That anyone spoke with him.
Nicholas led us to an unoccupied storage room, a small area muffled from the party by the humming of the florescent lights. The door closed behind us, and my step-brothers stood between me and the monster who had yet to make his move.
“A stirring speech, Nicholas,” Darius said. “Though you really must annunciate more. Do this family some justice and use a bit of bravado.”
“What do you want?” Nicholas asked.
“Am I not permitted to attend my own son’s celebration? You’ve done it, Nicholas. Secured the Bennett Corporation for yourself. Bloodied your fists and earned your keep.” He snorted. “I should think I’m entitled to a bit of caviar for giving you this opportunity.”
“You’ve given me nothing.”
“I gave you a name. A purpose. A legacy.” Darius tilted his head. “And you ruined it. You’ve tarnished our family with this union. The girl is your whore, not someone deserving of quarter of the company. And still you parade her around, free, as if the child is yours.”
“It is.”
“And I’ll permit you to take credit for the heir, if only because the world would not understand my coupling with Sarah.”
“Coupling?” I refused to avert my gaze. “You raped me.”
“Many times, my dear. Many times.”
“And yet, here I stand. I’ve taken your family. I’ve stolen your company.” I raised my chin. “Hard to be ashamed of a little coupling when I’ve conquered the only things that ever gave you pride.”
“When the bastard is born, I will be bursting with pride.”
“It isn’t your child.”
“Call it father’s intuition,” he sighed. “Call it probability. Why lie? Why stand there and blush and giggle and whisper all those sweet nothings into Nicholas’s ear when you know the truth? They had three months to take you, rape you, force a child into that womb.” He extended his arms. “Tell them how long it took me to mount you, how long it took me to create our child—”
Nicholas rushed forward, striking his father and slamming him into the wall. His voice grated with rage.
“She isn’t yours!”
My hand reflexively twisted over my belly.
Oh no.
“Sarah isn’t yours,” Nicholas grunted. His forearm pressed into Darius’s neck. “The baby is my son.”
No. His reaction was too violent, too visceral, too quick.
Darius’s eyebrow perked just as Nicholas corrected himself.
Darius glanced to me, as though looking upon my body would reveal everything we hid about Bumper. My heart thudded, wracking against lungs that threatened to collapse in a breathless scream.
“Leave,” Nicholas rasped. “While I still give you the chance.”
“I never thought I’d see the day when my son defended an Atwood.”
“I said leave.”
“After all these years, after all these tragedies.”
Nicholas tensed. He looked to Reed and Max. “Take Sarah home.”
“The blood has always been bad between our families, particularly since her father attempted to murder you and your brothers. A shame he succeeded in only killing your mother.”
Reed took my arm. Darius called to me.
“All this ugliness worked out for the best, don’t you think, Sarah? Now you have a new lover and a little bundle of joy on the way. How fortunate your father succumbed to cancer so we could steal you.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered. Reed ushered me to the door.
Darius’s voice rose, calling to me, taunting me.
“If we knew you’d be so amenable to this arrangement, we wouldn’t have waited to murder your brothers.”
The room spun.
Murder.
A sickness churned in my belly, frozen by the chill piercing my spine. I turned, slowly, every movement an ache against the crushing agony of that memory, that horrible vision of flames and metal and my brothers’ last moments.
“What did you say?” I whispered.
Reed tugged on my hand. “Sarah, let’s go.”
“What did you say about my brothers?”
Darius’s grin spread with vile delight. “Josiah and Michael would have been great leaders for Atwood Industries. They certainly would never have sold a multi-billion dollar research idea to us, and their children would have kept the company protected within the Atwood line. Not like you, my dear.”
“Tell me about my brothers!”
“What did you think happened, Sarah? They impeded our takeover.”
“You’re lying.”
“Pilot error. Mechanical error. It’s fortunate the investigators couldn’t scrape up what bits remained of your brothers to identify the true cause of their deaths. Hard to have a homicide investigation if there’s nothing left but ash.”
“You’re fucking lying!”
“If it’s any consolation, it was much quicker and far less harrowing than putting a bullet in their brains. Your mother wouldn’t have survived her sons’ murders. A one-in-a-million tragedy was cruel, but less damaging to her fragile health.”
My chest ached in a pained gasp.
I’d never take a full breath again.
“It isn’t true,” I whispered.
“Max can tell you exactly how he did it,” Darius said. He nodded. “Go on, son. Tell your little sister how proud I was of you…that crash was one of the few times you didn’t disappoint me.”
I’d scream if I didn’t fear the sickness rising.
Max didn’t meet my eye.
It couldn’t have been true.
It wasn’t.
I looked to Reed. He no longer reached for my hand.
No.
Not now. Not after everything. Not this.
“Nick?” I begged him. “Nick, please. Tell me he’s lying.”
His silence was a knife to the heart.
I should have known. I should have protected myself. I should have run when I had the chance.
The Bennetts lived only to cause me suffering and betrayal.
And now they had everything. My child. My family’s empire. My research.
My pride.
My heart.
I had nothing left for them to destroy.
They knew.
The whole time. Since my brother’s deaths. Since they first captured me. Hurt me.
Bred me.
Darius. Reed. Nicholas.
They knew.
Max murdered my brothers, and they never told me.
Because they knew what I would do.
The limo delivered me to the penthouse, but I only made it as far as the farm-themed nursery. My purse dropped as my lungs tightened, the sickness rose, and everything hurt.
Too much.
My inhaler eased some of the pressure, but this wasn’t a pain caused from troublesome lungs or shock.
This was misery.
Darius forced me to endure Josiah and Mike’s deaths, binding me to a chair and replaying the video and cockpit recordings of their screams over and over until my mind shattered. I tried to kill him, but the slice was too far from his heart.
I might have ended it then.
I might have stopped the lies. Saved my body. Prevented the rape.
But nothing I did would have saved my brothers. Not from the plans Dad had for them and not from the Bennetts. Darius plotted their deaths from the instant Dad announced his cancer. Their fate sealed when they formed the Josmik Trust.
And then I let my brothers’ murderers kidnap me. Take me. Befriend me.
Love me.
Nicholas promised we’d be a family.
Reed cherished me like his own sister.
And Max?
Fury stole my thoughts. I clutched the little bump as I sat, rocking as if to the cradle the life that was yet to be born.
No one was left to cradle me.