Max offered. I nodded. His driver wacked Bryant’s back, aiming for his kidney. His pained scream ended in a sharp wheeze.
“The child is mine.” I let my voice edge with a growl. “And anyone who says otherwise will wish they hadn’t indulged in such dark rumors.”
“Your father raped and impregnated that girl. If you want to raise your fucking half-brother like a pathetic cuckold—”
Reed’s club slipped, aimed for the opposite kidney. Bryant’s sickening words silenced.
I’d do worse.
Much worse.
I pulled my own club, testing the weight against an imaginary distance somewhere beyond the green and the cracking of Bryant’s skull. It felt good.
I tossed my jacket into the cart. No sense wasting a shot. I didn’t believe in mulligans, not when a gentleman, a businessman, and a Bennett accepted their failures and rebuilt their successes without excuses or blame.
“I was never fond of this sport.” I fit a glove onto my hand. “My father insisted we all learn how to play. We were given private instruction and encouraged to join teams in our secondary school and universities.”
“Lot of good it did,” Reed said. “All I learned was how to shank a ball hard to the left.”
Max snorted. “I learned it was a bitch of a sport for those with bad ankles, knees, hips…everything.”
“And I learned it was the best location for business to be discussed in a reasonable, friendly atmosphere.” I dropped the ball an inch from Bryant’s nose. “I always had a great drive.”
Bryant’s once enraged grumble shifted to a timid whimper. He struggled to rise. Reed pushed his club once more into his back, rendering him still.
“Now this course, I’ve never played,” I said. “Haven’t had time, what with trying to ensure Sarah Atwood carries my—what was it? Half-brother?—to term. But I’m sure I can master this particular course just as easily as the others.”
I didn’t aim for the green or the hole. I readied for a shot overlooking the beautiful cliff drop to the ocean below.
“These courses have a few more hazards than sand pits and the occasional pond,” I said. “Notice how the wind swirls here? That must be a hundred foot drop to the ocean over there.”
Max shook his head. “Hundred and fifty at least.”
“And the waters around here are straight-up turbulent,” Reed hummed. “Those waves break too fast. Can’t swim. Can’t surf. Really a wasted bit of coastline.”
“This location is made more difficult because the only thing preventing a bad shot from edging over the cliff…?” I stilled as I aimed for the drive. “A little wooden fence, rotted from the salt spray.”
Bryant’s pathetic murmurs rose into a frantic cry as I shifted my weight into the stance and swung the club across my hips, crushing the ball and whiffing the air only a few centimeters from his nose.
The ball sailed out over the cliff and disappeared into the mists over the water.
“Nice one,” Reed said.
Max drew Bryant to his knees. Tears wet his cheeks, but the slobbering mess of a man before me would never earn my pity. If he reserved none for Sarah why would I afford him the privilege of my mercy?
“Bryant, I really have no time for this game,” I said. “We came to discuss the Bennett Corporation. You understand the importance of my promotion. I require a complete change of ownership to alter the current course of my company. I am, once more, asking you to consider your resignation and the sale of your shares.”
“And if I say no?”
“I’ll think you’ll find that assisting my father’s attempt to murder me damns you enough.”
“I didn’t—”
“You were there during the gunfire. You chose the location, the table, the time. But this isn’t about an insult to me. This is my attempt to take control of what’s rightfully mine. I am offering you a chance to sell now. Will you accept?”
“You aren’t your father.” Bryant’s eyes widened. “You won’t hurt me.”
“That is why I offered the sale and not a bullet.”
He eyed the clubs in our hands and swore. “What the hell do you want? I’ll do whatever you like.”
It was the smartest thing I ever remembered the man saying. I retrieved the contract of sale from my pocket, simple and direct and pre-filled with Bryant’s specific information and holdings.
“A signature, please.”
“Fine. Fine!” He waved for the contract and pen. “You win. Take the goddamned company. Just fucking let me go.”
I passed him the papers. He initialed where I indicated and passed the contract back to me. His profanity was unnecessary.
“Congratulations, Nick. You and the Atwood whore own the company. I did what you wanted. Now let me go. Give me this second chance, and I won’t come near you or the girl.”
Or the child.
I didn’t damn my soul in doing this. I sacrificed for my baby.
I folded the contract and handed the paperwork to Reed.
“Thank you, Bryant, for your lifelong support of my company and our business. Your dedication to the Bennett Corporation is both admirable and frightening.” I took a deep breath. “But I’ve learned something from this experience. A second chance is only another opportunity to repeat the same mistakes and cause the same pain. No one deserves second chances, least of all me.”
“Nick, what the hell are you doing?” Bryant twisted as my brothers drew him to his feet. “You got what you wanted. You have the company. You have the girl. You even made the fucking heir. What else do you want?”
“This isn’t for me.” My grip tightened over the club. “What happens now will be for her, to prove the second chance she gave me wasn’t in vain.”
“You won’t kill me for an Atwood! Nick, Nicholas.” Bryant struggled as my brothers led him to the edge of the cliff. “Stop this. You wanted the company on your terms. You got it. You aren’t cruel like this.” His blubbering turned hysterical. “Nick, you aren’t a man like your father.”
“Yes, I am.” Admitting it was another opportunity to save myself. “But I’ll make this sacrifice to appear to be a better man…at least in her eyes.”
My signature blotted across the page.
With a single swipe of the pen, the Bennett Corporation now owned every patent, every note, every bit of research I ever conducted on my genetically modified crops.
Dad would have been inconsolably enraged. But even at his worst, he wasn’t like Darius Bennett. He never raised a hand to me. Nicholas, Max, and Reed bore the scars of their father, some more apparent than others. In that regard, I was the lucky one.
I traced the thin, white mark over Nicholas’s bicep. I didn’t realize he was awake. He shifted only to gather me to his chest, hold me close, and distract me from the injuries that dotted his skin.
“If this happens…” He whispered more to himself than to me. “If you get pregnant—”
“I won’t.”
“If it happens, and you have my son…”
Not an heir. Not a child. His son. His voice caressed me in protective secret.
“I won’t treat him how my father treated me. I promise you. I would be kind.”
“Would you love him?”
He held me tighter. “With every beat of my heart.”
Greater mistakes than mine had been made before.
At least, I thought so.
But this wouldn’t be a mistake. I felt it. I knew it. The new Bennett Corporation wasn’t the same evil empire that challenged my father and ruined lives. Nicholas assumed control, as he had been bred to do, as he was raised to do.
And Darius’s resignation was coming at the end of the month.
For the moment, for the peaceful days that lured us into a strange and foreign equilibrium between anxiety and relief, everything threatened to turn out…okay.
That was more unsettling than any kidnapping, any captivity, any abuse.