Nicholas buttoned his suit jacket. “We’ll be back. Find Max. Tell him to keep his head down.”
Reed wandered into the kitchen, bare-chested and in no hurry to dress. He rubbed his neck. The wounds darkening his skin hadn’t yet healed. His eye looked scary red from the blown blood vessel.
I hated this. Darius knew I was pregnant. He couldn’t touch me. But my step-brothers?
He’d kill his own flesh and blood if it meant he’d have a chance to take me and the baby.
“Stay safe?” I hoped to sound more certain.
Reed grinned. “For you? Anything.”
My bodyguard met me at the airport, herding us into a chartered jet. I tried calling Mom before we took off, but she didn’t answer. Last time she lost her phone, we found it in the bathroom cabinet. I hoped that was all that happened. I sighed, head in my hands.
“Sarah.” Nicholas called to me. The cushy seats of the plane were separated by a decent amount of space. Dad never let the family buy a private plane. Mike and Josiah learned why the hard way. I let my hand dangle over the armrest. His fingers brushed mine. “She’s okay.”
“I just didn’t think I’d be taking care of both Mom and Bumper.”
“You won’t do it alone.”
“Not now, Nick.”
“You will never do it alone.”
Even if Nicholas wasn’t talking about him, even if he meant I could hire maids and nannies, private chefs and home care nurses, I wasn’t ready to think about Bumper in our life. Not until I was assured we’d be safe. Not until Darius was gone.
How much longer could I wait for that day?
The plane landed after an hour, and a limo waited for us off the tarmac. Anything was better than making a three hour drive, but my fingers beat a quick and unsteady rhythm against the seat belt as we rode. I didn’t wait for the driver to park once we reached the farm. I launched from the back, earning both Nicholas’s and Robert’s shout as they hurried to follow.
The front door was unlocked. I hoped that meant the doctor was already inside.
“Mom?” I shouted. “Mom, where are you?”
The Atwood farm was nothing like the Bennett Estate. Decently sized, but not the sprawling gluttony of money, stone, and power. I checked Mom’s bedroom first, but her bed was empty, perfectly made, even down to the cozy pillows stashed at the headboard.
But the boxes were new.
A half dozen boxes stacked against the wall. Her dresser and wall were cleared of our pictures, and her closet was emptied of clothing and hangers. I spun, calling her name.
“Mom!”
The kitchen light glowed fuzzy and warm. I crashed down the stairs and turned the corner.
“Sarah, what in the world are you doing?” Mom frowned, lowering a pot of coffee. I stilled as she patted Darius’s arm. “You scared us half to death.”
Us.
She hadn’t said us on the phone.
She hadn’t said Darius was there, sitting with her, sharing breakfast like he was a normal husband and not the antichrist himself.
Like he hadn’t kidnapped, beaten, and raped her only daughter.
At least I took pride in the new stitches on his brow.
Nicholas passed to my side after dismissing Robert. He edged me behind his arm. I didn’t retreat.
I only wondered what Nicholas would do, face-to-face with the monster, now that he knew.
Darius’s smile widened with welcomed perversion. He didn’t bother acknowledging his son. His eyes never left my body.
“What are you doing here?” My voice rasped with breathless panic and threat.
“Good morning, my dear.”
“What are you doing here!”
“I’m enjoying a morning cup of coffee with my wife, of course.”
“Get out.”
Mom sighed. “Sarah, behave yourself. You’re making a scene in front of your brother. Hello, Nick. How did the soup recipe turn out?”
I didn’t let him answer. “Mom, you don’t understand.”
“Sarah, you’re being rude.”
“Let her be. Our Sarah is a bit emotional now.” Darius’s voice blackened, coarse and raw with a dark intent. “Isn’t that right, Nicholas?”
I held my aching breath, but Nicholas didn’t react.
“Mom, are you okay?” I asked.
“I’d be a lot better if all these people weren’t coming and going at all hours of the morning. Honestly, Sprout. Where is your head? You’ve tracked mud all through the house. Take those shoes off.”
She was fine.
Not sick. Not panicking. Not fluttering with too many medications.
What the hell happened?
“Mom, you called me two hours ago.”
“I did?”
“You said you took too much of your medication.”
“When?”
Darius curled his arm around her wait. “Darling, I think you’ve forgotten. Just a bit ago, when you woke up, you called Sprout. Before we opened the new prescriptions from the doctor.”
Mom laughed. “Oh, right, right. Gosh, I am not human before I have my coffee. Oh, well. Sprout, Nick. Join us for breakfast then. I have a quiche baking in the oven.”
The only thing that turned my stomach more than sharing a meal with Darius was the thought of gooey, parsley stuffed baked eggs.
I ignore Darius’s stare. “You said you took too many of your pills. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m a grown woman, Sprout. I think I can manage my own medications.”
That sharp tone again. I hardly recognized it. Darius drew her hand to his lips, gently kissing her fingers. She seemed to calm down.
I’d murder him. Cold-blooded. Raging. Uncompromising murder.
“Your mother was a little confused.” His voice stalked me, slithering like a snake through the grass and enjoying every brazen moment of his hunt. “But Bethany, some of your medications are quite potent, and you know how easy it is to accidentally take one too many. Clumsy, really.” He paused. “Fortunately, I was here to protect you.”
It wasn’t fortune.
It was threat.
He couldn’t touch me, but he could target those closest to me. My mother. Nicholas. Reed and Max. He would murder his children and harm his own wife if it meant securing the future he desired.
A future with my son.
I’d never let it happen. Darius Bennett was little more than a bad nightmare, a fleeting memory in a life scored with darkness, shadow, and pain. I survived before, and now it was far easier to withstand his evil. Especially as the safety of those I loved depended on me to stay strong.
“There are boxes in your room,” I said. “Why?”
Darius answered for her, as though my mother had no voice, as though he had the right to speak in her stead. “Great news, actually. I asked, and your mother finally accepted.”
“Accepted…what.”
Mom squeezed Darius’s hand, like they shared a sweet secret.
“This house is so lonely, Sprout, with you and…” Her voice broke. “And the boys gone. I decided it was time to leave this darkness behind and start a new phase of my life.”
I edged closer to Nicholas. “What phase?”
“I’m moving to the Bennett Estate with Darius.”
Oh, no.
Darius nodded. “I too am realizing how lonely a house can be without one’s children to fill it…at least, for the moment.”
Now I would be sick. I shook my head.
“You can’t leave the farm,” I said.
“Sprout, there’s nothing here for me.” Mom curled her hand around her coffee mug. Darius dared to wrap his arm over her shoulders, pressed his gnarled fingers into her skin. “I can’t come into the kitchen every morning, look outside, and see…”
Their graves.
But that was why someone had to be here.
For Josiah and Mike. Because the farm needed an Atwood, and not just the eternal vigil of Dad’s headstone watching over the land he worked, tended, and bled for.
My vision of Dad had been shattered in the past few months, but now I understood him more than ever. The Atwood name required hard work and sacrifice to protect the land. My family, its legacy, was fragile and defenseless on its own. Kindness and understanding and compassion didn’t protect one’s interests.