“It’s because I care for you so much that I’d make you say it, again and again, every minute of the day, until you realize the mistake you’re making.”
“It will only hurt you.”
“I’m in love with you, Sarah Atwood. And nothing you say or do will hurt me more than my own guilt. I want you to be mine. I’m asking you to be mine.”
“You can’t give me a choice now. Not after everything that’s happened. Not now that you’ve gained everything you and your father wanted from me.”
“I have an heir,” I said. “And my name will live on, but Sarah, my life is meaningless without you.”
Her words echoed with heartache. “Why do I wish we’d never met?”
I encroached again, tipping her chin, taking a kiss salty with tears from lips numb with sorrow.
“I wish I hadn’t either,” I said. “If only so I could start again, right here, right now, and love you the way I should have loved you from the beginning.”
I released her, giving her the space she needed. She should have been held, warmed, caressed. Instead, she cradled herself. Alone.
“I’ll take care of my father. Trust me. You’ll never have to think of him again.”
Her hand covered her stomach. “I won’t let you take this revenge from me.”
Taking a life while nurturing a life. She thought it was her right. I would never let it happen, never let the blood stain her hands or that final innocence be lost.
Once my father was gone, nothing would prevent me from earning her trust, rebuilding our love, and beginning our family.
Sarah carried my son.
And soon, my father would never again haunt her.
Sarah Atwood didn’t go to war. She scorched the earth, salted the ground, and stained what remained with blood.
Even her most devious plan encompassed solid business sense and a practical eye for details. But she hadn’t the experience to know when to slice the throat instead of gutting her target for pleasure. If I had it my way, she’d never learn.
But her revenge was plotted long before she called Reed to bring her home. I hadn’t expected it. I didn’t approve of it.
I didn’t have a choice.
The Bennett Board of Directors assembled under the pretense of a quarterly fiscal report. They stayed for the beginning of their end.
If they suspected anything, they didn’t speak of it. We discussed the upcoming quarter and hid the soured profits within promised terminations and restructuring.
As we had done for the past five quarters.
The board was beginning to notice.
And that made our meetings…complicated. Even more complicated when the woman I loved willingly antagonized the men who needed no reason to end a problem before it cost them more money. Sarah was an expensive mistake.
Worse, her absence made a fool of my father.
And yet, his temper hadn’t lashed. He never troubled himself with the lost Josmik shares. And Sarah no longer feared his retaliation.
Why?
The board room silenced as a secretary set up the screen to display Sarah’s fatal mistake.
My father’s attention fixed on me rather than the press release from Atwood Industries. His chosen board members grumbled as this inconvenience interrupted their tee off time.
“Nick, can’t you just fill us in?” Peter Hannigan checked his watch. “Christ, we’ll miss lunch.”
I said nothing. For the past two months, I endured their every humiliation. They mistreated my name, rank, and power within the company to award pet projects, fully expensed yacht parties, and terminations of employees to ensure a greater profit for the next quarter.
Worse, they showed no remorse for how they treated Sarah. They voted on her life as though it were a decision to buy a smaller competitor or break for lunch.
It would end soon enough.
“What the hell is this, Darius?” Bryant Maddox was a rat-bastard who turned on my father and cast the final vote to murder Sarah. I never met a man more slime than skin and bone, but he’d bleed like any other board member. “I thought we had this problem under control.”
My father waited as the secretary closed the door behind her. He didn’t dismiss the two security guards poised in the corner, waiting for another shot at my kidneys.
“It’s been brought to my attention that Sarah Atwood has reappeared.” My father met my gaze. He baited me to anger. He didn’t deserve any reaction.
Bryant chuckled. “The whore needed another taste, huh, Nick? I thought the last time the Bennetts got their fill she wasn’t very happy.”
My father’s lip twitched, a cross between satisfied smile and irritated scowl. “Oh, I can assure you, Sarah Atwood…suffered.”
“Good,” Bryant said. “That slut cost us millions of dollars. We need to earn it back.”
The Board nodded. Stanley, our oldest member, had a heart weakened with age and blackened with power. His voice cracked, choked on his salivating thoughts of what we’d forced Sarah to do.
“Bryant,” he said. “I’m sure she has her reasons for reneging on our arrangement. If she wants to live, she’ll provide the promised shares. A fair trade, I should think.”
My father taught us never to retreat from a challenge. We punished the fool who dared to flex instead of bow.
It wouldn’t be a fair trade until she bled.
He pressed play on the recording emailed to the executives of both Atwood Industries and the Bennett Corporation. Only I noticed Sarah also uploaded the video to YouTube.
She did it without consulting us. Without considering the implications.
What might have been a push for power would become her Last Will and Testament.
The video began with a bright, smiling, beautiful vision of the woman I loved, grinning at the camera with a feminine grace laced with her family’s thorns. She sat at a desk, palms folded, in a perfectly professional blouse. She had curled her hair, dabbed modest makeup over her cheeks, and disguised the flush of her nausea with raw enthusiasm.
She fooled everyone but me.
Everyone but my father.
“Good morning.” The recorded Sarah spoke delicately, sweetly, and as if the teeth she bared in her smile wouldn’t bite and punish. “I wanted to issue this announcement myself, as head of the Atwood family and company.”
The board shifted, eying the screen and wishing they could rip her from the recording just to bind her at the table.
“I wish to thank you all for your patience and compassion during these past few months as I’ve recovered from various health issues. I’m pleased to say, thanks to the loving support of my step-family, I am completely rejuvenated. They’ve offered me a new outlook on life, this company, and how best to secure our futures. I am eager to return to work.”
I steeled my expression. It wouldn’t save me. Either the board would believe I organized Sarah’s disobedience, or they’d assumed the truth—that I had absolutely no control over the woman who owned a significant portion of the company.
Neither scenario endeared me to the board.
In fact, it endangered me more than Sarah. I possessed enough of the company to challenge my father, but I was an easier, less volatile target than Sarah. If I died, my shares reverted to him.
Sarah spoke to the camera with a smile of genuine confidence. Her speech rolled with ease. She assumed everyone, everywhere listened, as if her words were the most important in the world. It was a trait she inherited from her father.
“My first order of business will be a…challenging one.” Sarah breathed deeply, to prove she had no lingering symptoms of the asthma attack we had claimed forced her from her position. “For years, Atwood Industries has strived to maintain a positive, wholesome, and family-oriented business plan. After the tragedies that stole my father and brothers this past year, I’ve been searching for a reason to end the mourning. I found it, finally, right where it always was. With family.”