They were my fears too. I nodded.
“She won’t ever know,” I said. “This is the last we speak of it.”
“Until the next time you drag me through the fucking mud.” Max rubbed his face. It did little to sober him. “Don’t pretend you’re innocent. I proved my worth to the family, same as you. Only now, you know what it feels like to be me.”
“And what’s that?”
Max pointed to the scars on Reed’s cheek and the wounds over his neck. “Completely and utterly disposable. Dad’s not gonna stop if he wants Sarah’s heir. He’ll kill us and take her for himself.”
“He won’t touch her again.”
“You better fucking hope.” Max sunk into the sofa. “Because he thinks he’s won. He thinks it’s his son.”
Reed shrugged, flipping through the baby book. “If it’s a boy.”
The words stilled my heart. “It is.”
Reed’s grin turned cold. “Don’t tell me you’re that goddamned arrogant, Nick.”
“Arrogant about what.”
“That the baby is a boy.”
Son of a bitch. I intended to end the conversation, but Reed spoke anyway.
“Every time Sarah says he or son, it’s more a prayer than a certainty,” he said. “Only you and Dad are convinced she’s having a boy.” His eyes had hardened over the months, seeing far more than I gave him credit for observing. “And we better hope to Christ it is. Dad’s a bastard, and he’d rape her again without question, but he doesn’t have the patience for another pregnancy. If your baby is a girl…” His fingers crinkled the cover of the book. “They’re both in danger.”
Silence.
Not that I hadn’t considered it, but the thought terrified me.
My son or my daughter, it didn’t matter.
I didn’t want an heir. I wanted a family. I wanted her, happy and smiling and proud to carry my child. I’d save her from further bloodshed just for a chance at that perfect-ever-after.
I paused, pulling my phone and calling for her guard to meet us downstairs. Max frowned as I gave him the instructions.
“Robert hasn’t been guarding her,” I said. “He’s following her.”
Reed tensed, but Max expected it.
“Dad’s probably paying for him to stay close,” I said. “Find out how much he spent.”
Max nodded. “And then?”
“If you want to earn Sarah’s forgiveness?” I said. “Keep her safe. Nothing will endanger her or the baby. I’ll check on her first, and then I’ll follow.”
“What? You want to warm up with her bodyguard? Get a practice kill?”
I didn’t need the practice anymore. The war had already begun.
The toxicity website highlighted it’s warnings in bold, blocky letters. Pesticide poisoning was a cruel and harsh way to die.
Headaches and cramps, nausea and shortness of breath. It read like an acute form of morning sickness coupled with the ugly weaknesses caused from my asthma.
How fitting, punishing a man who had inflicted me with the same symptoms, the same pain, the same humiliations?
I’d make Darius Bennett suffer, and the idea thrilled a dark part of me. Like an illness strengthening in each passing hour, the desire to hurt, to cause him pain, burrowed from the hidden fantasies. First it was simply a secret in the night. Now it burst into my waking thoughts. Visions of revenge suffocated my mind—crippling every desire, every honest joy, every moment of rest.
Never before had I dreamt of harming another person.
But he caused the vile thoughts. He forced me to demand blood for blood and pain for pain.
And so I would deliver it.
Darius threatened my mother and nearly overdosed her on the medications that kept her senses dulled and judgement clouded. He ordered his men to shoot Max, strangle Reed, and gun Nicholas down in the street like an animal. He raped me and promised either more torment or a violent death.
He meant to take my child.
Every minute he lived trapped me in a new agony. It ended now.
And the irony of it—of using the Bennett Corporation’s own products to erode him from the inside out—delighted me.
My father, a man just as cruel and barbaric as Darius, would have been proud. The first and only time he’d be honored by the daughter who sacrificed so much to avenge his name, safeguard his legacy, and protect our futures.
He didn’t deserve my efforts.
But I needed that peace. I needed something to dull the racing, jarring, enraged thoughts that stole every moment of rest from my exhausted and weakened body.
I planned to murder a man.
And no matter how many times I thought of him as a demon, a monster, an animal, I still imagined the blood on my hands.
And it sickened me.
And it excited me.
And it would ruin me.
It would finally free me from the Bennett nightmare.
If I only could gather the courage to do it. If the implication didn’t lace me with shivers, smother me with panic, and coat me in the same filthy grime that created Darius Bennett.
My father once said if revenge were easy, peace wouldn’t be so hard.
I closed the website—the same specs I requested for the Bennett chemicals I used to treat my farm. The words faded, but it felt like the entire world saw through the innocence I once had. Like they knew the choice I’d made.
I ran a bath and, for the first time in three months, actually enjoyed the bathroom without needing to cuddle on the tile with my sickness. The last days of my first trimester forged a truce between me and Bumper. I snacked on carrots and the occasional plate of mushroom lasagna, and he let me be.
A bath usually calmed me, and Nicholas’s penthouse offered the sleekest, most modern bathroom, complete with a Jacuzzi tub, warmed floors, and selected aroma therapy candles. Dark granite and harsh angles wasn’t my preferred style, but it fit Nicholas.
Would it fit me?
After Darius was gone, after the baby came, after we controlled the Bennett Corporation and my farm, would I eventually think of the penthouse as a…home?
The night with Nicholas did more than grant me confidence. It made me hope.
I wanted him. I loved him. I needed him. But could I risk the danger? I doubted I’d survive the heartache of leaving him.
The bath did nothing to soothe me, and thoughts of Nicholas only flushed me warmer than the water. That heat didn’t pass, even as I brushed the towel over my body.
I glanced to the mirror.
The towel dropped.
I didn’t recognize the reflection.
“That’s new.” I swallowed. My hand traced the barest swell of my belly. “Uh-oh.”
I was used to the darkening of my nipples, the tenderness in my breasts, even the mood swings and fatigue. But…this was different.
Real.
I dressed quickly, tossing on a strappy shirt with a pair of thin shorts and snuck from the bathroom.
My step-brothers crowded the penthouse. Five thousand square feet, and they all descended on the living room—Reed with the pregnancy books by the window, Max rummaging through the refrigerator, and Nicholas working remotely on a desk in the corner.
I hesitated, earning their attention all at once. My cheeks burned.
Nicholas closed the laptop. “Everything okay?”
“Yes.” I bit my lip. “Kinda.”
Reed tossed the book aside. He pointed to his abs, tight against his shirt. “More nausea? Round ligament pain? It’s common. Are you hurting?”
“What? No.”
Max pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and slammed it on the counter. “Drink it.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Sick?” Reed asked. “Tired? Are you feeling any tenderness?”