“I know.”
Darius leaned close. “Now, Bethany. Surely Atwood Industries assumed this day would come. They’ve been waiting for a male heir to take the company ever since Josiah and Mike passed.”
“We never planned for it. Why would we?” Mom sighed. I tried to stop her, but the secret slipped before I could interrupt. “Sarah is supposed to be infertile.”
Goddamn it.
Darius’s jaw tensed so hard it popped.
Had we been alone, had he still trapped me within the confines of the Bennett Estate, nothing—not even the possibility of his child—would have protected me from a vicious strike.
If he hadn’t killed me for deceiving him.
Nicholas nodded to his father.
“Infertile….” Darius murmured. “How fortuitous then.”
Mom snorted, but the edge weeded from of her voice. “I suppose so. Oh, Sarah. You never did like to take the easy path, did you? Well…”
She smiled, weak, but it was there.
“A baby is a miracle, especially when we never expected to be blessed. And we are certainly in a position to accommodate a little one, despite the scandal.” She sighed. “You’ll have to join at the estate then. We’ll shield you from a bit of the talk. Besides, Darius raised his own children there before, I’m sure he would love to have a baby around again.”
I didn’t trust the darkness in his words. “Of course, darling. I’ve been planning on it.”
Too much. It was too much. I swallowed.
“I have to get going,” I said. “I just…wanted to check in on you, Mom.”
“You aren’t staying?”
So I could stare into the eyes of a man who would eagerly slice the child from my stomach once he was strong enough to live on his own? A man who threatened my mother’s life with dangerous medications? A man who’d murder all three of his sons because they defied his insanity?
No. I wasn’t staying.
And neither was she.
I would kill Darius before he dared to harm those I loved, and the only reason I didn’t dive for a knife was to spare my fragile mother the horror of witnessing yet another husband’s death.
“I’ll call you,” I said. “Check in and make sure you’re okay.”
“I’ll be fine. I have Darius to look after me.”
She gave the devil the keys to the church and waded in the ashes he cast on the altar. I backed from the kitchen, but Darius scooted out of his chair.
“I’ll walk them out.”
Mom sighed. “You’re such a sweetheart, Darius. Truly.”
Nicholas edged between us, but I didn’t let Darius get close. My vision blurred with rage as I slammed through the front door. I lifted a rock from the rose planter, but it was my own bodyguard who prevented me from slamming it across Darius’s temple.
Nicholas seized me, securing me with an arm around my waist.
“You are a monster.” I twisted against his hold. “What are you going to do? Kill my mother? Murder your own wife?”
“Nicholas, please.” Darius buttoned his suit jacket. “Control the girl. I won’t have her endangering my unborn son.”
Goddamn him! I struggled, but Nicholas’s grip was as strong as his own iron will. He faced his father with absolute silence. I hardly recognized his stoic, intimidating challenge.
“It’s not your son,” I said. “You have no right to be here, no right to control my mother.”
Darius gazed over my cornfields, stared at my barn and my machinery tending to the crops in the fields. “Soon enough, this farm will belong to the Bennetts, as it should have months ago.”
“Never.”
“I don’t mind it, actually.” He took a deep breath. “The estate is rather isolated, but this…this is a different type of peace. A shame it breeds such insolence in the children who play in its dirt. My son will need to grow and learn discipline in the estate, but I think I’ll retire here.”
“You will never take my child.”
“I’ll clear some of the…debris from the fields though.” Darius met my gaze. “Too many Atwoods poisoning the grounds. Once your father and what remains of his bastard sons are disposed of properly, this land will be suitable for the Bennetts.”
It was too much. Too cruel and too deliberate to watch me burst with the indignity and agony of my family’s deaths. I twisted, pushing against Nicholas.
Darius hadn’t broken me before.
He wouldn’t now.
“I think I’ll keep you here too, my dear,” he said. “If you agree to behave. You’ve done so well now, accepting my seed and swelling with my child. I might let you live. You can stay locked in a room here on your land. And we’ll see if that infertility was a one-time blessing. Why stop at one son when I can replace the lot of them?”
His words weren’t meant for me. He stared at his son, his eldest, his heir. He waited for the moment that Nicholas would finally break and challenge him.
Nicholas said nothing, only simmered in the ravenous, feral silence of animal facing a threat.
“You can have her for now, Nicholas,” Darius said. “Take her. Care for her. Fuck her. Do whatever you wish. But understand. The estate, the companies, the fortunes are mine. I will not mourn those who defy me. Not if I have a new son to inherit both the Bennett and Atwood names.”
“This child is not yours.” Nicholas spoke with confidence, certainty.
“Nicholas, you had months to breed the girl, and nothing came from it. You’ve studied probability and statistics.” Darius leaned closer, his words meant to draw me back into the nightmare he created. “You realize she was still slick with your seed when I took her? But that doesn’t matter. I enjoyed her more times than you did that night.”
I would be sick, but Nicholas didn’t degrade himself in anger or react to Darius’s attempted humiliation.
“I plan to kill you,” Nicholas said. “Prepare for it.”
His words were not threat or promise, but the still coldness of near-premonition.
More frightening than any strike from Darius’s hand or the moments of despair under his control was the sound of Nicholas Bennett’s honest and promised vengeance, as though the graves were already dug and the crimes purged from our memories.
Darius’s cruelty cast us into shadow, but Nicholas now existed in the merciless efficiency of a wronged man protecting the ones he loved.
Not for his own satisfaction. Not to appease his sadism.
But because blood answered in blood.
And we would make the final slice.
He led me to the limo, kissed my hand, and shielded me—shielded us—from his father.
I had no doubt Nicholas would make good on his threat.
I only prayed we didn’t have to wait.
The gun rested in my suit jacket. My father lived.
I didn’t regret my decision, and I hadn’t looked in the mirror as the limo pulled from the farm.
The time would come for revenge. The money had already exchanged and my brothers prepared for the plan. In a few weeks, it would no longer matter.
Still, I coiled in rage. My father attempted to harass me. He wanted to exert what little control he held over me and my brothers by manipulating the woman we strived to protect.
He claimed the child was his.
Harming Sarah was crime enough. Taking my son? He would die for even considering it. He would die for the pain he inflicted, the nightmares he caused, and the life he attempted to ruin. The brutal, disgusting words he spoke of Sarah would be his last opportunity to insult her.
A Bennett’s greatest suffering was not the final beat of a heart, but the world forgetting his name.
My father would not be remembered. The tyranny he cast over my family would end, and Sarah and my son would share a life with me free of that pain.
If she would have me.
Sarah curled in her seat, staring out the window as the plane ascended and stole her from the comforts of her family, her home, her land. I permitted her silence. The few words we whispered during the night revealed far more than any momentary confession or pressured conversation would offer.