Takeover: The Complete Series

by Lana Grayson

  The injection site from the fertility drug ached. “Every day you give me reason to hate you.”

  Nicholas held me tighter.

  “Do you hate me now?”

  I wished I hesitated. Wished I had any other answer. Wished us away from the estate, to a place where we could be free and happy and safe.

  “I love you more than ever.”

  I rested, panting, nuzzling against him in breathless amazement. His hands caressed me, rubbing my goose bumps and creating more. His touch grazed my tummy. I held him there, imbedded within me, sharing a moment of hope.

  I knew the little life in me belonged to us.

  I closed my eyes. “Just for tonight.”

  “Tonight.” His voice deepened. “Tomorrow. The next day.”

  “Just…tonight.” I could think of nothing beyond a heartbeat yet. “Just now, and we can lose ourselves.”

  “I’m not lost, Sarah. Not with you.”

  And neither was I.

  But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t risk it.

  “Just for tonight.” I pressed my lips against his before I whispered any confessions that would tangle us deeper together.

  But the words felt wrong.

  The implication terrible and aching.

  I didn’t want tonight.

  I wanted it to be us.

  Just for…forever.

  13

  Sarah

  Nothing good came from calls before sunrise.

  My phone buzzed against the nightstand, but I tangled within Nicholas’s arms. The sheets caught my legs. I rolled with a groan.

  Naked.

  Of course I was naked. Naked, sticky, and completely and thoroughly humming with a newfound strength. Rejuvenated.

  Loved.

  Confused.

  One touch was impossible with Nicholas. One night a dangerous proposition. If I wasn’t careful, it’d become all mornings with him.

  And maybe that’s what I wanted. What I needed. For both of us.

  All three of us.

  Bumper didn’t make mornings fun, but the call made me equally queasy. I bumbled for the phone. Hamlet rolled back over. Nick kissed my shoulder.

  I wasn’t ready to confront him yet.

  I answered, but Mom rambled before I greeted her.

  “—I can’t tell, this bottle is empty—”

  “Mom?”

  “If your father were here, this never would have happened.”

  It was too early to talk about Dad. Did she have any clue what time it was? Did I? I squinted at the windows, but Nicholas slept with blackout curtains in the peaceful dark.

  He’d like sleeping on the farm.

  Not the thought to have. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

  The bedside clock read 5:30 AM. I had no idea when we finally fell asleep.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  Her voice shrilled in confusion. “I just can’t see what I took.”

  “Took where?”

  “These pills shouldn’t need to be refilled yet.”

  My stomach flipped. I clutched the phone. “What pills?”

  “I must have taken too many.”

  And my stomach flopped. I slid from the bed and searched for anything to cover me. Of course my clothes from last night weren’t in the bedroom.

  How did we even get into the bedroom?

  “Mom, which medication did you take?” I asked. “Was it for blood pressure?”

  “I don’t think so…”

  “The anxiety meds?”

  “No, of course not.” Her tone shifted, sharpened. “I’m not an idiot, Sarah.”

  “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  Nicholas slipped from the bed and pulled on a pair of slacks. I rummaged through my bag to find a dress and forced it over my head. It caught over my breasts.

  And then again on my waist.

  Uh-oh.

  I smoothed it as I raced to find a scrunchie. “Mom, are you okay?”

  “I can’t remember when I took these pills.”

  That was the most terrifying and frustrating answer she might have given, and it killed me that I didn’t know either. I didn’t just hide from the Bennetts for two months. I avoided my own mother, calling her from pre-paid cellphones to say I loved her.

  She didn’t realize I was gone.

  She hardly remembered I hadn’t lived at the farm for the past seven months.

  I couldn’t risk it. I had to check on her. I rushed to the bathroom to brush my hair and teeth.

  “Mom, I’m in San Jose. I’m hours from Cherrywood Valley. Do you need to call an ambulance?”

  “What for?”

  I dropped the brush and groaned. “Because you took the pills.”

  “What pills?”

  “Mom.”

  “Sarah Meredith Atwood, I don’t know who raised you to take that tone with your mother, but it certainly wasn’t me.”

  I lowered the phone for a cleansing breath. She sounded downright mean.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Mom wasn’t sick before Dad died. At least, not that I noticed. She suffered through his chemo with the rest of us, but his death hit her hard. And then, once Josiah and Mike died, she became a completely different person. I hired chefs to cook, a maid to clean. She fired them all. I was the only one she let care for her, the only one to stop the bleeding when she tried to hurt herself.

  Except for Darius.

  “Call the doctor and go lay down,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  She’d forget the instant she hung up. I called our physician for her, redialing twice before she picked up in a groggy haze. I explained the situation, and the doctor promised she’d be there within the hour.

  Sooner than me. I bound my hair into a pony tail and turned to Nicholas.

  He deserved an explanation. A moment of gratitude. A declaration of my love. Anything to explain how much the previous night meant to me, and how difficult it was to even consider what I was supposed to do now.

  “There’s a plane waiting at the airport.” He skipped the complicated talk and offered me comfort instead. “We can be on the ground in Cherrywood Valley in an hour and a half.”

  “We?”

  “You aren’t going alone.”

  “I’ll take my guard,” I said.

  Robert, the beefy guy with a personality as scarred as the injuries he earned from a tour in Afghanistan, seemed solid enough to deal with my dementia-aggravated mother.

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Fine. I didn’t have time to argue. Bumper wasn’t the only thing unsettling me this morning. I slipped on a pair of shoes and burst from the bedroom.

  Reed groggily rose from the sofa, tossing his blanket to the floor—over the pile of our clothes, wrinkled and discarded.

  “Hey.” His wink was thoroughly inappropriate, and, at any other time, I might have giggled. “What have you two been doing?”

  “Nothing.” I answered too quickly. “I gotta go home. My mom might be in trouble.”

  Nicholas buttoned his suit jacket. “We’ll be back. Find Max. Tell him to keep his head down.”

  Reed wandered into the kitchen, bare-chested and in no hurry to dress. He rubbed his neck. The wounds darkening his skin hadn’t yet healed. His eye looked scary red from the blown blood vessel.

  I hated this. Darius knew I was pregnant. He couldn’t touch me. But my step-brothers?

  He’d kill his own flesh and blood if it meant he’d have a chance to take me and the baby.

  “Stay safe?” I hoped to sound more certain.

  Reed grinned. “For you? Anything.”

  My bodyguard met me at the airport, herding us into a chartered jet. I tried calling Mom before we took off, but she didn’t answer. Last time she lost her phone, we found it in the bathroom cabinet. I hoped that was all that happened. I sighed, head in my hands.

  “Sarah.” Nic
holas called to me. The cushy seats of the plane were separated by a decent amount of space. Dad never let the family buy a private plane. Mike and Josiah learned why the hard way. I let my hand dangle over the armrest. His fingers brushed mine. “She’s okay.”

  “I just didn’t think I’d be taking care of both Mom and Bumper.”

  “You won’t do it alone.”

  “Not now, Nick.”

  “You will never do it alone.”

  Even if Nicholas wasn’t talking about him, even if he meant I could hire maids and nannies, private chefs and home care nurses, I wasn’t ready to think about Bumper in our life. Not until I was assured we’d be safe. Not until Darius was gone.

  How much longer could I wait for that day?

  The plane landed after an hour, and a limo waited for us off the tarmac. Anything was better than making a three hour drive, but my fingers beat a quick and unsteady rhythm against the seat belt as we rode. I didn’t wait for the driver to park once we reached the farm. I launched from the back, earning both Nicholas’s and Robert’s shout as they hurried to follow.

  The front door was unlocked. I hoped that meant the doctor was already inside.

  “Mom?” I shouted. “Mom, where are you?”

  The Atwood farm was nothing like the Bennett Estate. Decently sized, but not the sprawling gluttony of money, stone, and power. I checked Mom’s bedroom first, but her bed was empty, perfectly made, even down to the cozy pillows stashed at the headboard.

  But the boxes were new.

  A half dozen boxes stacked against the wall. Her dresser and wall were cleared of our pictures, and her closet was emptied of clothing and hangers. I spun, calling her name.

  “Mom!”

  The kitchen light glowed fuzzy and warm. I crashed down the stairs and turned the corner.

  “Sarah, what in the world are you doing?” Mom frowned, lowering a pot of coffee. I stilled as she patted Darius’s arm. “You scared us half to death.”

  Us.

  She hadn’t said us on the phone.

  She hadn’t said Darius was there, sitting with her, sharing breakfast like he was a normal husband and not the antichrist himself.

  Like he hadn’t kidnapped, beaten, and raped her only daughter.

  At least I took pride in the new stitches on his brow.

  Nicholas passed to my side after dismissing Robert. He edged me behind his arm. I didn’t retreat.

  I only wondered what Nicholas would do, face-to-face with the monster, now that he knew.

  Darius’s smile widened with welcomed perversion. He didn’t bother acknowledging his son. His eyes never left my body.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice rasped with breathless panic and threat.

  “Good morning, my dear.”

  “What are you doing here!”

  “I’m enjoying a morning cup of coffee with my wife, of course.”

  “Get out.”

  Mom sighed. “Sarah, behave yourself. You’re making a scene in front of your brother. Hello, Nick. How did the soup recipe turn out?”

  I didn’t let him answer. “Mom, you don’t understand.”

  “Sarah, you’re being rude.”

  “Let her be. Our Sarah is a bit emotional now.” Darius’s voice blackened, coarse and raw with a dark intent. “Isn’t that right, Nicholas?”

  I held my aching breath, but Nicholas didn’t react.

  “Mom, are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’d be a lot better if all these people weren’t coming and going at all hours of the morning. Honestly, Sprout. Where is your head? You’ve tracked mud all through the house. Take those shoes off.”

  She was fine.

  Not sick. Not panicking. Not fluttering with too many medications.

  What the hell happened?

  “Mom, you called me two hours ago.”

  “I did?”

  “You said you took too much of your medication.”

  “When?”

  Darius curled his arm around her wait. “Darling, I think you’ve forgotten. Just a bit ago, when you woke up, you called Sprout. Before we opened the new prescriptions from the doctor.”

  Mom laughed. “Oh, right, right. Gosh, I am not human before I have my coffee. Oh, well. Sprout, Nick. Join us for breakfast then. I have a quiche baking in the oven.”

  The only thing that turned my stomach more than sharing a meal with Darius was the thought of gooey, parsley stuffed baked eggs.

  I ignore Darius’s stare. “You said you took too many of your pills. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m a grown woman, Sprout. I think I can manage my own medications.”

  That sharp tone again. I hardly recognized it. Darius drew her hand to his lips, gently kissing her fingers. She seemed to calm down.

  I’d murder him. Cold-blooded. Raging. Uncompromising murder.

  “Your mother was a little confused.” His voice stalked me, slithering like a snake through the grass and enjoying every brazen moment of his hunt. “But Bethany, some of your medications are quite potent, and you know how easy it is to accidentally take one too many. Clumsy, really.” He paused. “Fortunately, I was here to protect you.”

  It wasn’t fortune.

  It was threat.

  He couldn’t touch me, but he could target those closest to me. My mother. Nicholas. Reed and Max. He would murder his children and harm his own wife if it meant securing the future he desired.

  A future with my son.

  I’d never let it happen. Darius Bennett was little more than a bad nightmare, a fleeting memory in a life scored with darkness, shadow, and pain. I survived before, and now it was far easier to withstand his evil. Especially as the safety of those I loved depended on me to stay strong.

  “There are boxes in your room,” I said. “Why?”

  Darius answered for her, as though my mother had no voice, as though he had the right to speak in her stead. “Great news, actually. I asked, and your mother finally accepted.”

  “Accepted…what.”

  Mom squeezed Darius’s hand, like they shared a sweet secret.

  “This house is so lonely, Sprout, with you and…” Her voice broke. “And the boys gone. I decided it was time to leave this darkness behind and start a new phase of my life.”

  I edged closer to Nicholas. “What phase?”

  “I’m moving to the Bennett Estate with Darius.”

  Oh, no.

  Darius nodded. “I too am realizing how lonely a house can be without one’s children to fill it…at least, for the moment.”

  Now I would be sick. I shook my head.

  “You can’t leave the farm,” I said.

  “Sprout, there’s nothing here for me.” Mom curled her hand around her coffee mug. Darius dared to wrap his arm over her shoulders, pressed his gnarled fingers into her skin. “I can’t come into the kitchen every morning, look outside, and see…”

  Their graves.

  But that was why someone had to be here.

  For Josiah and Mike. Because the farm needed an Atwood, and not just the eternal vigil of Dad’s headstone watching over the land he worked, tended, and bled for.

  My vision of Dad had been shattered in the past few months, but now I understood him more than ever. The Atwood name required hard work and sacrifice to protect the land. My family, its legacy, was fragile and defenseless on its own. Kindness and understanding and compassion didn’t protect one’s interests.

  It took hatred. Violence.

  Vengeance.

  A daughter’s touch, even if Dad never trusted me with such responsibility.

  “You can’t leave,” I said. “And you’re not moving to the Bennett Estate.”

  “Your mother made her choice,” Darius said.

  My chest heaved with a lost breath. “You don’t speak for her. You made the choice for her.”

  His eyes darkened, thick with treachery and lacking the basic human qualities that separated man from mud. “It seems I must do that ofte
n with Atwood women.”

  Nicholas still said nothing, brushing his hand against mine when I stepped forward to face the monster.

  “She isn’t going,” I said.

  Mom sighed. “Sarah, I respect the sentimentality, but really. You haven’t been home for so long. You wouldn’t understand. I want to be with my husband, to enjoy the time I have left.”

  Limited time if she dared to trust a man like Darius Bennett.

  “Please, Mom. I’m asking you to reconsider.”

  “There’s no discussion. I won’t be lonely anymore, and I won’t leave Darius all alone in his big, drafty house.”

  He smiled as if he could comprehend the gentleness behind the emotion. “It isn’t drafty, love.”

  “Too big. Ostentatious.”

  “I’ve always wanted the best for my family.” He nodded Nicholas. “For all of my sons.”

  Sick, depraved bastard. My breathing ached, and every exhale stuck in my throat. Not what I needed.

  Not a weakness I should have ever shown Darius.

  “Sarah, my dear. You really should sit.”

  I hated that tone. The false sincerity. The sing-song pretention of a demon pretending to be a father. I bit back the profanity.

  Darius aimed for the kill.

  “Someone in your condition shouldn’t be rushing around all hours of the morning.”

  Son. Of. A. Bitch.

  “What condition?” Mom worried too easily. “Sarah, is it your asthma again?”

  “Yes,” I answered before Darius could. “But I’m fine.”

  “Now, now.” His voice cracked like the snap of a belt over broken skin. “Sarah, this is your mother. She’ll understand.”

  Mom was agitated again. She stood, burning her hands as the coffee spilled over her mug. I rushed to offer her a towel. Her eyes dulled, but she stared with that same fierce gaze I remembered as a child, when she found the hidden midterm I stashed under my bed revealing the accidental D in my eighth grade Algebra II course.

  “Sarah,” she warned. “I have endured you stomping through this house, snapping at me and dishonoring my husband, your step-father. I will not tolerate you keeping secrets from me about your health. I am your mother. At least permit me the common courtesy to not speak in riddles while you stand around my kitchen table without even offering to get your brother any coffee to drink.” She exhaled. “Honestly. You have the mannerisms of your father sometimes. It’s like I’m looking at Mark.”