While They Watch

by Sosie Frost

  She sank deeper into my arms. “You aren’t giving me a choice, Nicholas Bennett. Am I always going to be your prisoner?”

  “If that’s the way to keep you here, so be it.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  No. It wasn’t, but I was beyond fair. The rules of the world—the laws and morals, principles and ethics—didn’t apply to us. To me. My name, my money, and my power offered something more than what normal men possessed. Sarah Atwood could beg and plead, and I would never let her go.

  If only because I feared that she wouldn’t come back to me.

  And that made me more of a threat to her than even my father’s vengeance.

  Sarah’s whisper begged for the wrong things. She should have asked for affection, devotion, and seduction. Those I offered. But mercy?

  Mercy didn’t exist within my embrace, and forgiveness would never rest within her heart.

  “Nick, if you love me—”

  “I do.”

  She shuddered. “Then please.”

  She couldn’t support herself any longer. I laid beside her, cradling her against my chest. She clutched at me, the tears damp on her cheek. I stoked her hair, rubbed her back, accepted her warmth.

  But I wouldn’t let her escape from my possession.

  “I hate to cause you pain,” I whispered.

  “It will always end in pain,” Sarah said. “Nothing can survive this, Nicholas. Our families have hated each other for generations. Your father will stop at nothing to break me. You refuse to let me go.” She rolled over only to bury her head in my chest. “Even if this were different…you’re my step-brother. God, everything about this is wrong. We have nothing to keep us together and everything that will drive us apart.”

  “Trust me.”

  “We’ll never trust each other. We’ll never let ourselves.”

  “Then depend on me. Know that I will find a way to keep you safe.”

  “Even from you?”

  “Especially from me.”

  Sarah burrowed deeper. She fit perfectly against me, snuggled against my jacket and digging her fingers in my shirt. Her breathing shuddered only as she drifted into a fitful sleep. The horrors of her day hadn’t stolen her courage, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been scarred.

  The Sarah Atwood who challenged me, fought me, and forced me to confront the depths of my sins hadn’t escaped unscathed.

  I feared for her.

  It was the wrong thing to fear.

  Sarah never needed my pity or my strength, my kindness or my pledge of foolish love.

  She needed only to wait for me to fall asleep.

  I woke suddenly. She was gone, and, in the hazy panic of my fatigue, I burst from the bed fearing she had been taken by my father.

  I rushed from the bedroom.

  She wasn’t in my suite, and the door opened into the hall. My blood chilled.

  Would she always refuse stay where I put her?

  I prepared for battle, already texting my brothers with an order to find her before my father did. I was wrong to worry for her. My office door propped open—the lock picked by a clever hand of someone who learned her lesson from the last time she spied on what wasn’t hers.

  This time, she didn’t focus on Darius’s office.

  The heir had the same information.

  I was too late to stop her from finding it all.

  She sat at my desk—papers strewn across the top, folders opened, the computer on and my email displayed for her to study.

  Her scowl darkened with every step I took. I waited before the desk.

  “A secret trust,” she said. “My brothers had a secret trust built specifically for an inheritance in my name when I turn twenty-one.”

  And so we began the descent into Hell.

  “Josmik Holdings,” I said.

  “Josmik fucking Holdings.”

  I waited as she pitched a folder at me.

  “My brothers negotiated with your Board of Directors.”

  I exhaled. “Your father and brothers held a proxy takeover of the Bennett Corporation. They contacted our private investors and offered them an exorbitant amount of money to betray my family and promise their shares to the Atwoods.”

  Sarah’s voice shrilled with shock, rage, and utter surprise. “And they succeeded!”

  “Some of them. When your brothers died, the deal stagnated. You were named the beneficiary of a secret trust only to be accessed when you turned twenty-one. They tried to protect you by limiting your involvement.”

  “This isn’t happening.”

  “In less than a year, the trust will be available to you.” The words bittered in my mouth. “Your brothers secured a large quantity of our stock. That’s why we’re holding you here. That’s why we planned to keep you.”

  Sarah laughed—a frantic, frightened laugh that crippled her against my desk. She stared at me, her voice a light waver against the darkness.

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You knew this all along.”

  “I did.”

  “In ten months, I’ll possess a controlling interest in the Bennett Corporation.”

  I said nothing. I had nothing to say, nothing to do, and no hope to offer my family save for the depravity we forced on Sarah Atwood.

  We could hurt her, terrorize her, abuse her, and it wouldn’t make a damn difference.

  In less than a year, it would be us begging for her mercy.

  Sarah Atwood would control the Bennett Corporation.

  24

  Sarah

  My step-brothers paced Nicholas’s office.

  Reed sunk into a chair and held his head in his hands. Max stole a bottle of whiskey from a hidden cabinet under the window. Nicholas remained still, as always.

  He was the only one who dared watch me.

  “You hid this from me,” I said. The realization refused to stick.

  They didn’t answer. I pitched the folder and all its damning contents on the table.

  “You hid this from me!”

  I didn’t know who I yelled at—my step-brothers or my real family.

  Stocks. Investments. Secret trusts and hidden agendas and proxy wars to steal and punish and humiliate.

  And my father won.

  My brothers won.

  They secured the deals. Somehow. They approached the right members on the board and convinced them to hand over their stocks in exchange for…

  So much money.

  Damn it.

  Mike and Josiah didn’t waste the money. They spent every cent they could get—every penny that might have been reinvested in the farm, in crops, in research—and they used it to punish the Bennetts.

  Our families would do anything to hurt the other. Burn money. Murder. Ruin futures.

  Kidnap and betray the one innocent person who had no idea any of it was happening.

  “This is why you stole me,” I said. “You kidnapped me and devastated my life because of this deal.”

  Nicholas nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I covered my face. “You’ve beaten me. Fucked me. Kept me locked in a goddamned basement. You father almost raped me today.”

  Reed and Max stiffened.

  “Yeah.” I lost my nerve as they paled. “When he took me to your company and told me all the dirty little secrets about my father and what a monster he was. He tried to rape me. He almost f—fucked my…my…”

  I couldn’t say it.

  Had Nicholas not been there, not saved me, held me, and hid me away within his arms, I wouldn’t have survived both the revelations about my horrible father and the torment of Darius’s touch.

  I thought my life was over.

  Instead?

  “I’ve won,” I said. “You can’t do a thing to me now. I’ve won.”

  Nicholas’s whisper was gentle, but it didn’t dull the pain of loving a man who held me captive. His every word enthralled me, but the darkness and mistaken trust would damn me forever.

&n
bsp; I didn’t care.

  The excitement burned within me.

  I won. I had nothing to fear from the Bennetts.

  And the surge of raw, uncompromising victory sealed my first real smile in weeks.

  My step-brothers didn’t share my excitement, but they didn’t understand. All the battles, all the stubborn defiance, and all the endless warring now had an end.

  Why did Nicholas hold me prisoner when I’d be his willingly?

  “Sarah,” he said. “Forget what you saw. It makes no difference.”

  I grinned. His words resonated within my head, twisted to punish him instead. “Why are you fighting me, Nicholas Bennett? It’s over.”

  He took my hand. The heat from his touch burned through me, surging with the whirling, coiling emotions of my discovery. I’d cry. I’d laugh. I’d leap into his arms and let him comfort me and take me in the promise of our newfound freedom.

  “It’s never going to end,” he whispered. “You know what we have to do to you.”

  “You aren’t serious.”

  “We wanted Atwood Industries out of greed, but we need it for our security.”

  My stomach dropped.

  Now I understood.

  “You’re trying to breed me so I’ll trade the baby for Josmik Holdings.”

  “Unless we find a way to block the trade and retain our investor’s shares, keeping you was always a failsafe to ensure the company didn’t fall.”

  Max said nothing, sipping his whiskey. Reed paced without looking at me.

  I let Nicholas pull me into a hug, holding me tight as he plotted his ways to force my surrender.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hated to deceive you. But I swear, you will be kept safe. Protected. Loved. Even in this ugliness, I won’t let you get hurt.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Had none of them listened to me? Watched me?

  Why hadn’t they tried to understand a single thing about me?

  They freaked about the asthma and obsessed over the calendar for the proper time to fuck me, but they never stopped to think.

  To ask.

  Why didn’t they realize how strange it was that I’d let three men—my step-brothers—force me into bed with the intent to breed me like an animal?

  “You guys…don’t know, do you?” I shifted from Nicholas, holding each of their gazes. “I mean, you never thought it was possible.”

  “That what was possible?” Nicholas asked.

  “That you could rape me as many times as you wanted, and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I am. But it will happen. It has to happen.”

  I didn’t answer, not because I feared the finality in Nicholas’s decision or because, regardless of how wicked his words were, I felt coveted in his possession.

  The game had been frightening and seductive.

  But now it was done.

  They should have realized. So much suffering might have been avoided.

  Did I ruin everything or save myself?

  How to begin?

  “When I was eleven years old, I was rushed to the hospital for severe abdominal pain,” I said. My step-brothers shared a puzzled silence. “My father didn’t believe me when I said I hurt, so I didn’t get to the hospital quickly enough.”

  They didn’t answer. I perked an eyebrow.

  “Ovarian cysts are unusual for someone that young.”

  Nicholas darkened. I waited. They didn’t move. They still didn’t understand.

  “There were complications. Internal damage to my fallopian tubes from when the cysts burst.”

  I tensed until I thought every bone in my body would crack under the strain of their stares.

  “I’m infertile, guys. There won’t be a male heir for Atwood Industries because I can’t get pregnant. And that is a secret only my mother knows. I’m surprised she didn’t tell Darius.”

  I expected victory to taste sweeter. Reed was the first to start laughing. A rushed, bewildered laugh that muffled as he rubbed his face.

  “Holy shit.” He grinned. “We’re fucked.”

  Max poured another drink. “No. She is.”

  I extended my arms. “There is nothing you can do to me now. I have every advantage. Atwood Industries still belongs to me, and in a year, I’ll have the controlling interest in your company.”

  Max didn’t flinch. “We can stop some of the sales. You’ll only retain a portion.”

  Reed tucked his hands behind his head. His wink stunned me to silence.

  “No. I’ll give her control. She has one of my shares. She can buy the rest.”

  Nicholas spun, his eyes a molten, charred amber. “What?”

  “Fuck it.” Reed said the words slow, staring at his brother. “I’ll take the money and run. Get as far from this fucking lunatic asylum as I can. I told you, I’m not going to be a part of this. When Sarah turns twenty-one, she’ll get my stock too, and she can burn this fucking family to the ground for all I care.”

  Max leapt over the couch and reared to punch. Nicholas hauled him off before Reed took aim for Max’s bad leg. He forced them apart and turned to me with a wild stare. He ripped his jacket off, but his motions weren’t meant to frighten me.

  They frightened him.

  “Everyone stop.” He ordered. “Stop and fucking listen to me.”

  I hated the frustration in his voice. “Nick, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but—”

  “Quiet.” The snap in his words struck like a whip. “You have no idea what you’ve just done. No idea at all. You’re still thinking of this as a rivalry. As a way to punish the Bennetts and redeem some sort of pride for your family.” He swore again. “You just lost whatever chance you had of surviving this.”

  “But it’s over—”

  “My father will never let the Bennett Corporation fall to Atwood control.”

  “He doesn’t have a choice.”

  Nicholas’s expression hardened, fierce and shadowed with rage.

  “Yes, he does.”

  I retreated as Nicholas stalked toward me, his words punctuated with each echoing step.

  “My father will torture you. He’ll beat you, starve you, rape you, and inflict every horrific torment he can devise to force you to sell.” He breathed, wild and fierce. “There won’t be a damn thing I can do to save you.”

  “Saved from what?”

  “He’s going to kill you, Sarah.”

  The shiver rocked me. I fell against the desk.

  “You said your father wasn’t a murderer,” I whispered.

  “I said he hadn’t murdered.” Nicholas curled his hands into fists. “Not that he wouldn’t. He wants the heir, but he’ll protect the family first. If he finds out you’re infertile and there’s no way to trade for the stock, he will kill you to save the company.”

  “Christ.” Reed stole the whiskey from Max. He swore after the gulp. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

  “He’ll kill you too, Reed,” Max said. “Selling your shares? Are you an idiot? If you die, your portion reverts back to the family. He’d slice your throat before letting you make a deal with Sarah.”

  “He’ll do it anyway,” Nicholas said. My heart thudded with a newfound sorrow. I didn’t want to think about it—didn’t want to imagine them in danger. “Dad forced me to convince you to help. That’s why I pushed you to take Sarah. If you didn’t, he said he’d kill you. I believed him.”

  Enough blood threatened to spill. Reed and Max stared at their brother. My tears prickled.

  Would any of us survive this?

  What was left to win?

  Nicholas sighed. “Sarah, if you aren’t pregnant by the time you’re twenty-one, my father will murder you to avoid losing the company.”

  “But…I can’t. The doctors said…”

  “Did they say there was a chance?” Reed asked.

  “Slim, if any at all.” I wasn’t about to give them hope. “But it won’t happen. I have to get away from Darius. That�
��s the only thing we can do.”

  Max snorted. “You can’t hide from my father. No one can. There’s too much money and power. He’ll hunt you like a dog. If he found the man who killed our mother hiding in the middle of Central America, he’ll find a little Atwood billionaire, no matter where she goes.”

  “Then I’ll sell the stock. You can have your fucking company.”

  “It’s not about the stock.” Nicholas approached, gently stroking my cheek. “It’s about your family. He’ll protect the Bennetts until his dying breath, but he’ll kill to hurt you.”

  Christ.

  Nicholas was right.

  I saw it in Darius’s eyes. Felt it in his urge to degrade me. He tried, and he failed, but I knew the Bennetts well enough to realize they’d never stop, never surrender, and never allow someone like me—a woman they saw as no challenge—to gain control over them.

  I gritted my teeth.

  I’d never surrender to Darius Bennett.

  And neither would Nicholas.

  “We should kill him,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe the words slipped from my lips. “Darius. Before he kills me.”

  “Darius Bennett is the CEO of one of the largest and wealthiest privately owned corporations in the world,” Nicholas said. “He can’t be murdered. Not without starting major investigations into our family and company. It would be a media phenomenon, and every law enforcement agency on the West Coast would descend on us.” He exhaled. “His will is clear if he dies of unnatural causes. We’d lose everything.”

  Max narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?”

  “You don’t think I’ve planned it? Thought about it?” Nicholas gestured towards me. “He kidnapped an innocent woman and plotted with her innocence. That isn’t a man who deserves to live, but he’s a man who must if we want to save our company and inheritances.”

  “So what do we do?” Max asked.

  “We’ll move on the takeover. My father doesn’t know that Sarah’s learned about her inheritance. We’ll keep it a secret.”

  Reed swore. “That means we can’t give him reason to believe she’s infertile.”

  “No,” Nicholas agreed. “We can’t.”

  The silence hung.

  I knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t to free me.

  The excitement fueled his strength.