Takeover: The Complete Series

by Lana Grayson

  Darius Bennett patted Nicholas’s shoulder. His words slithered over me.

  “Son, allow me this first dance with our beautiful little Sarah.”

  I hadn’t answered, and Darius didn’t ask. He seized my hand and forced me onto the dance floor, snaking a cold arm around my waist—nearly too low for anything proper. The music swayed, and he tossed me off the beat.

  He was lucky I didn’t knee him in the groin. He was more fortunate that Mike restrained Josiah.

  Darius chuckled as I stiffly twirled under his hand. His words laced with poison.

  “My dear, let me be the first to welcome you to our family.”

  I shut the water off. The towel waited for me, flipped over the shower bar.

  Just the brush of the cotton against my hands revolted me.

  It was weird to hate terrycloth towels, but after the attack, even the simplest of memories manifested in strange ways. Darius groping me the day I swam with Reed was another moment when I might have prepared myself for the inevitable.

  Darius didn’t just steal my dignity. He chipped it away, piece by piece, touch by touch.

  Be a good girl, my dear…

  I wouldn’t drop the towel. For two months, I used the hairdryer to dry off instead of touching my own body. Not again. That freak-show ended now.

  I wrapped myself in the towel, grating it against my flushed skin until the sandpaper fibers streaked my legs blotchy and red.

  It sickened me, but I’d handle it. This was how I’d heal.

  Breathless, I pitched the damn towel against the wall.

  It shouldn’t have felt like a victory, but one fear was conquered. Only a few more to go.

  For the first time in days, I could meet my gaze in the mirror. And the girl looking back? She’d been screaming at me for weeks to stop running and start fighting.

  Two weeks ago I took a pregnancy test, and the results terrified me. But the pity and self-loathing ended now. My thoughts crept with disgusted memories and humiliated realizations, but hiding the truth made the pain worse.

  I wasted too many seconds of my life living in fear of Darius Bennett. In my waking hours and trapped in nightmares, he lurked, pinning me in harsh, unfamiliar helplessness.

  No more.

  Shock was a powerful tool, but denial rent through every mental defense. The pained cramping of my stomach heaving in morning sickness forced me to confront the truth.

  I was pregnant.

  I had no idea who the father was.

  But it wouldn’t make a difference. Darius Bennett took what he wanted, and his family achieved their monstrous ambitions. They stole me. Bred me. Hurt me.

  He did as he said he would, and now I had nothing more to fear from him. I looked into the eyes of the devil, endured his vile and disgusting lust, and I survived.

  He should have killed me. Instead, he underestimated me.

  He’d regret that mistake.

  First, I’d ruin the Bennett Corporation.

  Then I’d take his family.

  And after he was left crawling in the dirt in the remnants of his shattered pride? Only one of us would remain.

  I had more than enough reason to live. I didn’t plan for it to happen, it shouldn’t have been possible, but I was pregnant, and the child was completely and utterly innocent of all the insanity.

  No matter the father, I had to protect him. No one else deserved to be corrupted by this feud. But the only way to keep him safe would be to forever deny the Bennett blood in him. My son was an Atwood.

  Darius would never, ever touch him.

  And Nicholas?

  I turned from the mirror.

  Two months had passed since the night I spent in Nicholas’s arms, and I wished I could forget everything about those stolen moments. What should have been a beautiful, amazing, life-affirming passion was ruined. Stained. Lost in violence.

  I ran, and I hadn’t contacted him since then. I didn’t know what to say, how to tell him what happened. Maybe Darius already revealed it, using my pain to break his eldest son.

  Rage was an easy emotion and love far too complicated. It wasn’t the first time I wished for the simplicity of hate—Atwood against Bennett, prisoner against captor, woman against man.

  Falling in love with Nicholas endangered all of us, especially me. Staying in love with him? That selfish, naïve longing would ultimately threaten my child.

  And nothing would ever hurt my son.

  If it was a son.

  It had to be a boy, the male heir. I refused to think of any other possibility—not when the consequences and Darius’s retaliation were too horrible to imagine.

  Which meant it was time for revenge.

  For days I imagined my bloody retaliations, and the pure fantasy of hate kept me strong. Darius’s punishment wouldn’t be a slit to the throat or a bullet to the brain. That was a death far too easy for a demon like Darius. Too quick. Too impersonal.

  Hamlet chewed through my second laptop charging cable—a difficult expense when I avoided my credit cards and forms of ID. My battery dipped below forty percent, but I had everything I needed.

  Toxicology reports.

  Hazardous material screenings.

  Chemical compound listings. Material Safety Data Sheets. Environmental checklists.

  With the click of a mouse, and the cooperation of my attorney with one thinly veiled request, I possessed all the information on the Bennett agrochemical products. I had the formulas, research, and trade secrets Nicholas hadn’t let me read while they held me captive.

  I had more rights as stockholder than prisoner, and I realized that only hours after the attack. Once I managed to move, before I ran, before he came back, I emailed for the information.

  But I hadn’t opened the reports yet. The emails sat in my inbox, unopened, for two months. At first, my denial convinced me to run instead of work, to hide from the panic and shame. I hid from everything to protect the fragile part of me flickering with the remnants of my courage.

  That flicker burned just a bit hotter today.

  I opened the email and read the message Anthony Delvannis enclosed with the attached reports. Even through email, he was a direct, assertive, protective asshole.

  Where the hell are you? Call me immediately.

  Women tended to obey Anthony—and, after my time spent under Max’s hand, I understood it more. Unfortunately, the damn auto-read receipt popped an alert to his office when I opened the email. His response pinged on my screen now that he knew I was at the computer.

  Sarah, call me.

  Oh, this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Not with my damn attorney, and not with anyone else, including the man who deserved the truth.

  I deleted the email and skimmed over a report—the chemical compositions of the Bennett pesticides which earned the family their first billion.

  Anthony emailed again.

  Sarah, if you’re reading this, tell me you’re all right.

  Well, I wasn’t, but I wasn’t explaining why I went missing. The Bennetts probably covered up my disappearance on their own. Asthma. Illness. God only knew what other lies they’d spread from the darkness. I was just lucky neither Nicholas nor Darius had found me yet. Both would rip the sky from the ground and search through every hidden crack in the earth to find me.

  I continued to parse the attachments, hesitating over the lone financial report tucked within the chemical breakdowns. My father refused to use Bennett chemicals, and our multi-billion dollar farm became the sole challenger to the Bennett Empire. My father took pleasure in watching as the Bennetts squirmed, trying to explain why one of the most powerful agricultural families in the United States rejected the offers from the largest agrochemical business in the world.

  Now it was my turn to honor my father’s legacy and ruin the Bennett Corporation. But I wouldn’t do it by denying Darius Bennett. Their greatest achievement would be securing a claim over my farms.

  And I would give it to them if only so
I’d suffocate Darius in the very dirt he so longed to possess.

  The email pinged again.

  Sarah, it’s about your mother.

  My stomach heaved. I didn’t have room in my belly for guilt too, not while I carried enough of a secret. I hadn’t seen Mom in months, and my few messages to her were quick and superficial.

  I had nothing to say that wouldn’t break her.

  Your husband raped me.

  The baby I’m carrying might be his.

  I’m going to murder the only man you’ve ever loved and enjoy every second of it.

  And that was if she understood what was happening. How much time had passed.

  If Darius hadn’t hurt her while looking for me.

  I stuffed a saltine in my mouth and waited for the lurching to stop. It didn’t. I called Anthony anyway.

  I was a billionaire heiress, and I was making calls on pre-paid phones, hiding in tiny hotels, and traveling from city to city on what was left of the ten grand I pulled out of my account before bolting.

  Anthony answered, but his graveled voice wasn’t the mocha smoothness I longed to hear.

  “Sarah, are you okay.” He didn’t ask it as a question. After months of my complete silence, he was beyond pleasantries. Anthony demanded an answer. He wouldn’t be the only one. “Goddamn it, Sarah. Just say something.”

  “Hi.”

  They were the first words I spoke in a week to anyone but Hamlet and the hotel’s clerk. It didn’t sound like me, but, then again, I had lost, found, and destroyed myself so many times in the past weeks that I didn’t know which Sarah Atwood even answered. I wasn’t a timid girl any more. I wasn’t a captive.

  And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be a victim.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  No place I trusted myself to reveal. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

  “Sarah—”

  “I’m fine. What happened to my mother?”

  He hesitated. Every passing second burned a greater hatred in my chest. The only person I loathed more than Darius was me, especially if he hurt Mom because I ran.

  “She’s not well,” he said.

  “Does she realize it?”

  “No. Not entirely. But he realizes it.”

  “What’s he doing to her?”

  Anthony paused. “As far as I can tell, nothing. But he’s whispering in her ear. She’s trying to change her will.”

  “Of course she is,” I said. “But power of attorney passed to me.”

  “And Bennett is challenging it.”

  Goddamn it. Darius struck at me, luring me from my hiding by using Mom. Only he would be monstrous enough to place a sick woman in the middle of our feud.

  “What the hell does he want? She doesn’t have any control over the farm or corporation.”

  “You tell me, Sarah. What’s his game?”

  “How would I know?” His name choked in my throat. I forced myself to speak it anyway. “I don’t pretend to understand the cesspool that is Darius’s mind.”

  “Figure it out. He might get the POA if Bethany’s daughter refuses to show at a court date.”

  “Mom won’t change her will.”

  “You should make sure of it. Where are you?”

  It was a mistake to call. “Email me any updates. I’ll stay in touch. I gotta go.”

  “Christ, Sarah, you are an Atwood! You can’t just disappear like this!” Anthony’s voice seared through the phone. “It was bad enough when you were lost in the Bennett Estate. And don’t tell me you were there to recover from an asthma attack.” He interrupted me with a grunt. “No one’s heard from you in two months. That includes the Bennetts.”

  “I said I was fine.”

  Anthony swore. “Don’t feed me that bullshit. You dropped off the grid the instant the Bennett stock passed into your possession. That doesn’t make sense. You are the largest shareholder outside their family. You practically own the company.”

  And the shares weren’t worth the sorrow. I stayed quiet.

  “Nicholas Bennett stormed into my office two weeks ago.”

  My chest instantly tightened.

  “He demanded information about you. Where you were. The last time we spoke. Where you were staying. He nearly had a coronary when I said I had no goddamned idea where you went.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know what he’s planning, but Nicholas will burn your fields to find you, Sarah.”

  I believed him, but not for the reasons Anthony feared. “I had an agreement with Nicholas, but…the circumstances changed. I’ll deal with him.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Sarah? Just talk to me. Something is wrong.”

  “It’s under control.”

  “You hate Darius Bennett. You’d let your lungs collapse before accepting his help, but you move to his estate because of an asthma attack?”

  “I said it was fine!”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Silence.

  How was I supposed to answer that?

  Yes. Constantly. Every moment of every day?

  Every second I spent with Nicholas shredded my soul and blinded me with a deceptive peace. I trapped myself within his control. But did he hurt me? Was that abuse?

  His devotion wasn’t anything like the sadism that hardened Darius’s heart and other more repulsive parts of him.

  Nicholas hadn’t hurt me, but, because of him, I now understood pain. I experienced it in more ways than just heartbreak, stolen futures, and submissions forced from an unwilling body.

  “Sarah.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “I control enough of the Bennett Corporation to influence Darius. I can either use that power to get more money, or we can end this once and for all.”

  “End what?”

  I swallowed. “The feud between our families.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “Tell my acting CEO to get me a quote on how much it would cost to use all Bennett agrochemicals on my fields. Fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, everything.”

  “What?”

  “Have them email the proposal. Absolutely anything the Bennett Corporation provides on an agrochemical level, I want to use on my fields.”

  “Sarah, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And don’t tell them I requested the information.”

  Anthony sighed. “What are you doing? This isn’t a peace offering. You’d rather those crops withered and died than ever spray with Bennett products.”

  “You said it yourself. I’m a shareholder in the Bennett Corporation—so powerful I practically own the company. Shouldn’t I use the products of my investment? What better spokesperson could the Bennetts find?”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Get me the quote. We’ll move on it once I have the information.”

  “Your board won’t like this.”

  “Unlike the Bennetts, my father kept control of his investors. They’ll do as I say, and, if they don’t, they can’t overrule my decision.” I swallowed. “Nor will they want to…once they see what I plan to do.”

  “You need to talk to me. Really talk to me. You aren’t well, I can hear it. Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m doing what I always meant to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m tearing apart the Bennett Empire, beginning with their Board of Directors.”

  “But—”

  “And once they’re gone, Darius Bennet will pay for the sins he committed.”

  “Darius Bennett didn’t kill your father.”

  “No.” My voice faded. “He’s done worse than that.”

  “Sarah—”

  “Get me those quotes. I’ll explain it all later.”

  Anthony didn’t take the order well, but I hung up and turned off the phone to prevent him from calling again. Instead, I focused on the reports with their unfamiliar c
hemical compounds and reactions. I took enough chemistry and chemical engineering classes to be dangerous, but I specialized in genetics. I wanted to work in genetics.

  The Bennett stole that dream. And, as a result, they’d lose everything. A few un-sprouted seeds and ruined fields would destroy Darius Bennett’s reputation.

  One of the reports bore Nicholas’s signature.

  This would harm him too.

  But he knew it was a possibility. He knew what would happen when he promised his love, but still tried every night to breed me.

  He succeeded, and it wasn’t a beautiful creation made by a loving couple. It was a complete disaster with consequences that would endanger us all.

  It couldn’t be Darius’s baby.

  But if it was?

  I’d hide Darius’s crime. I’d bury the truth. I had no choice.

  Twenty year old Sarah Atwood, raped and impregnated by her step-father? The baby was the heir to two multi-billion dollar empires. He would be important, influential, and nothing would be denied to him. If the truth were revealed, the entire world would realize what happened.

  Nicholas would know.

  The reports blurred, but it wasn’t tears. My breath sharpened, stinging as it caught within my uncooperative lungs.

  Not again.

  The clinic said the inhaler was safe for both me and the baby, but I hated taking the puff, especially when it wasn’t allergies or exercise that caused the attack.

  It was frustration. Anger.

  The tightness in my chest still felt like Darius’s weight crushing me. Weeks had passed, and that wheezing pain hadn’t healed. And it wouldn’t. Not while I ran. Not while I hid. Not while I cowered and Darius walked free, content with his crime and unaffected by the trauma it caused.

  It was the second bad attack that week. The breathless cough scared me, but my heaving sickness made it worse. I collapsed on the bathroom floor, gagging and choking and hating everything about my shuddering, silent cry.

  I threw up. I couldn’t breathe. I choked. My stomach lurched.

  I gagged and wheezed until my vision darkened and the agonized headache split my skull.

  Minutes passed as I lay crumpled on the cold, damp floor of an unrated motel. Mold grew in the corners. The radiator smelled of burnt dust. Hamlet whined next to me, thumping a tail against my thigh as he waited for me to peel myself from the tile.