Текст книги "Capital Risk"

Автор книги: Lana Grayson

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“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.

She knew I wanted her. That I loved her. That I loved the baby.

And she did too. Her hand curled over her tummy as she rested.

“How’s Bumper?”

The nickname grew on me. She smirked. Sprout and her Bumper Crop. Entirely too cute for a Bennett boy, especially as it took years before I accepted the shortening of my name to Nick. But our family traditions and conventions could change. They would change.

“He’s okay,” she said.

I didn’t want okay. I wanted great, fantastic, healthy. Once we rid the world of my father, Sarah would only need to worry about the sheer amount of toys, clothing, and baby equipment I planned to buy for our child.

She’d only have to consider loving me once more. Accepting my offer of family.

Staying with me. Always.

The plane landed, and Sarah fell asleep in the limo on the way home. She wasn’t comfortable, but the confrontation overwhelmed her. I expected it.

I feared it.

My father’s insults were meant for me. He cared little about Sarah’s reaction, only that she continued to carry the child he considered more asset than family. But she bore his words with equal indignation and endured his torment with Atwood impetuousness, not Bennett patience.

She needed no other reason to act out in violence. She simply waited for the opportunity.

And we’d all suffer as a result.

We returned to my penthouse. My brothers greeted Sarah the only way they knew. Reed offered her a bottle of water. Max, a seat and blanket. Neither could speak to her about the horrors she faced at my father’s hand. Still, they tried to help. I appreciated it.

“What happened?” Reed asked. “Everything okay?”

“Mom’s fine.” Sarah’s words tightened in frustration. “I need to rest. I have a headache.”

I waited until the door to the bedroom closed before casting off my jacket and stealing the whiskey from Max’s hands. Noon was too early for either of us to drink. At least I had stopped at some point during the night. Hungover, sober, or drunk, Max’s eyes remained bloodshot. I could only imagine the condition of his liver.

“What the fuck happened?” Max grunted.

“Bethany wasn’t alone.”

“Dad?” Reed guessed.

“Waiting for us,” I said. “Bethany’s memory is ruined, and the dementia is getting worse. He threatened her with her medications.”

“Why?”

I gritted my teeth. “Because he expected Sarah to rush to her mother without me.”

Max crossed his arms. “And then?”

“He’s convinced the child is his.” I took a seat. Reed perched on the side of the sofa, but Max preferred to pace. “He’s planning to take Sarah and steal the baby.”

“And if he succeeds?”

It would never happen. “Either he’ll kill Sarah…or he’ll keep her to make another child.”

“Fuck me,” Reed whispered. “Does Sarah know?”

“He made his intentions clear.”

“What do we do?”

Max answered for me. “Just what we’re doing. Stick to the plan. We kill the son of a bitch.”

“No.” I lowered my voice. “I kill him.”

Reed frowned. “Like it fucking matters who points the gun.”

“It does to me.”

“We all want a shot at him—”

I didn’t need to interrupt him. My gaze silenced Reed. “I will do it.”

Max understood, which meant he would forever challenge my decisions. He glanced over his shoulder, ensuring the door shut tightly behind Sarah.

“No, you mean she won’t do it.”

I nodded.

“You aren’t even going to tell her what you’re planning?”

“No.”

Reed waved his hands, grabbing another baby book from the stack he kept on the coffee table.

“That’s it. I’m out. Unless you want her aiming for us too, you better let Sarah Atwood in on this plan.”

“If I can spare her the trauma, I will.”

“It’s not about trauma,” Max said. “You want the kill shot because Dad hurt her. Fuck, I want to do it too.”

“It’s not about the rape.” The word soured on my tongue. I resolved never to say it again.

Max never knew when to drop a subject. “Then what is it? Sarah’s been through enough trauma. This shit would be fucking therapeutic for her.”

“Sarah is pregnant, and not by choice. She’s scared, she’s exhausted, and the asthma and stress will only make her weaker.” I pointed to Reed’s books. “What do those chapters say about a healthy pregnancy? I guarantee there’s no talk about assaults, beatings, and corporate takeovers between the benefits of cloth or disposable diapers.”

“And you don’t think she’d take pleasure in murdering that asshole?” Max voiced the obvious. “She’s a goddamned Atwood. They’re raised from birth to want to draw our blood.”

“Exactly,” I said. “She sacrificed her body when she believed we killed her father. She expected to be hurt and beaten and humiliated, and she accepted it for the chance to avenge her family. And now? The real crime has been done to her. She’s the one who was hurt.”

Reed rubbed the rawness around his neck. “So…what? Sarah’s always been a little…intense.”

“It’s not intensity,” I said. “It’s obsession.”

“You would know best.”

I stiffened. “Yes. And that’s exactly why I’m doing this. Why it has to be me. Why we need to do this on our own. I understand her, more than she realizes. I don’t want her to suffer as a result of taking a human life.”

Max grunted. “He’s hardly human.”

“I won’t let her regret in ten, twenty, thirty years the revenge she wants now.”

“She deserves that revenge.”

“And she’ll have it, even if it comes from my hand.”

“Nick, you can’t decide that for her.” Max’s jaw tightened. “You’re killing a man. It’s done. It’s happening. But don’t take that choice from her.”

“I’m protecting her.”

“You’re robbing her of the chance to end things on her terms. You’d steal the only choice she has in her life right now. You’d be no better than Dad.”

Reed exhaled. I didn’t dignify it with a reaction.

“He harmed her. I am stopping her from harming herself.”

“You’re fucking delusional,” Max laughed.

“And the lives you took? The crimes our father asked you to commit? Hasn’t your perspective recently shifted?”

“Don’t fucking change the subject.”

“What about her brothers?” I hated speaking of it when she rested in the other room. “How do you feel now that you’ve met and loved Sarah Atwood?”

“I didn’t know it was Michael and Josiah in that fucking plane.”

“No, but you did what he asked of you, realizing it would hurt another person. Now we face the consequences of that decision.”

“Fuck you, Nick.” Max hissed the words. “You have no idea what that shit has put me through.”

“And that’s why I would spare Sarah. We don’t know what will come of it in the future.”

The drink talked for him. “How goddamned magnanimous of you.”

Reed cleared his throat. “Just drop it, Max.”

Max refused. “How fucking lucky that you’re there to spare the woman you love. That you’ve taken this fucking curse upon yourself. That you’ve never had to get your goddamned hands bloody when it mattered!”

Reed lowered his voice. “He’s trying to protect her.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to make me the villain.” Max pointed at me. He chose a dignified finger. “You never had to decide between right or wrong, Nick. You never made the choice between spilling blood or never coming home again.”

“I own my regretted decisions.”

It insulted Max. “You think I liked doing Dad’s dirty work? I did those things—I murdered that poor girl’s family—because I thought it would endear me to that fucking monster. You’re right. I feel like shit. But you’re the one who gets to kill him. You’re the one who saves the girl and starts a family. Me?” he sneered. “I get to live day after fucking day, knowing Sarah would forever hate me if she knew what I did. That she’d toss my carcass in the same shallow grave where Dad would rot for eternity.”

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?”

“Reed, I’m fine.”

That drew Nicholas’s attention. “What is it?”

It was embarrassing. It was natural. It was everything that would continue to happen to me for the next six months. Why was it so hard to admit?

“Bumper gave me a…bump.”

They didn’t get it. All three lurched to their feet, each scattering in three different directions to gather my things. Reed seized my purse. Max my shoes.

They thought I had to go to the hospital.

Only Nicholas waited for the explanation.

The confession.

“I’m showing.”

Reed and Max stilled. I squirmed as their collective gazes centered low on my belly, like they expected it to suddenly balloon up. I lifted my shirt. They didn’t react until I turned to the side. Their heads angled. Reed snorted.

“That’s it?” he laughed. “Christ, I look like that after I eat a pizza.”

I bit my lip as Nicholas approached. He made no such joke, didn’t shake his head like Max. His eyes narrowed in concentration, brightened with excitement, and studied the tiniest swelling with rapt attention. I stilled as his hand brushed my exposed skin. His palm covered the bump and hid the secret once more for us and us alone.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

And he meant it.

The raw amazement in his words banished my embarrassment. It fueled me with the same heated intensity that simmered the caramel smoothness of his voice.

One word and he’d burn me. One promise and he’d trap me.

One command and he’d seal me forever within the warmth of his palm.

I swallowed, cascading from anxious to shamed to empowered in a single graze of his fingers. It didn’t take much for my heart to flutter and core to clench, but Nicholas’s touch tickled from the barest, faintest of promises. Suddenly, my thoughts twisted into something dark and utterly sensual.

I hadn’t spoken of our night together. Neither had he—either out of respect for my decision or because he recognized the truth.

I loved him more than I hated Darius Bennett. And that made the decision to leave impossible and the choice to stay so very complicated.

I shifted from his hand, shuddering as the electric heat sizzled from his fingertips through my core. He released me. My body hadn’t realized. Dozens of shivers raced over my skin, and the flush returned to my cheeks, more prominent than before. I tugged my shirt, but the brush of the material over my sensitive breasts and tightening nipples only made the heat worse.

I knew better than to go without a bra now.

My insides twisted. I knew exactly what I was thinking, and I didn’t trust it.

With my confidence restored, and the fear soothed under Nicholas’s careful, deliberate touch, I was almost healed. Nothing prevented me from feeling all the perfect shudders and warmths of my body, or enjoying the tingles and slick wantings.

I woke every night in his bed, surrounded by his scent, tucked within his silken sheets, but I hadn’t the courage to surrender to any desire.

And not just for Nicholas.

I swallowed. It did nothing. The goosebumps prickled under the attention of my step-brothers. I wished it hadn’t felt so good.

I retreated, earning a knowing stare from those golden eyes. I could hide nothing from him, but I’d sure as hell try. I edged to the sofa and sat, sighing once I was free of their gazes.

Reed immediately plopped down next to me.

“Can I touch Bumper?” His grin popped with just one dimple, playful and excited. “I’m curious.”

“Thought it was less impressive than your bloated pizza belly.”

“I’ll order some right now. We’ll see who gets bigger.”

“If you can promise to be the same size as me six months from now, we might have a deal.”

“That’s a lot of pizza.”

“It’s a lot of baby.”

“Well, Bumper should know Uncle Reed will do anything for the little guy. And if that means gorging on pizza, I’ll make the sacrifice.”

My heart fluttered. Uncle Reed. It was too sweet. But I hadn’t allowed myself to think of such things. Uncles and swelling bellies made it feel too real. Except it was. And it was getting harder to hide.

Reed waited for permission. What could it hurt?

I lifted my shirt and tried to position myself to enhance what little bump there was. Reed’s hand covered me, far gentler than Nicholas, almost as if the multitude of baby books he had read neglected to mention that I wouldn’t fall apart from a touch. I hadn’t before, and I wouldn’t now.

Especially as Reed’s proud grin matched the warmth of his hands. A good warmth. Just as protective, just as loving as Nicholas’s touch.

Just as consuming.

“Neat.” His fingers pressed against me. I hid the shiver and ignored the quickening flutter in my chest. “Max, wanna feel?”

“Pass.” Max looked away. “Not so good with delicate things.”

“You can’t feel anything,” I said. “It’s just…pudgy.”

“It’s beautiful.” Nicholas hovered close.

“Definitely,” Reed said. He pulled his hand away as he said it, clearing his throat. “You know. If you’re into that sort of thing.”

“It’ll get bigger,” I warned.

Nicholas answered without hesitation. “And you’ll be beautiful then too.”

“Good.” I swallowed. “Glad you’ve considered the consequences of all this.”

“Every day.”

His voice soothed me. I rested against the couch, drawing my legs up. The cool leather eased some of the ache. Not all of it. Not nearly enough. Both Reed and Nicholas touched me, and the memory of their previous embraces tingled through me. Heat pulsed between my legs. Insistent. Demanding.

Utterly inappropriate. I gnawed on my lip.

“You okay?” Reed asked. “You’re a little flushed.”

Nothing got past him. “Fine.”

“You sure? Need anything?”

He edged closer, and the sea-salt tease of his scent mingled with the memory of Nicholas’s sharpness. Nicholas watched me, the tug of a smile pulling on his lips.

He knew.

“I’m fine.”

“You can tell me. Whatever you want. Ice cream, weird cravings, whatever.”

“Reed, it’s not…” I twisted in the sofa. “I’m not hungry.”

“Tired?”

Now I was. “No.”

“Then what—”

Max snorted. “Christ, you’re the one reading all the damn baby books. She’s second trimester. Sarah’s fucking horny.”

And the embarrassments never ended. I ground my jaw.

“Thanks, Max.”

“Happy to help, baby.”

Yeah, only one thing would help, and I wasn’t sure they were ready for that conversation.

But it had to be done. It should have already been done.

Darius wasn’t the only man who left me with tarnished, terrible memories. My last intimate moments with both Reed and Max were ruined by the barrel of a gun slammed against my head. I sacrificed my body to the brutal demands of their father. I tried to forgive their body’s natural instincts.

It took the violence of another to forget the horrors caused by the men I loved.

So much had changed since then. Since we left the estate. Since we bound together to fight and run and forged an alliance against Darius.

I had confronted my demons and banished my nightmares with Nicholas. Didn’t Max and Reed deserve the same closure?

We all needed whatever comfort, whatever forgiveness, we could offer each other.

Because who knew when it would be our last chance.

“Oh.” Reed glanced at Nicholas. “Uh. We can…leave, if you two need to—”

Now I did flush. “Look, I’m okay. It’s just hormones.”

It was more than that. So much more. Confusion and doubt, conflicted loyalty and anxiety. I planned to kill a man who might have swelled me with his child. I left my mother in the cruel embrace of a monster who would sooner murder her if it meant crippling me for his taking.

I loved the man who endangered me the most.

And I missed the gentle and ravenous touches of his brothers, even when they originally intended to capture, degrade, and humiliate me. Neither Max nor Reed ever really hurt me, not when it wasn’t Darius’s bidding. They loved me like a friend, like a sister, like a lover. It wasn’t a conventional relationship, but it had meant so much to me.

It kept me alive.

“This is such a mess,” I whispered. “I don’t even know what I want anymore.”

Nicholas settled beside me on the couch, taking my hand. I let him, but Reed hadn’t moved.

I seized a breath. Now or never.

I took his hand too.

“Whatever you want, it’s yours,” Nicholas said. “You tell us what you need to be happy, and we’ll make it happen.”

Reed nodded. “No questions asked.”

It was that simple. And it was that complicated.

“Is it strange that I want things back the way they were?” I asked. “Not…before my father died. Not before you guys kidnapped me. But before…”

I stopped. I had no idea if they’d understand. No idea if I was mourning a darkness that confused me or trading genuine friendship for captivity.

But I took a chance in loving them.

I searched their gazes. “Even with all those terrible, awful things that happened, and all the bullshit Darius put me through, I got through it because I had you guys.”

Max approached, but he didn’t sit. “It wasn’t us, baby. We caused that shit. We didn’t help; we fucked you up more.”

“You might have hurt me, but you didn’t. Not like I knew you could.”

“But we did hurt you.” Reed swallowed. I hated the hollow regret in his voice. “And we never apologized for it.”

“It’s a bad dream now. It doesn’t scare me. I just wish…”

Hormones again—tears and heat. I wished I could make up my mind. Nicholas brushed my hair behind my ear. His touch stirred more than confusion.

“I wish we could be close again,” I said.

Reed winked. “You were close with Nick.”

Yes, but I still hadn’t figured out what it meant—not to me, not to him, not to Bumper. We cleansed a terrible memory, but, beyond that?

I was as desperate to be free of the Bennetts as I was to love each one of them again—Nicholas as my equal, Reed as a brother and friend, Max as a loyal protector.

“It’s just comfort I miss,” I said. “The intimacy. That’s all.”

Nicholas’s voice layered me in his consuming, perfect confidence. “I wouldn’t deny you that comfort, Sarah. Not after what we’ve been through.”

Reed nervously chuckled. “Uh, she’s pregnant.”

Nicholas nodded.

“With your kid.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“We’re not…really of use anymore.”

Max grunted. “Besides fucking with her head.”

Reed shrugged. “I fucked other places.”

“I’m serious,” Max said. “Baby, I’ve done enough damage to you. If you need to get off, take Nick. He deserves you. Not me. Not after the shit I put you through.”

“You don’t believe that,” I said.

“I do.”

“Max, what happened was…I let you guys take me like that. We had to do it, or Darius would have murdered us all.”

“Doesn’t fucking matter.”

“It does to me.”

My throat tightened. I didn’t want my inhaler, I just wanted him to look me in the eyes, something he hadn’t done since that awful night in his penthouse when my freedom lasted only a few precious minutes before a new captivity began.

Darius destroyed more than my confidence, my life. He took my step-brothers.