Capital Risk

by Lana Grayson

“No.”

  Reed tried to be reasonable. “You aren’t running again. You’re pregnant, Sarah. You need to be at home. With doctors and rest and good food and—”

  I finished for him. “And a life free of stress and fear and the constant dread that sometime, somewhere Darius will…” The memory sickened me. “Hurt me.”

  “He won’t,” Nicholas vowed.

  The damned fool. It’d be tragic if his father’s touch didn’t linger like grease over my skin.

  “No, he won’t hurt me or this child,” I said. “Because you won’t let him.”

  “That is my promise to you.”

  Broken without even realizing it.

  “I ran because he would have found me. I’m sick. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept a full night since…” Hell if I knew. Not since before the attack. Not since Nicholas saved me from his father and the board. Not since I stole the trust and tried to protect myself with the money and power Darius coveted. “I need to feel safe.”

  “You will be safe with me.” Nicholas stepped too close, promised too much. “You and the baby. Sarah, let me help you. Let me take care of you—”

  “There is nothing you can do while Darius is still alive.” I retreated from his arms. “If you really want to protect me, you will kill him. As soon as possible. Before…”

  Before he found out about the baby.

  Before he reveled in the rape.

  Before he ruined everything like he tried to ruin me.

  The tears and sickness ripped me apart only to force the raw pieces back together in a broken array, just disjointed enough to render me unrecognizable, pained.

  Heartbreak struck me harder than any attack, hurt me more than any assault, and left me mourning a love more wonderful than my lost innocence.

  “We are going to kill Darius,” I said. “And then I’m leaving you, Nick. It’s over. The captivity. The false promises. I refuse to put myself or my baby in danger.”

  I expected Nicholas’s challenge, but nothing he did would force me to submit to him.

  Not ever again.

  “My son will never know his father is a Bennett.”

  It worked.

  Sarah Atwood was pregnant with my child.

  We left her alone as she requested. The deck jutted into the darkened woods, muffling the words we hadn’t the courage to speak. Max cracked open a beer and pushed it into my hand. Reed leaned against the balcony rail, his perpetual disappointment memorialized in a frown as we, yet again, mistreated the girl.

  I hadn’t sipped my beer. I preferred whiskey. We all did. Why hide who we really were? Certainly not now, not when every depraved and monstrous obsession burning in our blood suddenly realized within the tears of the woman we promised to protect.

  Reed offered her his bed for the night. Sarah took it without protest, shutting the door behind her.

  Then locking it.

  Did she honestly believe a wooden door would keep me from her?

  Did she think she could hide her pregnancy from me and then cast me from her life?

  She threatened to keep me from my son—a word she spoke with such certainty I didn’t know if it was mother’s intuition or her own fear for a male heir that dared us to think otherwise.

  I captured her once. I secured a collar around her fragile neck, and I bound her arms above her head while I mounted her morning, afternoon, and night.

  Sarah Atwood never had the privilege of escaping from me. Not when we first stole her. Not now that she carried my child.

  Not while I suffered in the twisted, agonizing relief that was finally seeing her, touching her, hearing her voice.

  Even if she meant to break my heart.

  I loved Sarah Atwood. I wanted her more than I ever wanted her heir.

  And I had one, but not the other.

  This disaster required something stronger than a drink brewed into brown glass.

  Then again, we were supposed to smoke imported cigars for this victory. Clink our glasses of vintage brandy and chuckle in satisfaction.

  Sarah upped the bet by a thousand dollars. Reed folded. Max swore and chucked his cards over the table.

  I matched her bet and called.

  “Seriously?” she laughed. “We’re billionaires. This hand getting a little too steep for you, Bennett?”

  Tough words for a girl who was down to her panties from our first few rounds of the game. Of course, we ganged up on her. In more ways than one.

  “Thinking of changing the stakes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Clothes, money. I’m your prisoner remember? What can I possibly bet?”

  I grinned. “Something very important.”

  “Name it.”

  “Exactly.”

  Sarah adjusted her arm, trying to hide her breasts while holding her cards. “I don’t understand.”

  “If you get pregnant this month—”

  “If.”

  “Winner gets to name the baby.”

  “Oh, you’re sick.” She rolled her eyes. “But you’ll never beat my hand.”

  I held four of a kind, and her eyebrow twitched when she bluffed.

  I hoped she liked the name Adam.

  “So.” Max chugged his beer. “Who wants to tell her we were about to kill Dad. You know, before that idiot ruined the plan?”

  “Hey.” Reed swore. “She called me and asked for help. What the hell was I supposed to do? Tell her to fuck off because we were busy?”

  Max shrugged. “She might have wanted to help.”

  “No.” Shock and perverse joy bound my words. “I won’t let her be involved in something like this. She’s pregnant. We’re not endangering her or the…my child.”

  “You did it.” Max toasted me with a sarcastic nod of the beer. “How’s it feel, Daddy?”

  Like I betrayed an innocent, beautiful woman. Like I fulfilled the promise I made each time I took her to my bed, seized her in my sheets, and violated her while pretending to make love.

  And yet…

  I succeeded.

  I took her. I held her. I bred her.

  My primal, savage instincts weren’t quelled with a simple rut and the lure of submission. My urges required a visceral proof of her conquering. This was the result I longed for, the product of complete and utter dominance.

  Sarah was right.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  I wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  I loved her, but Sarah and I never planned for a future together, only for a funeral which had yet to happen.

  Max read my thoughts, but he didn’t have the common sense to leave it unspoken.

  “How do we keep this pregnancy from him?” Max asked.

  “He won’t learn,” I said.

  “You gonna keep it secret? I don’t know much about pregnant women, but Sarah won’t look like a twig for much longer.”

  Reed grunted. “This is a nightmare. What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Nothing to do.” Max shrugged. “Get her some vitamins. Buy a crib. Sarah’s naive, but even she knew this was bound to happen.”

  “You heard her. We bred her like an animal. She’s carrying a Bennett.” He slammed his hand against the railing. “She’ll never forgive us.”

  “She’d never forgive us anyway,” Max said. “Grow up, Reed. She’s never been your friend. She’s an Atwood. We’re Bennetts. Our families have attempted to ruin each other for generations. You really think she was going to hop back in your bed? Dad held a gun to her head while you raped her. No one recovers from that. She’s just waiting for the right moment to take her revenge.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “Then why haven’t you told her I killed her brothers?” he stared at Reed until he broke the gaze. “Yeah. Because you know what she’ll do.”

  I wasn’t tolerating this discussion with her in the house. If she learned we were the cause of her brothers’ plane crash, she’d hurt herself just for the chance to avenge those she loved
.

  If it didn’t destroy her first.

  “No one is telling her what happened,” I said. “That secret died with her brothers.”

  “You don’t think she deserves the truth?” Reed asked.

  “She’s heard enough truths. We kidnapped a girl, let her suffer, and now I claimed a part of her she never meant to give. We should have taken better care of her. We should have helped her.”

  Reed wasn’t convinced. “She doesn’t want us anymore.”

  “She doesn’t have a choice.”

  Max laughed in genuine amusement, as though he expected this complication. “Sarah wants nothing to do with you, Nick. It doesn’t matter how you held her or how much you loved her, bottom line is she only tolerated that bullshit because she never thought she’d get pregnant. And now you’re the man who did it to her. You’re the man who stole her fortune, her farm, and her freedom. She’s going to hate you.”

  Like the thought wasn’t hurting every scar I earned for her. “She won’t.”

  “She’s going to hate all of us.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Christ, man!” Max smashed his bottle. The shards showered over the deck. “She’s pregnant! You’ll be goddamned lucky she doesn’t turn a gun on you once Dad is dead.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Bullshit. We took her family. We took her freedom. We ruined her.”

  “She’s stronger than that.”

  “Then she’s stronger than me.”

  Max cut himself on the bottle. He clenched his fist and shoved the sliding glass door open, leaving a streak of blood in his wake. It hadn’t been his first beer. It wouldn’t be his last.

  Now I had two people to care for and neither wanted my help. Reed called to me before I followed.

  “Let them be,” he said. “You want to help Max? Give him half of your liver once this is done.”

  “I’m not after Max.”

  “She should sleep.”

  “I have to talk to her.”

  Reed didn’t look at me. He stared out over the balcony, toward the ocean and waves Dad forbade him from enjoying after he graduated college.

  “If she wanted to talk, she’d be out here. Sarah’s not shy.”

  I exhaled. “It’s my baby. I have to…”

  “You don’t have to do a damned thing.” Reed pitched a pebble into the woods. “It’s already done. Don’t make it worse, or she won’t call us next time.”

  Call us?

  She hadn’t called us.

  She called Reed for help, not me.

  I’d have hated him for it if I wasn’t so damned grateful he brought her back.

  Reed surrendered his bed, but Sarah wasn’t sleeping. The light spilled from beneath her door. I rapped against the frame. She didn’t answer.

  Any other time, in any other circumstance, I’d have entered anyway.

  The situation changed, but I hadn’t. She was mine. She needed me even if she denied just how much she loved me. I wasn’t letting her escape.

  I knocked again. Her voice whispered, raw from coughing.

  “Go away.”

  I twisted the knob. The lock wasn’t sound. I jiggled, and it popped loose. Sarah expected it. She shakily rose from the floor, leaning against the door to the bathroom.

  All manner of nightmarish fears passed through my mind. I rushed forward to help her, but Sarah hurried to her feet before I touched her.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Did you fall?”

  She didn’t look at me. Instead, she tugged the t-shirt lower. The booty shorts spelled Sexy on her behind. She used to wear them just so Max would have somewhere to aim his occasional smack. Now she hid from me.

  Hid everything.

  “The floor is cooler than the bed.” She brushed a hand through her sweaty hair but didn’t look at me. “Morning sickness comes at night too…constantly, actually.”

  I would have apologized. It felt like the time to apologize. But she wouldn’t have accepted it, and it wasn’t right to ask for forgiveness. Not now.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Sarah curled against the wall, and Hamlet plodded to her side, collapsing with a sigh. His head rested in her lap.

  At least she hadn’t been alone.

  “You should go,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “It’s just nausea.” Her words hardened. “You knew this was a consequence.”

  I hadn’t intended to fight, and I wasn’t ready to leave. “Ginger ale?”

  “Nick, please.”

  “Saltines.”

  “No.”

  “You need to eat.”

  “I need you to let me rest.”

  Why hadn’t she looked at me? She avoided my gaze, flinched from my touch, and hardened with the same shell of anger which shielded her when we first kidnapped her.

  This wasn’t the Sarah Atwood who shared my bed and whispered stories of her childhood, the plans for her company and education, and her every secret fantasy.

  She trembled with fatigue and stress. Her fists hid within the ginger curls of Hamlet’s coat. For a woman two months pregnant, she looked tinier than ever. Thin, delicate—a little fairy too tired to fly even when danger crept close.

  “I’m taking you to a doctor in the morning.”

  Sarah refused my hand. She groaned as she stood, leaning toward the bathroom. She breathed deeply, coughed, and steadied.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?”

  “Don’t.” Now she did look at me, but her warning glance wouldn’t deter me. “Don’t you dare.”

  “What?”

  “I will not have you tell me how to handle this. I was checked out after I took the pregnancy test. They said I’m fine. It’s under control.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Nick—”

  “You said it yourself. You’re not feeling well. You’re exhausted. And your asthma is not controlled. You need to get checked over again. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Then why did you come back to me?”

  I edged closer. If she refused my comfort, I wouldn’t offer it, but she’d know how serious I was about it. About her.

  “You left me. You ran. If you could have handled it yourself, you never would have returned. But here you are, nowhere left to go. So you might as well ask the father for help.”

  “Yeah, I want your help to kill Darius,” she said. “But the baby and my health are my concerns.”

  “They’re mine too.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “They will always be my concern, Sarah.”

  “You don’t have that right. Not now. Not after what’s happened. Everything’s changed.”

  “Then we’ll change with it.”

  She turned, sipping from a glass of water on the nightstand. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then let me.”

  Silence. A refusal.

  What went wrong in the two months since I left her bed? Had we hurt her that badly?

  “You called Reed,” I said.

  That insult hurt, but it was the only admission of my pain I’d give the woman who caused it.

  “I did.”

  “Why not me?”

  She hesitated a moment too long. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You never needed to run from me. I would have come.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It’s exactly that simple. I love you, Sarah. You should never have gone through this alone.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “I never should have gone through this at all.”

  I had no counter for our past crimes. “Let me help you.”

  “There’s nothing you can do now.”

  “Just give me the chance. Midnight craving food runs. Foot rubs. Doctor’s appointments�
��”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” her voice wavered. She couldn’t look at me. “It’s over, Nick. The Bennetts have caused me nothing but pain. You don’t deserve the chance to be a part of my life, and I’ll be damned if you’re part of the baby’s.”

  The rage flared, quick and hot. “That’s my child too, Sarah.”

  She said nothing. Maybe I didn’t deserve anything more than her silence, but my child did.

  “You aren’t leaving me.”

  “I won’t let this baby grow up in this madness. He deserves better than what happened to me.”

  “I agree. That’s why I won’t let anything harm you or him.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she said. “I’ve already been harmed. Many times. Too many times. You did nothing. You still can’t protect me, not while Darius is alive and looking for me.”

  “Don’t waste a single thought on him. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ve lost myself in fear of your father for too long,” she whispered. “But not anymore. You and I will end him, and then I’m gone.”

  “And you plan to…what?” I asked. “Have a baby alone?”

  “What alone?” she shrugged. “I am Sarah Atwood. I am a goddamned billionaire. I have farms, ranches, land, and control over two companies. My farm is one of the wealthiest top ten private companies in the fucking world.”

  “So?”

  She scoffed. “So? My child will have the best of everything. The best home. The best clothing and toys and opportunities. The best education. The best tutors in languages and business and art and any topic he’d ever want to learn. He will want for nothing.”

  “What about a father?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I had a father, and the only thing he did was make me feel unwanted and unappreciated.”

  “You don’t think I’d be as cruel as Mark Atwood.”

  “No, you’re a Bennett. You’d be worse.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve made my decision.”

  “And you didn’t consult me.”

  “You don’t have a say in it, Nicholas.”

  “I have every right! You are carrying my child!”

  I didn’t let her move away. The guilt lacerated me with every backwards step she took to flee from me. Her back pressed against the wall, and I’d forever hate myself for pinning her there, my arms on either side of her body.