulled it out.
Regretted it.
Alexis walked into the living room with a beer just as I held the used condom up for her inspection.
“Unless you’re whoring that ass out…” I didn’t want to say the words. “Unless this got you a hundred bucks to turn the water on, ain’t nothing you can say, so don’t even try.”
Her eyes widened as much as whatever poison in her veins let her react. I didn’t expect her to scream.
“Like you fucking care!” Alexis’s words rattled the windows. Silver immediately whimpered too. I couldn’t handle both of them flipping out. “Like you fucking care who the fuck I fuck.”
“Damn right I care!”
“Oh, do you?”
“You’re my old lady, Alexis. You got my fucking patch on you.”
“You think I give a damn what Anathema thinks? So you bent me over and gave me a ride. Christ, I pushed out that fucking baby. There’s your property patch. You fucking love her more than me.”
That wasn’t hard. I loved the baby more than my goddamned life.
I didn’t love Alexis. Never did. In fact, I was really starting to hate the cock-sucking whore who let some other man into my house to fuck what was mine while my daughter cried until her lungs gave out in her soiled fucking crib.
This was the last time. No more chances. No more trying to make it work.
The kid deserved better. I didn’t, but that didn’t mean I’d let the baby crawl through her own filth and my own bad judgement. Her father was already James “Gold” Mered, a fucking nobody made into a badass by virtue of the cut he wore and the friends he made and the blood he spilled. It’d be a rough enough life for a baby.
Never gave a damn about it before.
Then she was born.
Then she smiled at me.
Then she giggled and played and squealed at me because I was her everything.
And she was my everything too.
“Know what?” I grabbed the kid’s carrier. “Do what you want. Shoot up whatever you want. Fuck whoever you want. I’m done.”
Alexis frowned. “You’re done?”
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t even going to fight for me?”
No, but I’d fight to the death for the kid. “You’re goddamned toxic. I’m out.”
“You can’t leave me.”
I hoisted the carrier. I pocketed the truck keys and kicked away a couple discarded magazines hiding the diaper bag.
It shouldn’t have thrilled me to find three diapers in the pocket, but it was like goddamned Christmas.
“You ain’t taking my baby!” Alexis’s voice shrilled. She rushed forward, nearly toppling the carrier from my hand. Silver wailed. “Gold, you motherfucking asshole! That’s my baby!”
I didn’t want to hit her, but goddamned if I wouldn’t push her ass onto the sofa if she didn’t get away from the kid.
I drew myself up to my full height. I wasn’t as big as the other guys in Anathema, but they threw down their last twenties on me when I entered a boxing ring. Alexis knew it. She blew me the day I won ten gran
d for the club while I was still sweaty and bloody in the ring.
That was the night I guessed I knocked her up.
The biggest fucking mistake of my life gave me the greatest fucking gift.
She didn’t back off. I tossed her to the ground. The drugs dizzied her. She screamed as she struggled to rise to her feet. Gave me enough time to get my jacket and cut from the kitchen.
She came at me from behind.
I didn’t realize she had the knife until it sliced through my shirt and nearly imbedded in my shoulder.
The bitch got me good, and my vision whitened with shock. The carrier clattered to the floor. Silver cried, louder, shriller.
I turned, twisting Alexis’s wrist and almost breaking it. The knife wrenched from her hand. It fell to the ground.
Just inches from the baby.
Jesus Christ.
I grabbed the blade, tossed the mother of my child against the wall, and threatened her with the sharpened edge of the bloody chef’s knife she dared to turn on me.
“You want to see how this ends?” I hissed. “You really want to try me? I’m taking the baby. I’m leaving your junkie ass. And if I see you anywhere near me or Silver again, so help me God, you’re gonna wish you had burnt to a crisp on the fucking couch.”
Alexis scowled, but she didn’t move. “You aren’t leaving with my baby.”
“Watch me.”
“She needs her mother!”
“Well you ain’t it.” I tossed the knife away. “You’ve never been a mother. Kid’s better off without you. Fuck your own life over, you aren’t messing with ours. Not anymore.”
Silver wailed in the carrier. Alexis didn’t move.
It wasn’t hard leaving the house, the woman I knocked up, or the memories behind.
I wish I had been man enough to do it sooner…
SAINT is available now—and only for a short time—as part of the Possess Anthology! Grab your copy now and read this novella and more from some truly fabulous authors!
And keep scrolling for yet another sneak peek…
The Legacy Series Book #1
The Complete Trilogy Is Now Available!
Sarah
Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Ravished.
When tragedy stole my family, my father’s will mandated my future. I didn’t inherit Atwood Industries. I became the only one capable of protecting it.
Atwood Industries belongs only to a male heir, my heir. And my enemies—my own step-brothers—will stop at nothing to create a shared bloodline.
But they’ve made a mistake, and they’ll forever regret trying to control me.
Nicholas
Damned. Destroyed. Enthralled.
My family’s livelihood depended on acquiring the rival Atwood Industries and seizing the innocent woman bound within its terms of succession.
I never expected such a challenge from my step-sister.
I never thought I’d betray my own blood to protect her from the nightmare we began.
But if I don’t stop her, the woman I’m forbidden to love will sacrifice herself to tear apart my billion dollar empire...
Keep reading for a sneak peek of the this dark and sinful trilogy!
It wasn’t just a hostile takeover.
It was war.
The email jolted my phone. A flurry of text messages and calls rumbled it off the library’s desk.
I let it fall. My laptop dinged and threatened to blue-screen as it lagged over the invasion of alerts. A blizzard of emails flashed over the desktop, all attaching stock reports, portfolios, bond liabilities, and profit and losses. My life was a tangled disaster of graphs and spreadsheets that, until this quarter, predicted a booming year for my family’s farm.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
My voice bounced off the library walls, followed by a particularly angry hush from the students studying below. My apology carried too far, and I cringed as the next shush hissed into an unfriendly word.
God, did I envy the students just fretting over their midterms.
My thesis minimized under the mess of emails, reports, and numbers. The lab would have to wait. Again. I rubbed the exhaustion from my face. I’d have to redo the titrations before I finished the damn thing. That’d set me back another day.
It was okay. I could handle it.
I flipped through my planner and scribbled a quick note for Wednesday. The little block was filled with names, notes, and numbers. I scrawled in the margin instead. Titration. I could fit it in between my Soil Fertility exam and the presentation for the irrigation proposal designed for our south cornfield.
My phone didn’t stop vibrating. Maybe the battery would drain before I was forced to take a call from a nervous investor? A girl could hope. I snapped the buckle around my planner and shoved it into my laptop bag.
Dad warned about this. He knew it was coming, but he thought Darius Bennett and the Bennett Corporation would make the move when he announced the cancer. They didn’t, and the suspense poisoned us as much as his chemo. We prepared anyway. In the hospital, Dad told my brothers every last secret about our company, the farm, and the Bennetts. They were ready when he died.
But no one prepared for Josiah and Mike dying in a private plane crash just four months later.
And Dad never thought to share his secrets with me.
I shouldered the bag and burst from the library, nearly tumbling down the steps leading from the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering loft. Studying in the loneliest section in the library didn’t bother me. No one was around to watch the CEO and prime shareholder of a multi-billion dollar company crash on her behind. Even better, no one spied me taking a hit from my inhaler.
The albuterol sucked, but it was effective. I blamed my trembling on the meds.
The Bennetts targeted my family for the past thirty years, but never once stole a single stock from my father’s control.
But Dad was dead now.
I hid the inhaler in my purse. In a way, the tightness crushing my chest composed me. I couldn’t rush, and I took greater care saving my breath on the most important words—all sound business practices according to my father. Fleeing from Broughton University’s library in a burst of paperwork and bumbling backpacks was not proper Atwood behavior, and I would not grant the Bennetts the satisfaction of seeing me rattled.
That bastard family deserved only the same grief they caused me.
My phone rang three times before I made it to my car. Our attorney, Anthony Delvannis, did his job well, but he had a bad habit of calling me during lectures and labs. He charged enough that he could have purchased some patience while I failed my classes for his conference calls. And it wouldn’t have hurt to buy a little bit of good news every so often. Apparently, that wasn’t part of the attorney/client privilege.
“We have a problem.” Anthony didn’t greet me. He never did—a relic from Dad’s time. Josiah had inherited the same abruptness, but Michael used to tolerate the pleasantries. “Bennett held a press conference.”
My fingers tightened over the steering wheel. “And?”
“You better get over here.”
“How bad is it?”
“I’d advise an immediate response. And I’d convince your mother to make a public appearance.”
“She hardly gets out of bed—”
“Force her, Sarah. The marriage spooked the board and dropped your stock prices. And now Bennett’s making these statements. Best not to hemorrhage any more money.”
Like we had any money left to lose.
“I’ll be there in five.”
Uttering an uncouth word might have relieved some stress, but my chest still ached. Darius Bennett didn’t deserve a single breath wasted over his name.
“Damage control,” he said. “Start thinking.”
The call ended. I hated this. I wasn’t Sarah Meredith Atwood anymore. I became Sarah Damage Control Atwood, though Sarah Criminally-Underprepared-But-Faking-It Atwood was probably more apt.
The University faded in my rearview mirror. What had been my life’s ambition now shifted. I was Mark Atwood’s only living heir, the last member of my family competent enough to act as owner of the farm—even if I was never intended to touch the books, make the decisions, or involve myself with the corporation. My role was to help Mom, study, and distract the guests at our parties with my pretty dress and sensible conversation.
I had a lot to represent. Our farm grew from a little homestead out west into a major, multi-thousand acre empire of diversified crops and ranches stretching throughout Southern California and encroaching deeper into the Southwest. The Atwoods didn’t trade seeds for a pail of milk anymore. And, once I finished my degree and conducted my own research, our seeds would be the foundation for an entirely new division of the company.
Genetically modified, drought-resistant, high-yield seed. My research would be something that could really make a difference, a true legacy that would secure the Atwoods for generations and help the farms in Southern California survive. Maybe even in other arid places throughout the world.
Dad sent me to the best schools, put me in the best agricultural engineering university, and ensured I had every opportunity to place the family first. But, instead of working in the lab, I was on damage control. Investor problems. Worker grievances. Irrigation administration. We had vice-presidents to handle the day-to-day, but only an Atwood could ease the trigger-fingers of our stock holders.
I much preferred the lab.
Anthony’s paralegal waited for me outside. I tossed him the keys to Josiah’s Mercedes and hurried inside as he parked. The receptionist handed me a bottle of water, and I cracked it open before bursting into Anthony’s office without knocking. He hated that.
Anthony wasn’t a man who tolerated interruptions, impropriety, or disrespect. He was far too handsome for such strict business practices. If Anthony was anywhere near as intimidating in the court room as he was frowning at his desk, I pitied his targets. Luckily, he represented us.
His office hid under a stack of papers and thick files. Dad hired his family’s firm based on their superb organization. Now? Rolled plans, endless contracts, blueprints, and banking statements cluttered Anthony’s tables. Dad’s death didn’t just leave our house a mess. The remnants of his legacy mixed in the papers and clutter left behind by my brothers.