by Lana Grayson
Almost perfect. Perfection wouldn’t struggle and heave and choke to breathe.
Her lips turned blue, and her coughing rasped far too shallow to be effective. Her body lurched, but still she clung to me.
I had no idea what to do for her.
“Should we sit her up?” Reed knelt before her, trying to hold her still. He rushed to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water. “Give her this.”
We padded pillows behind her. Sarah slumped and turned her head. The water dripped from her lips, blending with the crimson cuts on her neck.
“Jesus.” Max gritted his teeth. “You gotta call him, Nick.”
My father was the last person who needed to know our prisoner slowly suffocated. I nodded, though the decision churned my stomach. He wouldn’t care that she suffered.
Why didn’t I realize she had asthma?
We studied the Atwood stock and bonds, hired private investigators to trace her brothers’ activities, secured corporate allies and tucked them within her company. We knew everything about Atwood Industries and nothing about Sarah.
My father planned for us to bed and breed her. We purchased clothes for her, provided lotions and makeup, and prepared her room. But we neglected her most important amenity.
A rescue inhaler.
“Got a problem.” Max lowered his voice as he spoke into the phone. “The girl’s sick...Not sure....An asthma attack, I think.” He paused. “No, definitely not faking it.”
Max’s frustration mirrored my own. He ended the call. “He said to call Doctor Rimes.”
Absolutely not.
“Rimes is an hour away,” I said. “She doesn’t have that long.”
Reed flipped through his phone. “Dude, this is serious. Every one of these websites says to get her to a hospital.”
Max crossed his arms. “She’s not getting out of the house. Dad will carve her lungs out himself. He’s not risking her escaping.”
“Look at her!” Reed stood. “She can’t run away like this.”
Sarah’s grip weakened. I knelt before her, helpless as her delicate blue eyes widened, teary, and dulled to the color of a rich ash.
Last time I held her this closely, it wasn’t terror that made her tremble.
It was rage.
Indignation.
Desire.
But I didn’t see it then. The coughing. The walking. The weakness. The attack had lasted for a while, and she pushed herself beyond her strength.
She didn’t tell us she was sick. She hadn’t trusted us. And now, she was in trouble.
Unacceptable.
The girl was our captive, but she was the only woman—only person—I met who intimidated my father to violence. He loathed the Atwoods, but his hatred of Sarah bordered on personal obsession. She returned it, punch for punch, even when she could no longer defend herself.
She was the most remarkable woman I knew.
I tied her robe closed to calm her, though she was lovely, even in distress.
How beautiful would she be when we conquered her?
“Max, we’re taking the helicopter,” I said. “You fly. Reed, call the hospital. Tell them we’re on our way and give them our flight information.”
“Are you insane?” Max wove his fingers through his hair. “If she goes to a hospital, they won’t just treat her asthma. Not when Dad punted her down the stairs and rolled her in glass. They’ll ask questions. She’ll tell people she’s been kidnapped and fuck us over.”
Reed offered the water again. She turned away. Gripped me harder.
“I’d rather explain a kidnapping than a murder.” Reed exhaled. “We don’t have a choice.”
Max swore. “We take her to the hospital, and Dad will kill her himself.”
“She won’t talk.” I cupped her chin. She choked and gasped, but she was still listening. “She knows if she tells anyone what’s happened to her, our father will hurt her mother. She’s not ready to lose the only family she has left.”
“We’re her family,” Reed snorted. “Technically.”
“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 li
fe—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 against 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.