I’d never killed a man before.
I’d stared at the body upon the ground.
I had kidnapped. Raped. Corrupted.
Never murder.
This wouldn’t be my last.
My father was a fiend, but even he hired others or sent Max. He never murdered.
“Don’t tell her I did this.” My voice dropped. “Don’t ever tell her.”
“Yeah.” Reed swallowed. “Believe me, I’m not telling anyone about this. Who the fuck is he?”
“A gift from Dad.” I had nothing to wash the blood from my hands. Reed straightened, rubbing the raw flesh on his neck. “He targeted me as well. Had Temple MC do a drive-by.”
“Temple?” Reed’s expression flashed with a new pain. “Toviel Aren is my godfather. He’s not doing hits for Dad.”
“He is now, or Temple’s elected a new president.”
“Fuck.”
“Lock the office. I’ll hire someone to take care of this later. We have to find Sarah.”
“Where’s Max?”
The thought pierced me like I had been shot and only now suffered from the bullet burrowing through my chest. Reed swore.
“Does Dad know she’s pregnant?”
I stood, not waiting for Reed to follow. Blood dried on my hands, my suit.
“It doesn’t matter.” I wouldn’t cleanse the filth from my palms until another’s blood stained them. “I’ll kill him before he hurts Sarah or my son.”
I woke only to return to nightmare.
I rested upon Darius Bennett’s bed.
I wouldn’t endure his sin twice. I tensed to fight.
Darius watched as I slid against the mattress, edging into the pillows. I blinked through the haze and swallowed against the parched chemical dryness in my throat.
I feared I’d vomit, but I refused my body that relief. That weakness would remain hidden.
The darkness crept within the room, soundless and invasive. It’d swallow these crimes and trap me between memory and reality once more. His eyes pinned me. I imagined them a dark and dank pit that stole my virtue, innocence, and dignity.
And once more I’d climb from that hole.
When would it become a grave?
Darius claimed the wingback before the fireplace. He sat as if it were a throne, surveying the kingdom of hell resting between sheets that would be torn and tangled, bloodied and dampened with his sweat and my tears.
I wouldn’t let him do it again.
He promised to hurt me. He had. He lusted for my pride. He took it. He desired my heir.
He made it.
And I denied it. I hated myself for even considering it.
But I no longer remembered my passionate, loving, unifying embrace with Nicholas. That night crippled me with darkness, the utter helplessness when all control, power, and dignity were stripped from me in the pounded pleasure of a man who lusted for my cries.
I wanted the baby to belong to Nicholas.
But I feared Darius’s determination.
I’d be damned if either Bennett caused my son harm. I fed off the surge of adrenaline, of my fierce devotion to the idea of the child. I once warned Nicholas how dangerous I’d become if they succeeded. And now they’d see it. True wrath. Absolute rage.
Righteous bloodshed.
A mother protecting her child.
A woman defending her honor.
A soul seeking revenge.
Darius expected me to cower. I expected him to bleed.
“Remove your clothes, my dear.”
“No.”
He tolerated my resistance. I anticipated his lust.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“And I’m telling you no.”
“It isn’t wise to disobey your father,” he warned.
“And it’s equally dangerous to touch me.”
“Then run, little one. Run and cry for help. It won’t take me long to find you again, and you’ll regret every second of your disobedience.”
That I believed.
Darius sat entirely too still, as stone-faced and imposing as Nicholas. His suit jacket removed, but he hadn’t unbuttoned his cuffs. Not yet. Not while he crossed his legs and talked to me about his desires. But his palms folded. An impatient gesture, but hardly the crack against the cheek I’d earned before.
He’d punish me emotionally, cripple me mentally, or abuse me in sick and perverted ways. I once thought him insane. That was wrong. Darius Bennett controlled his every action. What he did to me, he planned. Rigorously. Deliberately. Almost…religiously.
Now I understood him, but realizing his thoughts, urges, and animalistic perversions disgusted me more than his hands over my bare flesh.
“What do you want?” I dug my fingers into the comforter.
Dark sheets.
Just like Nicholas.
Not like Nicholas.
“I thought it would be obvious?”
“You’re not raping me again.”
“I had hoped it would be more pleasant this time.”
“You’re a monster.”
“The tired insults wear on me. I won’t ask you again.”
“You won’t rape me.”
“Clothes off, Sarah.”
“No.”
What should have screamed, proud and vindicated, sneered through a long-festering anger. I faced a demon without a cross, and I had no more prayers to save me from the evil that already invaded my core. The devil desired a second indulgence.
If he hurt me, hit me, raped me, I didn’t know what would happen. I endured it before, but I wasn’t as weak then. Not as tired, not as…fragile.
I didn’t fear for me, and that made it worse. I had to protect the baby.
“You try my patience,” Darius said.
“Get used to it.”
“You’ve always been a trial of my tolerance. I don’t allow my children to misbehave.”
“I’m not your child.”
“Regardless of what you believe, of what Nicholas has told you, I’ve laid more a claim to you than any of my sons. You belong to me now, Sarah. I will not be spoken to with such disrespect.”
“Fuck. You.”
The words twitched his eyebrow as though I were the first to dare insult his pride with such vulgarity. He stood to unbutton his cuffs.
It didn’t worry me as much as the belt he unraveled from his trousers. He hadn’t swung the leather, only looped it within his hands.
“Stand up,” he ordered.
“And you were so eager to hold me down before.”
“Don’t test me, my dear.”
“If you think I would willingly surrender to you—”
“I do think it.”
He moved quickly, gripping my arm and lurching me to my feet. The sudden rise nauseated me. He’d deserve it if I threw up on him.
But it’d only get me hit.
The belt tightened in his grip. It didn’t strike.
“Remove your clothing.”
He didn’t hit me.
He didn’t hurt me.
He threatened me, but after months of his abuses, words weren’t as frightening as his punishments. My pulse quickened.
I was right. He suspected the pregnancy.
Somehow, someway, he read it in my escape, saw it in my behavior at the art gallery.
But he hadn’t said it, and I hadn’t admitted it.
He had no proof, only a hunch that stilled his hand when it would have otherwise struck.
Darius Bennett could do nothing to me but force me to admit I carried a child.
He wouldn’t earn that victory. If I had it my way, Darius would go to his grave with the mystery burning his soul, and the truth would die with him. I’d forever swear the child belonged to Nicholas—even if I lied to myself until the day I died.
I had nothing to use as a weapon in his bedroom, but I remembered the nooks and crannies of the estate. Knives in the kitchen, hunting guns in the basement game room. First I’d find a weapon…and then?
I had just witnessed the murders of two men. The blood of two human beings had been spilled at my feet. Murder disgusted me—especially as my life wavered so often on a hitched breath and the mercy of modern medicine. Dad was a horrid man, but he taught me to defend the name I bore. My honor.