Takeover: The Complete Series

by Lana Grayson

  “Max is a better pilot than that,” Reed said. “He wouldn’t crash…no one could survive that.”

  Fire tinted the world a terrible orange—charred and ashen and cratered with pitted rage.

  No. It wasn’t about survival. It wasn’t about death.

  The flames didn’t carry Darius Bennett home.

  They heralded his return.

  “He’s alive.” My words blazed with despair and finality. “He survived.”

  Nicholas pushed Reed, shaking him from the trance that trapped him within the flaring orange. “You go look for Max.”

  Reed didn’t answer. He bolted into the house, sprinting to the stairs to reach his brother.

  I knew what he would find, and it wouldn’t be Max. Only evil. Only a monster strengthened by the hell he wrought on earth.

  Nicholas pinned my arms at my side. “Sarah, stay here—”

  “He’s alive.” I shared Nicholas’s gaze, fierce and gold, fueled by the same flames that roared from above. “I can feel it. Darius is alive.”

  “He’s not—”

  “I was wrong to let him go. I thought it would end without me. I was wrong.”

  “Sarah, you aren’t making sense.”

  “He killed my brothers.” I broke down and screamed the word. “Josiah and Mike and Max! He killed my brothers! And now he’s waiting for me.”

  “Sarah, no.”

  “I thought we could escape it, but I was wrong. This feud consumes us. Every minute of every day. People get hurt. People die. It ends now. Like it should have ended before.”

  “What end, Sarah?” Nicholas grabbed my hand. “There is no end to this. There’s only more blood and murder and nightmare.”

  “That’s all there’s ever been!” I didn’t let him hold me. Didn’t let him stop me. “There has to be something else in this life!”

  “There is! There’s us!” He followed, shouting, forcing me to listen to words I couldn’t handle and a truth I refused to accept. “Stay here. Wait for me.”

  “He’s not yours to kill.”

  “He’s isn’t anyone’s to kill! He’s only a monster to those who let him control them. His death won’t bring your brothers back. It won’t save Max.” His voice cracked over the name, jarred and broken. “He has a power over you because you let him possess it.”

  Then why shouldn’t I be the one to end it?

  His power, the fear, the rage. The feud between our families.

  It answered in vengeance and revenge and blood.

  I had no other way to accept what had happened. I couldn’t grieve and mourn and hate if I didn’t kill Darius myself.

  Because otherwise, the forgiveness and pain and healing had to come from me. And no matter how much I survived, no matter how many times I faced the devil and scarred from his touch and stood up after I had been tossed to the ground, I wasn’t strong enough to accept what happened.

  The Bennetts stole my family.

  They humiliated me, hurt me, raped me.

  They forced me to betray my name.

  I loved them.

  I hated them.

  And the obsession consumed me just as the fires chewed through the barren estate filled with vile truths and bloody memories.

  I needed Darius’s death because I had nothing else.

  The flames leapt through the rooms and halls, feasting on the wooden frames, warped and rotted beneath the pristine stones. The fire spread too quickly. Rolling, thick smoke poured from the floors above. The electricity popped, plunging the estate into unnatural blackness.

  I rushed for the stairs.

  Damned my lungs. My coughing. The aching agony.

  Reed’s gun trembled in my hands, loaded with a terrible purpose.

  Nicholas followed me through the estate, his hands wrapping over me as I faltered, tripping over the darkness and sinking to my knees in a blinding cough. The hacking wheeze dizzied my vision and wracked me in a quick pain.

  I didn’t stop. Nicholas called for me, and the desperation in his voice turned to a shout.

  I knew where to find Darius.

  And he waited for me.

  I burst through the parlor, a smoking room, where the Bennetts had first captured me and forced me to present myself, my body, my very pride. The room was dark, haloed by the only contained fire in the estate, tucked within the mammoth stone hearth.

  Darius limped, bloody and bruised and weakened. He hobbled, almost broken, covered in burns. He survived the crash by a curse of pure hate and sin.

  He turned from the mantle, rearranging the delicate garland that had reserved a hallowed place for a silver framed picture I thought he displayed only to insult me.

  His wedding picture with Mom.

  The frame clutched in his swollen, gnarled hand, and the image of their first kiss as husband and wife defiled everything good and holy that existed in marriage.

  Why had he come to save it?

  In a burning mansion of extravagance and fortune, Darius saved a silver framed photograph. A memory.

  A memento of an Atwood.

  The gun rose. Trembled in my hand. Smoke coiled within the estate, blackening the grand hall and threatening to descend from the upper levels.

  What was I doing here? Endangering myself? Endangering Bumper.

  I chased a specter of blood. I hunted for vengeance.

  I channeled my father.

  This wasn’t the end I wanted.

  “This isn’t about the feud anymore,” I said. “It’s not about Atwood and Bennett. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not avenging an evil or forgiving your sins.”

  I pointed the gun at him.

  “This is about me.”

  “Then perhaps your aim is off, my dear.”

  It wasn’t. I tightened my finger over the trigger. “This obsession is all that’s mine. It’s my true inheritance. I’ve done nothing in this world except serve my family’s pride. But there is none. Not for the Atwoods. Not for the Bennetts. I’ve honored bloodshed and misery and hatred. I’ve sacrificed everything for this pain.”

  Darius hadn’t moved, couldn’t move with the injuries that should have claimed his life with his son’s. The slimy graze of his words coiled over my arms, my neck.

  “Then end it, Sarah.”

  “There is no end. There will never be an end. My brothers are dead. Your son is dead.”

  “There is no rationalizing vengeance, Sarah,” Darius said. “It simply is. It’s owed. It’s redemption of one’s failures and a responsibility to family—the most important element in this godforsaken world.”

  “I won’t serve the burdens of those dead and buried anymore.” I swore. “I spent my life living in my father’s shadow, answering for his crimes and damning myself to his sins. Everything I did, everything I ever was, became an extension of this violent feud. My father didn’t give me a purpose in this world. Only a task. I had to make a male heir in case the worst happened and there were no more real Atwoods to protect our name.”

  “And you couldn’t even do that right,” Darius hissed.

  Nicholas answered for me. “The child is no mistake.”

  “The child is worthless.”

  “She’s better than all of us,” Nicholas said. “Safe from this madness. She’s innocent.”

  Darius scowled. “No one is innocent in this world.”

  “Then I’ll change the world or protect her from it.” The gun trembled my hand, despite how tightly I clenched against the grip. “She’ll never know this rage, this obsession, this false pride and demand for blood. No one deserves a life created just to end another.”

  A heavy, spine-tingling groan of wood against stone roared through the estate. From above, a dangerous shatter and thudding heralded a collapse. The ceiling rattled, dislodging chunks of plaster. Thick smoke rolled the stairs behind us.

  Was Reed trapped upstairs?

  The flames in the fireplace burst quick, pulsing and hot. The threatening flicker of orange pierced
the darkness of the hall with a ghastly glow.

  We had little time.

  And the gun had yet to be fired.

  Was this what I wanted? I choked over the grimy air, clutching my belly as Bumper quieted and ceased kicking in my stress and fatigue.

  I carried a child. I held a gun. My prison burned to the ground around me.

  And my vengeance threatened to consume us all.

  The man I loved shielded me from falling debris, and the man I hated baited me with a sick grin and eager posture.

  Max was dead. Reed was missing. The child cradled too still within me.

  Tears rolled over my cheek.

  “I won’t fear you anymore,” I said. “I won’t fear this. I won’t bear the guilt of loving a Bennett. In my life I’ve mourned the wrong people and suffered because of the hatred of others.”

  I exhaled, coughing, aching, trapped.

  “I won’t hate anymore.”

  “You can’t help but hate,” Darius whispered. “It’s in your blood, just as it’s in mine. You will never be free, my dear. Kill me. I’ll live on. Every time you hold the child. When she cries in the night. When she nurses at your breast. Every sacrifice you make to care for her innocence, you’ll remember how I won. You carry a Bennett, Sarah. And every second she spends within your womb will eat you alive.”

  The gun fired, but I didn’t aim for his blackened heart or the perverted, twisted mind that existed only to plot my inevitable torture.

  I aimed for his right leg. His hip.

  And he fell in the crippled agony Max endured every day of his life.

  “You can’t threaten me with a daughter I love.” I watched as Darius limped and swore, bleeding his way into the leather wingback before the fireplace. His body cast in shadow, writhed in the growing flames bursting from the hearth. “I won’t let you hurt me anymore. I won’t let your name, your life, become my obsession.”

  Darius pulled the weapon he concealed from his pocket. Nicholas moved, but I didn’t flinch.

  “I bear enough of your scars,” I whispered. “I won’t let your blood stain me too.”

  Darius didn’t aim for us. He looked through me, his stare forever searing a darkening, terrible place within my mind, my memory, my heart.

  “You will never be free of this.” His every word fell upon us as a curse. “You wanted to start your new family?”

  The gun pointed.

  Fired.

  Shattered through the study’s window.

  A burst of cold air flooded the room, howling as it coiled within the heat of the flames. The rushing oxygen punched over us. The fire from the hall trapped us within the parlor as it twisted, danced, and exploded.

  Nicholas shouted, shielding me from the burst of heat, smoke, and ravenous inferno.

  Darius’s laugh rattled within the fire, calling him home.

  “Then, my dear, we will die as a family.”

  26

  Nicholas

  We weren’t dying here.

  Sarah fell to her knees. The fires and smoke poisoned the estate with ash, grit, and the charring memories of my home.

  Except it was never a home.

  Never a place of comfort or love, warmth or acceptance.

  I remembered nothing but pain within the smoldering halls. Places where I had been lashed and the secret corners were we hid until Mom took us by the hand and led us to him.

  The monster, sadist, and brutal tyrant filled the estate with a presence more frightening, more terrible than any flames or churning smoke. I’d have taken the burns and blisters over his expectations.

  The fire surged through the bottom level of the mansion. I hauled Sarah to her feet. She wavered. I plucked her from the ground and tucked her into my arms instead. She might have protested, might have fought, but the wracking coughs and tears choked her beyond anything safe for her or our child.

  My father didn’t move.

  His leg bled, spreading a puddle of crimson against his trousers, the chair, the floor.

  He made no attempt to flee. His wedding picture rested in his lap.

  No more expectations. No more threats. He waited for the fires.

  And only his clutching, veined hand gripping the chair revealed the consuming agony that seared through his body. I prayed nothing would remain once the fire purged through his carcass.

  Sarah struggled against my hold—either to turn and ensure the fires feasted on his corpse or because she’d discovered what I feared.

  We were trapped.

  The estate erupted into searing flames. Paint melted on the walls. The crystal chandeliers whistled as they fell, crashing against the stone floors in an explosion of glass and gold. A vortex of heat and violence whipped through the upper floors. Sarah clutched at me as a plank from the ceiling fell. I spun with her, dodging the cracking, failing ceiling as it all came undone.

  As everything ruined in flame and death.

  And she couldn’t scream. Couldn’t even cough.

  I burst through the hall, but thick smoke concealed the passage through the rear of the estate. The smoke blinded me, and the heat prickled my skin. Sarah pointed, her motions stealing what precious breath she managed within the crumbling inferno. The path behind us blocked with a wave of fire.

  It wasn’t ending like this.

  I lowered her to the floor and wrapped her tightly in my jacket, covering her soft skin. She gagged and sputtered, but I didn’t let her protest. I gathered her in my arms, rushed to the flames, and jumped through, bounding to the front door.

  The heat seared through my shirt, and a lick of flame singed the sleeve. A biting pain surged over my leg. I shouldered the door and sprinted outside, lowering Sarah to the grass as my own lungs seared.

  She beat at my arms. Hot embers burned, nearly engulfing my shirt. I forced the inhaler into her hands.

  “Reed—” She panted in a choked rasp.

  “Stay here!” I yelled. “Listen to me this time. Don’t fucking move. I’ll find him.”

  Her hand cradled her belly. I gently rubbed the little swell, still too little and new. Bumper didn’t kick. The thought shattered my courage. I relied on pure adrenaline to move.

  “This doesn’t end with us separated, Sarah. I love you.”

  The asthma took her words. She touched me instead, brushing a hand over my cheek.

  Her hand was burned. A fierce red streak over her fingers.

  I’d never forgive myself.

  I’d never forgive him.

  I took my jacket and burst inside the estate, the material wrapped over my head as I pushed through the flames once more. Heading upstairs bordered on suicide, but I couldn’t leave my youngest brother to die.

  Not when Max was already dead.

  The thought slayed me—a chill in the suffocating heat.

  I crawled the stairs, slinking low to the stone and breathing shallow gasps of the charring wood, grit, and dust.

  We presented the estate as pristine at all times, in all ways. Never a speck of dirt. No children’s toys beyond our bedrooms, no rough-housing on the furniture, no running to scuff the floors. The estate was kept immaculate.

  And now, the filth rotting it from the inside was exposed to the world.

  The Bennett Estate harbored a vile core, a crumbling, blackened heart that feasted on the misery and pain of others. Greed was praised as ambition, and success disguised through sadism. The tenants of family and power corrupted our dignity into the pretense of honor.

  I had none.

  But I’d regain it. Find it. Keep it.

  Teach my daughter the true meaning of honesty, integrity, and family.

  The north wing of the house had yet to be consumed, but the smoke smeared everything in foul, polluted grime. I choked as I ran, blinking through stinging, watery eyes.

  “Reed!”

  Nothing. He wouldn’t hear me. The walls groaned and shuddered, popping with boiling heat and creaking through an old foundation. Even the stone heated to the
touch.

  I couldn’t save this estate.

  I sprinted through the hall, aiming for a far staircase leading up and up, further into the swirling, frenzied mass of fire. Everything crumbled and stained, peeled and crushed.

  It was supposed to be mine.

  It was meant to be mine.

  The estate and wealth, the prestige and pride.

  I was Nicholas Bennett, and this was intended to be my legacy and my empire. It blackened to ash and collapsed upon the weight of the ideal and the dishonesty of the dream. Corruption fanned the flames.

  But my future?

  It was safe.

  My life, my future, my everything was spared from the fires.

  Sarah and the baby waited outside. They were the only riches, the only empire, the only future I needed.

  I kicked the door to the roof. The air wept with toxic moisture, thick and heavy with the consuming stench of fuel. Reed retreated from the wreckage, crashing over charred metal. He screamed, begging for our brother to answer.

  Max didn’t respond.

  He wouldn’t.

  My stomach heaved. I ran for my brother, pulling Reed from the unrecognizable carnage. He fought me, punching, kicking, flailing from my grasp to rush at the fires again. His hands burned on smoldering metal. He swore through the pain, tossing flaming debris aside.

  The roof cracked, a warning fate delivered only because the devil had swept back to hell.

  “Reed, we have to go!”

  He swiped at me, like losing one brother would justify attacking his remaining family.

  “Reed!”

  “Max!” His voice grated, raw and muffled with agony. “Max!”

  “Come on!” I pulled his arms, hauling him away. Reed fought me, refusing to leave the wreckage, screaming for a man who no longer existed. “Reed! The roof is going to collapse!”

  “Max!”

  Inconsolable.

  Desperate.

  I forced him to run, tripping his legs backwards, denying him the chance to throw his life away too.

  “For Christ’s sake!” I shouted. “We have to get out of here. Sarah’s in trouble!”

  Reed shuddered. Her name ran through us both, a fire catching and igniting our own fierce possessiveness. We rushed to the stairs, tumbling over them two at a time, crashing against the walls only to push off and sprint through halls that never heard pounded footsteps or shouting.