It wasn’t. I tightened my finger over the trigger. “This obsession is all that’s mine. It’s my true inheritance. I’ve done nothing in this world except serve my family’s pride. But there is none. Not for the Atwoods. Not for the Bennetts. I’ve honored bloodshed and misery and hatred. I’ve sacrificed everything for this pain.”
Darius hadn’t moved, couldn’t move with the injuries that should have claimed his life with his son’s. The slimy graze of his words coiled over my arms, my neck.
“Then end it, Sarah.”
“There is no end. There will never be an end. My brothers are dead. Your son is dead.”
“There is no rationalizing vengeance, Sarah,” Darius said. “It simply is. It’s owed. It’s redemption of one’s failures and a responsibility to family—the most important element in this godforsaken world.”
“I won’t serve the burdens of those dead and buried anymore.” I swore. “I spent my life living in my father’s shadow, answering for his crimes and damning myself to his sins. Everything I did, everything I ever was, became an extension of this violent feud. My father didn’t give me a purpose in this world. Only a task. I had to make a male heir in case the worst happened and there were no more real Atwoods to protect our name.”
“And you couldn’t even do that right,” Darius hissed.
Nicholas answered for me. “The child is no mistake.”
“The child is worthless.”
“She’s better than all of us,” Nicholas said. “Safe from this madness. She’s innocent.”
Darius scowled. “No one is innocent in this world.”
“Then I’ll change the world or protect her from it.” The gun trembled my hand, despite how tightly I clenched against the grip. “She’ll never know this rage, this obsession, this false pride and demand for blood. No one deserves a life created just to end another.”
A heavy, spine-tingling groan of wood against stone roared through the estate. From above, a dangerous shatter and thudding heralded a collapse. The ceiling rattled, dislodging chunks of plaster. Thick smoke rolled the stairs behind us.
Was Reed trapped upstairs?
The flames in the fireplace burst quick, pulsing and hot. The threatening flicker of orange pierced the darkness of the hall with a ghastly glow.
We had little time.
And the gun had yet to be fired.
Was this what I wanted? I choked over the grimy air, clutching my belly as Bumper quieted and ceased kicking in my stress and fatigue.
I carried a child. I held a gun. My prison burned to the ground around me.
And my vengeance threatened to consume us all.
The man I loved shielded me from falling debris, and the man I hated baited me with a sick grin and eager posture.
Max was dead. Reed was missing. The child cradled too still within me.
Tears rolled over my cheek.
“I won’t fear you anymore,” I said. “I won’t fear this. I won’t bear the guilt of loving a Bennett. In my life I’ve mourned the wrong people and suffered because of the hatred of others.”
I exhaled, coughing, aching, trapped.
“I won’t hate anymore.”
“You can’t help but hate,” Darius whispered. “It’s in your blood, just as it’s in mine. You will never be free, my dear. Kill me. I’ll live on. Every time you hold the child. When she cries in the night. When she nurses at your breast. Every sacrifice you make to care for her innocence, you’ll remember how I won. You carry a Bennett, Sarah. And every second she spends within your womb will eat you alive.”
The gun fired, but I didn’t aim for his blackened heart or the perverted, twisted mind that existed only to plot my inevitable torture.
I aimed for his right leg. His hip.
And he fell in the crippled agony Max endured every day of his life.
“You can’t threaten me with a daughter I love.” I watched as Darius limped and swore, bleeding his way into the leather wingback before the fireplace. His body cast in shadow, writhed in the growing flames bursting from the hearth. “I won’t let you hurt me anymore. I won’t let your name, your life, become my obsession.”
Darius pulled the weapon he concealed from his pocket. Nicholas moved, but I didn’t flinch.
“I bear enough of your scars,” I whispered. “I won’t let your blood stain me too.”
Darius didn’t aim for us. He looked through me, his stare forever searing a darkening, terrible place within my mind, my memory, my heart.
“You will never be free of this.” His every word fell upon us as a curse. “You wanted to start your new family?”
The gun pointed.
Fired.
Shattered through the study’s window.
A burst of cold air flooded the room, howling as it coiled within the heat of the flames. The rushing oxygen punched over us. The fire from the hall trapped us within the parlor as it twisted, danced, and exploded.
Nicholas shouted, shielding me from the burst of heat, smoke, and ravenous inferno.
Darius’s laugh rattled within the fire, calling him home.
“Then, my dear, we will die as a family.”
We weren’t dying here.
Sarah fell to her knees. The fires and smoke poisoned the estate with ash, grit, and the charring memories of my home.
Except it was never a home.
Never a place of comfort or love, warmth or acceptance.
I remembered nothing but pain within the smoldering halls. Places where I had been lashed and the secret corners were we hid until Mom took us by the hand and led us to him.
The monster, sadist, and brutal tyrant filled the estate with a presence more frightening, more terrible than any flames or churning smoke. I’d have taken the burns and blisters over his expectations.
The fire surged through the bottom level of the mansion. I hauled Sarah to her feet. She wavered. I plucked her from the ground and tucked her into my arms instead. She might have protested, might have fought, but the wracking coughs and tears choked her beyond anything safe for her or our child.
My father didn’t move.
His leg bled, spreading a puddle of crimson against his trousers, the chair, the floor.
He made no attempt to flee. His wedding picture rested in his lap.
No more expectations. No more threats. He waited for the fires.
And only his clutching, veined hand gripping the chair revealed the consuming agony that seared through his body. I prayed nothing would remain once the fire purged through his carcass.
Sarah struggled against my hold—either to turn and ensure the fires feasted on his corpse or because she’d discovered what I feared.
We were trapped.
The estate erupted into searing flames. Paint melted on the walls. The crystal chandeliers whistled as they fell, crashing against the stone floors in an explosion of glass and gold. A vortex of heat and violence whipped through the upper floors. Sarah clutched at me as a plank from the ceiling fell. I spun with her, dodging the cracking, failing ceiling as it all came undone.
As everything ruined in flame and death.
And she couldn’t scream. Couldn’t even cough.
I burst through the hall, but thick smoke concealed the passage through the rear of the estate. The smoke blinded me, and the heat prickled my skin. Sarah pointed, her motions stealing what precious breath she managed within the crumbling inferno. The path behind us blocked with a wave of fire.
It wasn’t ending like this.
I lowered her to the floor and wrapped her tightly in my jacket, covering her soft skin. She gagged and sputtered, but I didn’t let her protest. I gathered her in my arms, rushed to the flames, and jumped through, bounding to the front door.
The heat seared through my shirt, and a lick of flame singed the sleeve. A biting pain surged over my leg. I shouldered the door and sprinted outside, lowering Sarah to the grass as my own lungs seared.