by Lana Grayson
I couldn’t ask about Nicholas.
The plane descended into a tiny airport off the California coast. Reed lived West of San Jose, in a little ocean town known for the surfing community. He loaded me into a private car and pointed out his favorite board shop, coffee house, and the road he took to get to the Mavericks, a crazy surfing spot half a mile out into the ocean.
Reed rubbed the scar on his cheek. “You think that’s bad, you should see a twenty foot wave crashing over your head.”
Yeah, not something I would have done even before I landed in my current condition. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Sure, but that’s the fun of it. It’s an adrenaline rush. Nothing like it.”
“Not my type of adrenaline rush.”
“What’s yours?”
It used to be nights spent passed between each of my step-brothers. Now it was just nights running in fear. I was tired of that particular rush.
Reed turned from the main drag and headed up a secondary road leading away from town to the quiet hills overlooking the ocean. It was a beautiful place—peaceful, but exciting. Very Reed.
“I’m surprised you left here to live at the estate,” I said.
His fingers tightened over the wheel. “Didn’t have a choice. When Dad says come home…”
I shivered. “Right.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got security systems and everything working. It’s safer than Max’s penthouse.”
Nowhere was safe, but I appreciated his concern. We parked outside a beautiful, modern house, with more windows than walls. Hard angles and a classy, tight design blended it into the hill. The ocean was in clear view from a balcony stretching over the sloping hillside. The house rested in a forest of scrub and dark shadow.
I didn’t wait for him. I edged from the car and whistled for Hamlet. Reed followed with my bags.
“I won’t lie,” he said “They’re going to be upset.”
Not for long.
The front door creaked open. Hamlet burst inside as if he had lived there his whole life.
Max paced in the living room. Hamlet, of course, launched at his weak leg. The hulking, beast of a man crashed against the couch with a pained profanity. The fluffy goldendoodle gave him a sloppy lick.
Reed dropped my bags in the doorway. He pushed me in front of him.
Traitor.
“Look who I found,” he said.
“Jesus, fuck!” Max swore, rubbing the tension from his face with a thick hand. The muscles over his arm tensed, and the pattern of dark ink stretched tight. “Christ, am I glad to see you, baby.”
I didn’t answer.
The words refused to whisper.
He stood before the window overlooking the moon-kissed ocean, bathed in shadow and wrought with a strength I once thought would protect me from everything.
The golden halo of his eyes burned within the dimness of the house, captured in a moment’s rage and relief. The color dazzled, sharpened, and cracked as frustration trapped his expression. The rugged line of his jaw hardened, and the regal angles of his face encased him with a poised grace.
But beneath the edge of sophistication, I saw what I’d ignored for so long.
The thin curl of his lips.
The slope of his nose.
The angle of his brow, and the dark strength that held his body in perfect, disciplined ruthlessness.
Nicholas Bennett looked so much like his father.
And the words he uttered rasped with the same quick demands.
“Sarah.” He spoke my name with an unchallenged authority, as though I were just another of his billions of possessions. “Where—”
I didn’t let him finish.
I broke down and ran to him, beat against his chest. I blamed the hormones. I blamed the pregnancy. I blamed him.
For two months I fled from the secrets, the truth, and the pain.
In two seconds, I understood everything I needed to do.
Everything I had to lose, and what I had to protect.
My heart broke into pieces, a shard of regret for what I’d let happen and a splinter of what might have been.
For so long, I’d protected my captor and indulged the insanity. It was for nothing. My love for Nicholas existed in a moment of forsaken freedom. My kiss pardoned his crimes. My touch defended his abuse. And my submission damned us all.
I couldn’t imagine a life without Nicholas Bennett, but heartbreak was safer than the death throes of his ruthless family, betrayed and broken.
Nicholas held me. I savored his embrace.
It’d be the last time I let him so close.
“You know…” Reed dipped his chopsticks into my container of white rice. I slapped his hand away. “We all had our tonsils out as kids.”
Max chewed his lo mein. “What?”
“Just sayin’,” Reed shrugged at me. I smiled, but I was too exhausted to even eat, let alone decipher what the hell he was talking about. “If we’re all trying to make an heir, I mean…he’ll most likely have tonsillitis. And…” He nudged me. “Is asthma genetic?”
Probably, but I never had cause to worry about it. Now seemed an equally weird time to consider the possibilities. What I thought would be a night to celebrate my discovered inheritance of the Josmik Trust became the beginning of Nicholas’s rededicated plan to breed me.
So far, it had been a very fun plan.
Max hadn’t put a shirt on. They weren’t done with me yet. “I don’t think sore throats and inhalers are a major concern right now.”
My gaze flicked to Nicholas. He hadn’t spoken since offering me to his brothers. He simply…watched. The whole night. Enthralled. Obsessed. Unbelievably passionate when he seized me from Reed’s arms just to take me once more.
His golden eyes captured me, worshiped me, soothed me.
For the first time, my heart panged with regret for my infertility.
A baby might have inherited his eyes.
I wouldn’t let myself cry. I wouldn’t reveal what happened. Not to the men who still possessed an ounce of innocence despite their role in my captivity.
If they knew, I’d lose the calm, rational men who were capable of ending the nightmare. They’d act in bloody impulse and endanger themselves.
Max would consider it his failure to protect me.
Reed would forever view me as a victim he didn’t save.
And Nicholas?
If the baby wasn’t his…
No.
It had to be Nicholas’s.
It wasn’t time for tears. Strength was derived from opportunity. I couldn’t stop Darius when it happened, but we could end it now and save my child from a lifetime of shame.
First, I’d protect myself.
And after?
I pulled from Nicholas’s arms.
I’d learn to survive without them.
“Sarah.” Nicholas frowned as I stepped away. “What happened? Are you okay?”
A tangled chaos of pained words rose from my fluttering chest. Silence comforted me, but it challenged Nicholas—tempted him, angered him, exposed the desperation in his voice only I recognized.
“I told you to wait for me.” Those golden eyes weren’t beautiful now. They hardened in frustration. “Why didn’t you wait?”
I had begged him to stay. Why hadn’t he stayed?
“I didn’t know where you went,” he said. “I thought you were hurt!”
I was.
Max and Reed shared a wordless glance. I preferred their confusion. It was better than their pity. It was better than the helpless rage I suffered each night when the darkness pinned me against the bed without a chance to scratch or punch.
Reed cleared his throat. “Sarah, maybe you should sit down?”
No. Sitting would comfort me, and comfort would only encourage me back to Nicholas’s arms.
Nicholas’s stare tangled me in secrets, lies, and unspoken heartache. He waited, patiently, as though his presence would crack my silence and force
me to speak, act, and beg.
Just like Darius.
But I was through submitting to him. To any of them.
My chest tightened.
Why didn’t he stay with me that night?
Nicholas’s voice rumbled in a hard authority. “You left as soon as you inherited the Josmik Trust. I made an agreement with our Board. They let you live if you sold the shares back!”
He thought it was a power play. It wasn’t. For those horrible hours just before dawn, I’d have given the Bennetts every last cent I owned. The farm. The ranches. Everything.
And, in the most shameful moment of my life, I had offered.
Darius declined.
But what was done, was done. I wouldn’t ever beg. I’d never let them see me cry.
And I would never again surrender to anything Darius or the Board willed. I’d have them suffer instead.
“Sarah,” Nicholas said. I flinched as he reached for me. “For Christ’s sake, I had no idea what happened to you.”
Because he didn’t stay with me.
“You didn’t call. You didn’t answer your emails.”
Did he want an apology?
“I thought my father had you killed.”
It wouldn’t have been that simple.
Max exhaled, drawing Nicholas’s attention and breaking the intensity of his demands.
“Baby, you feeling all right?” he eyed Nicholas. “You don’t look so good.”
The understatement of the night. The tightness in my chest hadn’t alleviated, and Nicholas’s crushing interrogation did nothing to ease my queasy stomach.
“Come on.” Reed reached for my hand. I pulled away. “It’s okay. Just sit and rest for a second.”
I didn’t need to rest. The words I longed to say choked over the confession I refused to give. I looked away. Nicholas wasn’t done yet.
“Jesus Christ.” Nicholas’s stillness broke with a frustrated grunt and hand through his hair. His voice turned harsh, the crystalline edge of glass ready to shatter and shred. “I had no fucking idea if you were alive or dead, if you planned to sell the stock and destroy the company, if you left me, if you hated me, if something terrible had happened.”
I said nothing.
“Sarah, I held you in my arms. You said you loved me. I promised I’d be back for you.”
And I asked him not to leave. We both made mistakes. Some hurt more than others.
“Was it a lie?” he didn’t look away. “Don’t pretend you don’t care about me. Don’t act like that night meant nothing to you. I was there. I took you. I felt every goddamned word you said to me, so don’t stand there in goddamned silence like you don’t fucking care—”
“Nick, I’m pregnant.”
Chilled, piercing truth layered me in a quick sweat.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
My step-brothers were threatened with a gun held against my temple. They were forced to hurt me, to kidnap me, to punish me. They suffered through a childhood of abuses at the hands of a monster who raised them to harbor his same cruelties and aggressions.
And yet one word broke them.
One word crippled our fragile alliance.
One single, life-changing word presented Nicholas with everything he once planned to lie, steal, and destroy to acquire for his own.
My life twisted when the test revealed the double lines. I’d have no baby showers and well-wishers, no excited family or darling nurseries.
It wasn’t pregnancy. It was war.
If I wanted to protect myself, my farm, and my child, the truth would follow Darius to his grave. The rape would be forgotten. I carried Nicholas’s son.
And I’d never reveal otherwise.
“You’re…” Nicholas stared. Max hadn’t moved. Reed averted his eyes. “You’re pregnant.”
I nodded.
His breath shuddered. “That night…when you inherited the shares...”
“Yes.”
“That was two months ago. You’re…two months pregnant,” he said.
I nodded. “But the doctors count it like ten weeks because of my cycle.”
Reed counted on his fingers. Max paled. But Nicholas recovered with grace. Then again, he had imagined this moment for so long, months of attempts and plans, fertility drugs and dark hope. Of course he could face it so easily.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
A crack formed in my heart. I felt it, bound it tight, and collected every flaking fragment before I lost what precious devotion it beat for Nicholas.
“Why would I?”
His mocha voice smoothed, too patronizing for little more than a sticky layer of authority over me. He beckoned me forward. Like he wanted me to fall into his embrace, like he’d make everything all right.
I wasn’t that weak.
“You’re scared,” he said. “I understand. I just…we didn’t think it was possible.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sarah—”
“You always planned for this to happen. All of you. Every minute of every day, each of you wanted this to happen.”
The harshness of my tone shocked everyone.
Max folded his arms behind his head, eager to witness how his brother would resolve this. He always treated me like a problem to be handled. Or worse. He used me against Nicholas in a relentless sibling rivalry that sacrificed my body as a battlefield. They thought I never noticed.
Reed extended a hand. I’d break it before I let him touch me.
“Just stay calm,” Reed said.
I was beyond calm.
The nausea, exhaustion, and terror spoke for me. Each word sharper, more frustrated than the last.
“You kidnapped me. Fucked me. Held me down and laughed about rutting me until the seed took. You meant for me to get pregnant. And don’t you deny it, Nicholas Bennett. You told me each and every time you fucked me that you intended for it to happen. This—” I gestured to my tummy, flat with the secret it cradled. “—was always what you wanted.”
Nicholas nodded. “You understood that. You agreed to it.”
“Because it was never supposed to happen!” The words punished me with idiocy. “It was supposed to be impossible. I was infertile!”
Max hid a twisted smile. “Apparently not.”
No, apparently not. Apparently I was just fertile enough to get impregnated by either the man I loved or his demented father. I’d forever be remembered as a whore for my step-brother or a victim of my step-father, and both options suffocated me in panic and rage.
I had an opportunity to end the crisis before it got worse, but I left that information at the clinic.
I was an Atwood. For as much as the Bennetts desired their heir, my family line, my blood, was too good for that end.
Nicholas silenced his brother with a glance. “You’re upset.”
“Upset?” I laughed. “I’m not upset.”
My step-brothers disagreed but had the sense to stay silent. I stared at each of them, catching Nicholas’s possessive gaze, Max’s challenging smirk, and Reed’s gentle support.
“This was the plan, right? Capture the girl. Imprison her. Rape her if she was unwilling or seduce her so she’d willingly spread her legs.”
They called to me. I didn’t let them speak.
“Each of you planned to impregnate me and steal my farm and fortune. You’d use the child as leverage to eliminate the threat against the Bennett Corporation.” I lowered my voice. “You all wanted this. You all needed this. You did as Daddy ordered and now…?”
I held my arms out. Shrugged. Gritted my teeth.
“You bred me like a fucking animal. Congratulations.”
Nicholas stepped forward. I batted his arm away, but the motion blurred in the haze of blinded vision. I gasped for a breath that never came and damned the constant threat that bound me in more danger than anything Darius planned.
“Sarah, sit,” he said. “Where’s your inhaler?”
“You don�
��t get it, do you?”
“You’re having an asthma attack.”
Of course I was. “That thought never crossed your mind, did it?”
Reed tossed Nicholas my purse. I refused the inhaler.
“You didn’t think about me. Not in any of this.”
“I always thought about you,” Nicholas said. “Every second since you came to the estate.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Sarah, I’m in love with you.”
“If you really loved me,” I spat the word, “you never would have abducted a twenty year old. You wouldn’t have tied me to that bed and stolen my virginity.”
He stiffened, but I didn’t stop. I ripped the inhaler from his hand only to wag it in front of his face.
“You would have considered how dangerous it was to impregnate a woman with this kind of uncontrolled asthma. You would have thought how terrifying it’d be for me to be taken from my home, my school, my life, and forced into a prison where your father—”
The choked cough interrupted me before the memory doused me in weeping fear. I puffed the inhaler. Nicholas stood before me, his eternal, frustrating stillness. I hated it. I envied it. I needed it.
I had to escape from it.
From him.
My words trembled. I met Nicholas’s gaze and adopted his authority as my own.
After all, what did I have to fear?
Darius took what he wanted. My step-brothers fulfilled their obligation to the family name. I was rutted, seeded, and left to suffer the consequences with my life destroyed and another growing in me. Had they considered the baby beyond what rights it would inherit?
Even tiny, hardly a flutter within me, the child was more powerful than any of us—the billions he’d inherit, the names he’d possess. The only thing the Bennetts wanted more than me was their heir.
And while he grew in me, I would own them all. The stock. The child. The future.
It was mine.
“I didn’t come to tell you about the pregnancy.” I held Nicholas’s stare. “I came because I need your help.”
“Sarah—”
I didn’t let him speak. “I’m pregnant, but Darius and the Board don’t know. You will ensure it stays that way.”
Max was always the observant one. “They’ll notice eventually, don’t you think?”