by Lana Grayson
How was I supposed to love a man who captured me, sacrificed me, and deceived my trust?
And how was he to love me when I betrayed him to save myself?
I tripped over the stairs. It didn’t slow Darius. My hesitations and pleas, protests and screams would never stop him. He forced me to my feet, leading me up, up, up, into the desecrated secrets of his world and the depraved recesses of his mind.
Where was Reed? And Max?
God, where was Nicholas?
My chest ached with a breath that trapped too deeply within my lungs. I fought the asthma and ignored my fear. Neither would help me survive the pain, shame, and destruction Darius willed.
But I only needed to survive. Darius revealed too much of himself.
He’d keep me alive.
Broken, but alive, and that was his greatest mistake. I sacrificed everything before. I’d surrender my body if it meant I’d live to strike him down.
He hauled me to the landing, and I blinked back tears.
But Darius didn’t aim for his private wing—the desolate stretch of hell I hadn’t dared to explore. Instead, he forced me into Max’s sanctuary, the theater tucked within his hall. He took me to the first place in the estate that had offered me a moment of…comfort.
He didn’t plan to rape me, but that didn’t mean I was safe. He’d hurt me however he could.
I never thought I’d be eager for the bite of a belt or the rage of a flogging.
Pain I could handle. Pain I had endured, both at his hand and Max’s twisted protection.
But without my step-brothers, I had no idea if Darius had the restraint to end my punishment before it turned into a murder. He didn’t have Reed’s compassion, Max’s awareness, or Nicholas’s undying patience.
Darius possessed only absolute cruelty.
And I experienced a brutality that knew no limits.
But that didn’t explain why he forced me to sit in the leather recliner centered in the room. I stilled as he ripped the extension cord from a gaming console hooked to the theater system. He tested the strength of the wire and faced me.
His smile waged a cautious, lucid, merciless war.
Even my heart shivered. Whatever he planned would be worse than rape.
“I talked to your mom.”
Darius leaned over me to twist the wire against my chest. He looped it behind the chair and bound me against the leather. The cord nearly sliced me in two. He liked how I bit my lip to silence my squeal.
“You didn’t ask for permission to leave, but I understand. You missed your family, didn’t you?”
I swallowed my profanity. No sense endangering Mom.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You went home, my dear.”
I didn’t answer. Darius wrapped the cord around me a second time. It cut into the sensitive skin beneath my breast where he already punished once with his ropes. I didn’t let him see me flinch.
“The first time I asked, she lied.” He tightened the cord as he growled the word. I pinched my eyes shut. His force drove the air from my lungs. “My own wife. Lying to her husband to protect her whore of a daughter. Sarah, I won’t stand for that.”
Oh God.
He tied me too tightly to even tremble.
“Fortunately, Bethany is a devoted wife. She understands that I am her husband.” Darius knelt before me and surveyed his work. “She told me all about your visit. She said you acted…strangely. And that you were desperate for her to visit your aunt.” His voice lowered, the shadow of pure, utter hatred rumbled in his voice. “How dare you try to interfere in my marriage.”
My mouth dried.
How could she have told him I was there? She wouldn’t have betrayed me, not if she understood what she was doing.
A breath escaped in a pained cough.
She…forgot. Whatever illness cobwebbed in her mind captured a memory of my visit but not my plea to keep it secret. One conversation with Darius, and she spilled everything to him.
What else would she eventually forget to keep quiet?
How long did I have before she revealed my infertility?
“She’s not well.” I steadied my voice. “I wouldn’t trust a word she says.”
“I’ve learned how to decipher her. Despite your ill-intentions, your mother was thrilled that you came to visit.”
I didn’t answer. He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear.
“I know you miss her. I know you miss all of your family.”
“It’s expected when someone’s been kidnapped.”
The gentle hush to his voice was worse than any profanity. “We’ve tried to make you a home here. You know I’ve thought of you as my little girl.”
He thought of me in ways no daughter should ever have been imagined by a loving father.
His touch burned me with a warned shiver, but the cords bound me too tightly, biting through my skin even as I remained silent, pressed hard into the recliner.
Darius’s hand slid along my leg, savoring the soft skin of my knee. I looked away, but he only explored. His fingers pressed no higher than the uncomfortable swell of my thigh.
“I try to be a good father,” he said. “But it’s difficult raising a disobedient little girl who doesn’t respect her family the way they deserve.”
He wouldn’t pry a single word from me. His fingers dug into my skin. I’d bruise, but I’d survive.
“You understand, don’t you? Your father just wants what’s best for you.”
The grip turned painful. He’d rip my leg off if I didn’t acknowledge him. I nodded.
“I have enough trouble keeping my boys in line. I’d hate to think that my little slut daughter would cause as much mischief as them.”
“Where are they?”
“Your brothers?” Darius’s voice lightened. “Oh, there was a…bit of an accident. Nothing for you to worry about.”
An accident?
Blood on his hands.
Oh God.
“Darius—”
He wagged a finger. “Now, my dear, I told you. Nothing so formal.”
The word soured on my tongue. “Dad. What kind of accident?”
He ignored me. “It warms my heart how much you care for your brothers.”
What did he know? I didn’t react.
“You’re probably worried they’ll end up like Josiah and Mike—dead and burnt and scraped together into a bundle of charred flesh to be buried.”
He should have just hit me. I’d be sick. I wasn’t ready for him to mention my real brothers. He didn’t deserve to speak their names, let alone use their death to frighten me.
“You miss Josiah and Mike. Your mom does too. Luckily for my girls, I have something that can take the pain away.”
Nothing he offered would ever give me comfort. I twisted. Just the memory of my brothers exposed every raw and vulnerable nerve for him to fray.
My father’s death destroyed the family. Josiah and Mike’s deaths destroyed me.
And Darius knew it.
Of course he knew it.
He saw it at their funerals. He heard it in my voice every time an insensitive asshole demanded details of their crash.
Only a bullet to the head would end that pain.
And he wasn’t kind enough for that.
“I have something for you,” he said. “It took me a while to acquire it, and it cost a decent amount of money, but…” He caressed my cheek, his thumb pausing over my lower lip. He pushed as though he expected me to suck on it, but he turned before succumbing to that fantasy. “Nothing is too much for my little girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can give you one last chance to see your brothers.”
Darius tapped my nose as I stared at him, bewildered.
“You stay here.” He chuckled at his joke as he surveyed the bindings. “Daddy will be right back with your present.”
What. The. Fuck.
My stomach hollowed.<
br />
He left the theater. I fought against the wires binding me, but Darius knew how to trap someone within his grasp. My skin sliced against the cords. I couldn’t escape before he returned.
He carried a DVD.
None of this made sense.
Darius paused at the popcorn cart tucked against the wall. He added oil and kernels to the popper while humming a quiet tune. The machine whirled to life and kicked out bright kernels of fluffy popcorn. I flinched with each jarring pop.
He added a handful to a bowl and pumped glob after sickening glob of thick, gooey butter over the popcorn. He sat the bowl next to me and tightened the cords behind the chair with another cruel twist.
“Are you comfortable?”
He admired his work, how the bindings forced me stiff against the chair and raised my breasts high. My hands lost feeling. He didn’t care.
“I know it’s a bit much, but I don’t want you to miss a single moment of this.”
He waved the DVD in the air. Had he gone completely insane or was this just par for the course? I tempered the question as best I could, but my voice still trembled. Not like I could be calm when my skin abraded under the rope, the bondage ached my back, and his grin radiated pure evil.
“Darius, what the hell are you doing?”
“We’re going to watch a home movie.”
“What home movie?”
Darius tapped the DVD. “Why, one of your brothers, of course.”
I didn’t understand, but the dread prickled over the parts of my body that hadn’t yet gone numb.
He settled in the recliner next to me, pressing a few buttons on the remote. He shoved the bowl of popcorn at me, chuckling as the ropes didn’t allow me to even flinch away.
“Don’t worry.” He pressed a kernel to my lips. “Let Daddy help.”
I tried to refuse the greasy popcorn, dripping fake butter and offered from fingers that smelled of cigars and blood. Darius forced the bite into my mouth.
I spat it out.
“Let me up! What are you doing?” My voice rose. “What do you want from me?”
He frowned, shushing me with a finger. “No talking during the movie. Bennett house rule.”
Now I would be sick.
A button on the remote dimmed the lights. The screen projected a shaky video of a rest stop overlooking a busy desert highway.
The cellphone video focused on a group of teenagers before spinning upwards, capturing a small, private jet flying entirely too low.
It wobbled.
Then it lost altitude.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
It was a true home movie.
Darius found a recording of their plane crash from the cellphone video that captured their deaths.
“Shh.” He pressed another kernel of popcorn to my lips. “Watch, now, Sarah. This is the good part.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as the camera focused on the plane pitching to the ground.
I accidentally opened them in time to see the fireball.
The plane crashed nose-first onto a highway in Nevada, missing the traffic on the road but disintegrating on impact.
Mom and I didn’t know they had crashed.
We didn’t even know they were on the plane or out of the state.
We didn’t know they had died before the cable news channels splashed the screen with the crawler.
Billionaire Atwood Brothers Killed In Private Plane Crash
“This footage was difficult to find.”
Darius offered me more popcorn. I swallowed if only to keep from throwing up. He pointed to the screen, proud of what he forced me to watch.
“The FAA used it for their investigation, but I spoke to the right people so that my little girl could see her brothers one last time. And here we are!”
The video ended.
I released my breath. Sweat poured from my body, but I shook with unending chills.
It was done. Over. I’d forget what I saw. Banish it into the deepest pits of my mind.
Darius patted my hand. “Sarah, you are my daughter. It’s time I share with you the secret of the Bennett’s success.” He leaned close, as if revealing a grand mystery. “Family is the most important thing in this world, so I hope you can appreciate what I’ve done.”
The screen brightened.
The video began to replay.
“No, no, no,” I whispered. “Darius, don’t.”
The rest stop near the highway. The blue sky.
Their plane rolled again.
This time I didn’t close my eyes.
This time, I died with them.
“How could you?” I didn’t recognize the strain in my voice—the months and months of forsaken mourning I suppressed to protect Mom from herself, prevent our farm from failing, and to manage the mess I thought my brothers left behind. “Why…why are you doing this?”
“No need to thank me.”
The footage replayed again.
I struggled against the ropes. Nothing freed me from the damning bindings, but I’d have torn my body in half if it meant ending Darius’s sick punishment.
“You’re a monster,” I whispered. “This was why I went to Mom. To get her away from you. To save her before you torture her too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Darius studied the remote, squinting at the buttons in the darkness. “I love Bethany. She obeys me as a proper wife should. You, however, are more…difficult.”
“If you think this will make me behave—”
“Hush, Sarah. I forgot the best part of this DVD.”
He pressed the remote.
My world shattered.
Mike’s startled voice shouted, muffled and faint. “What the hell. What’s wrong with the engine?”
Darius patted my hand. “I also had access to the black box. I took the liberty of hiring someone to match the footage.”
“Son of a bitch!” Josiah’s cry broke over the pilot’s alert to the nearest tower.
I stilled.
Now I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t unhear their voices. Their confusion. Their fear as the plane pitched down and they faced their certain death.
“No no no!”
Mike.
“Jesus, fuck!”
Josiah.
They screamed in unison.
And then…the crunch of metal overtook them both.
The footage dimmed to black.
I couldn’t breathe.
The video began again.
The hum of the engines. The alert from the pilot.
“What the hell. What’s wrong with the engine?”
Mike.
“Son of a bitch!”
Josiah.
“No no no!”
Darius stood. He punched the volume until the sound hissed over the speakers and the screams of my dying brothers ached within my ears.
Then he tossed the remote on his abandoned seat, too far for me to reach.
The bowl of popcorn settled in my lap, and I tasted every greasy, butter coated kernel he forced into my mouth. My lips burned with salt. I couldn’t handle the charred, husked smell.
“You wanted to see your family, Sarah.”
The shaking video of the explosion framed Darius in a hell he deserved and every fire I would ensure consumed him.
“If only you had asked. You didn’t need to leave to see them.”
He watched the screen for a moment, smiling as my brothers screamed in terror. Then, he walked away, leaving me to suffer the looping footage, listen to their bloody screams, and endure the precise moment my family was destroyed in twisted metal and raging fire.
“Enjoy the movie, my dear.”
15
Nicholas
The world was too small a place to hide from my father, but it was still large enough to lose Sarah Atwood.
Max called me a little after two in the morning.
I pulled off the road, pitching my helmet into the dirt. I didn’t greet him. There wasn’t time.
<
br /> “How’s Reed?”
Max’s voice wavered—not out of remorse. He’d gone too long without a drink, and reality gave him a hangover worse than any vodka or whiskey.
“Twenty stitches.”
I didn’t swear, even if it was warranted. “What did you tell the hospital?”
“That he was fucking jumped. We said someone knew who he was, tried to take his wallet.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s pissed. And your fucking girlfriend’s gonna answer for it.”
I didn’t blame him for being angry. We all suffered from Sarah’s mistakes. But that meant I had to find her before my father did. Before she was beaten, bloodied, and killed.
If Sarah thought she could instigate the takeover of our company in an afternoon with one bad decision, she had a hell of a lot to learn about patience, commitment, and hiding her intentions.
Escaping the house did nothing to secure her strength—it only harmed Reed.
“Did you find her?” Max asked.
“No.”
“Should we keep looking?”
I tortured myself with that same question for the past three hours.
If Sarah found a place to stay, and if she could be trusted to remain there until the shares transferred to her, then it was best for her to stay quiet and lost.
But Sarah Atwood had a bad habit of tripping into the center of attention, and each time she blundered into the spotlight she risked ruining her life.
“She doesn’t want to be found,” Max said.
“She can’t hide from me.”
“She can’t hide from Dad either.”
Not without my help. Not unless she started to listen to me, to realize I had fucked up, but I still meant to protect her and love her.
But she hadn’t trusted me.
And the feeling was mutual.
“I’ll be at the house in half an hour. Get Reed there. He should probably sleep.”
“Reed’s not staying.”
Like hell he wasn’t. “If Dad thinks Reed split too, he’ll assume he’s helping Sarah. Then they’re both dead. Get him home and put him in bed. Handcuff him again if you have to. Reed isn’t leaving until we find Sarah.”