Текст книги "Capital Risk"

Автор книги: Lana Grayson

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

I woke in a choked gasp.

The penthouse was cloaked in darkness. Silence smothered my wheeze.

His hand gripped my shoulder. I hadn’t expected the night to come so soon. He hunted in slinking shadow. I couldn’t see him, but it wouldn’t matter. Not now.

“Baby.” Max’s raw whisper scarred the shattering stillness. “Gotta wake up now.”

Nicholas had warned of the danger. I thought I’d have more time.

I thought eight months of their mercy would somehow prepare me for the inevitable. But the days I spent captured within the Bennett’s will were simply the trembling shuffle of a prisoner to the guillotine.

We knew it would end this way.

Why did it frighten me now?

The bed was empty. The coldness terrified me.

“Where’s Nick?”

Max’s impatience ached my lungs. “Don’t worry about him.”

I wished I could see him before it happened. “Is he safe?”

“Yeah. For now.”

The thought granted me a little comfort, the barest flicker of hope. “Will he stay safe?”

“Depends on what he does tonight.”

“I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“No one plans to get hurt, baby,” Max said. “Sometimes there’s no avoiding it.”

“Like now?”

“Just like now.”

Just like always.

I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t hurt. Every touch preluded a new misery. Every kiss ended with the bitter strike of another’s fangs.

I fought and resisted and plotted, and it hadn’t prevented any pain, only delayed it.

At least tonight it would end.

“Do you trust me?” Max knew better than to ask that. He tried again, his voice low, almost apologetic, as if he possessed even a shred of empathy. “Did you ever trust me?”

That answer came easily, burning from the smoldering debris of my broken heart. “No.”

“Good.” He didn’t mean it. “Then I’m not missing anything.”

“I never trusted any of the Bennetts.”

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Max waited, his expression hard, unstable.

“Lot of good that caution did you.”

I rested my hand over my tummy. “You’re going to lecture me? Now? You really think it’ll help?”

“No.”

At least he was honest. I tried to stand. The asthma flared, and I coughed, hard. He didn’t offer to retrieve my inhaler. I leaned to the nightstand. The motion lurched my stomach.

So that was it then. Asthma and nausea. I’d hardly be able to walk. Let alone…

What? Run?

There was no more escaping. It was about to be over.

The finality of it all didn’t bring relief. Fear prickled my neck.

I looked at him, expecting something, realizing I’d earn nothing. “What will happen?”

Max anticipated the question.

“It’s gonna be quick.”

My stomach twisted. “Quick?”

“No suffering. No sense dragging it out.”

“Right.”

I puffed my inhaler and stood. Max allowed me to change from the pajamas into a dress. It didn’t matter what I wore when it happened, but at least I’d regain a shred of dignity.

Just for the Bennetts to steal it again.

Max watched my hand tremble as I smoothed the dress. I blamed the albuterol. He probably assumed it was fear.

He didn’t look at me. “If you want…if it makes it easier…I can do it instead.”

It wouldn’t make it easier. Just the opposite.

He tried to explain it, like it’d make it easier on me.

I didn’t need Max’s pity.

I knew this was coming.

“You don’t have to see him,” Max said. “I don’t want you to face him. We can do it…another way.”

I already shamed my family’s name by running once. It wouldn’t happen again. Now was a time for quiet dignity and acceptance. I fought. I survived.

And now came the consequences.

“No,” I said. “It ends like this.”

He didn’t patronize me by asking if I were certain. I made my decision. If he understood it, he didn’t say, but I doubted a man like Max Bennett would ever recognize the dread of blood.

“You know what he expects.” It wasn’t a question or an apology. Max uncurled the leather collar and leash from his pocket. “Last time, baby.”

Even if the asthma hadn’t squeezed my lungs, I doubted I’d have fought the scrape of the collar against my neck. I had been free of it for months. It only made sense he’d inflict it on me again.

The leash clipped, the tiny metal click just as loud as any crash of metal bars in a cell or shudder of chains binding my body. It was humiliating and unnecessary. The asthma, nausea, and fear already quieted Bumper.

“It still looks good, baby.”

Captivity never looked good. It was ugly and grotesque and so very Bennett. I touched my tummy.

“At least she’ll never know.” I dared Max to speak. “My one consolation.”

“No one will know.”

That was the agreement. No legacy of mine would be tarnished with such terrible brutality. The Atwoods were proud. Strong. And too many of us were now victims.

“He expects you to fight.” Max stood still. His hand curled into a fist.

“You never asked my permission before.”

“This isn’t like before.”

“What’s different?”

His voice hollowed. “This is it.”

“So don’t change now.” I raised my chin for him. “We’re not making memories, Max. Don’t pretend to be noble—”

The backhand came quick, hard. He silenced me with the blow, and I tumbled to the bed. My gasp choked over ragged coughs, but he had what he wanted. A bloody lip. The bruise over my cheeks.

Most men liked their women pale, blushing with inexperience and timid excitement.

The Bennetts preferred me bleeding, bruised, and swollen in more ways than one.

Max didn’t apologize for it, but I added it to the list of his unforgivable offenses. The list grew by the second. He wrapped the leash over his hand, coiling it just to tug me close.

“That’s the last time I hurt you, baby.”

The words forced from an aching chest—tightening with sickness, asthma, and grief. “Every minute near you hurts me.”

“Yeah.” He jerked the leash. I nearly tripped. “Glad I won’t be torturing you anymore.”

I followed him from the bedroom and stared ahead into the darkness. The gentle glow of a nightlight in the nursery lit our path. I ignored it, and I forced myself to forget everything delicate and perfect, soft and wonderful within the lovely room. It wouldn’t help me now.

Hamlet padded to my side from the kitchen, his muzzle wet from a late-night drink. I scratched his head as he loyally followed.

“No, Hamlet,” I said. “You gotta stay here. Be good.”

Max urged me to move. “Let’s go. He’ll be okay.”

“Someone will make sure, right?”

“Yeah.”

Hamlet whined as the door closed.

Max didn’t bother trying to hold a conversation with me. He knew I’d give him nothing but silence. The car ride to the Bennett Estate sped through the cover of darkness. I remembered the path, memorized the trail to hell that led from beautiful mountains and into the growling maw of hell. The car parked outside the front door. He trusted I wouldn’t lose my composure and bolt.

Much had changed since the first time I escaped from the Bennett Estate. The chair through the broken window didn’t grant me freedom. It signified a new life for me, trapped in Nicholas’s will, abused by Darius’s intentions, and punished for every mistake and moment of disrespect by Max’s hand.

Maybe I once liked it. Maybe I once danced through the danger and fed off the adrenaline rush we both experienced from the crash of leather against my skin.

But what was fantasy to me existed as Max’s reality. He knew only bloodshed, just like his father.

That evil waited for me, lurking on the grand staircase inside the estate’s foyer.

Darius Bennett once tortured me with a smile and false gratitude.

No longer.

He crashed against the white marble of the staircase, and the clap of his heel echoed over the entirety of the mansion. His eyes stared—stark, menacing, and utterly empty. Just like his mansion, his halls, and the expanse of gluttonous extravagance within the manor.

He was just one man, and yet so much more.

Bastard and rival.

Murderer and abuser.

Rapist and father.

His very presence chilled my core. He once ripped through me. He stole every warmth, every hope, every ounce of my courage. His touch rendered me empty, but his cruelty didn’t break me. Instead, every hollowed and worthless scar filled with burning, rampant hatred.

I hated this man.

I hated his name. His power. His corruption. I hated the way his eyes lingered over my curves, as if he weren’t yet satisfied in my destruction and would seize me again.

He longed to hurt me.

And he had.

But that was then. He could do little else to me.

I re-forged my dignity to stand before him once more at the end.

And it was Darius who cracked instead.

“I should have simply killed you and ended this charade.” He spat the words. I knew he wished to strike me. Given time, he would. “But I thought you might be trusted to fulfill at least one purpose to one of your fathers.”

His steps punished the stair beneath his boot. If he wished to stomp me, no need for the theatrics. We were both beyond posturing now.

“So…” He forced me to look up and meet his chilling gaze. “Our baby is a girl?”

“It’s not your child.”

“I should hope. A daughter is of no use to me.” His hand caressed my cheek. “Even the simple pleasures fade after time.”

I shook him away. Max didn’t let me escape. The leash passed to his father.

“Even when you’re flat on your back you can do nothing right,” Darius said. “Or when you’re on your knees or pushed over a table. Tell me, my dear, when did you feel the most useless under me?”

“Did it make you feel powerful?” I asked. “Hurting a woman who couldn’t defend herself?”

“It felt good at the time. Even better now that I imagine you still feel it.”

Not that I’d admit. Darius reached for me. I flinched, but Max presented me to him. His hands wove over my tummy, daring to touch Bumper, waiting for my reaction.

He didn’t have a right to touch me, and every moment his hands lingered needled me with dread.

It was supposed to be faster than this.

He wasn’t supposed to touch me again.

“Come with me, Sarah. I have a surprise for you. I think you’ll like it.”

The leash tightened in his grip. He dragged me to the stairs, but I tripped. I twisted to land on my behind on the bottom step. Darius aimed to kick. I hid my belly, and he grazed my hip.

“You aren’t even waddling yet. Get up. You’re fine.”

Max didn’t help me. If he felt any guilt, any worry, it never crossed his features. In his father’s shadow, any bit of light, hope, or cry for redemption darkened into the same beaten submission Darius so often sought from me.

He did his part.

I expected nothing more from Maxwell Bennett. His part was done.

Darius forced me up the stairs, into the wing I only dared to enter in fits of madness. I didn’t believe in an afterlife, but demons were as real to me as any monster lurking in children’s tales or the nightmares of the tormented. My proof existed in the man leading me on a leash to a newly remodeled room adjoining his bedroom. He pushed me within.

Blue.

Stark, but blue.

A cold, institutional blue paint splashed the walls in fake cheer. The white crib and changing table, rocking chair and dresser did nothing to welcome a new life. Only coldness existed here. Only the same extravagant furniture and art chiseled from the Bennett’s wallet. The room decorated with everything stylish and designer, fit for a prince but not a loved son.

Darius built a nursery. I saw a prison.

And it relieved me that Bumper would never rest within any crib in Darius Bennett’s possession.

“You disappointed me, my dear. I told you I expected a son.”

“I live to disappoint you.”

“Not for much longer.”

I held his gaze. “And if the baby is yours? You’d kill her before she’s even born?”

“Why should I tolerate inferior blood blending with the Bennett line? I should earn something in my sacrifice.”

“Your sacrifice?”

“The only reason I let an Atwood within my home, at my table, in my bed was to breed her like a common bitch.” Darius exhaled. “And even that was too complicated for you.”

He was on me before I reacted. His hand tightened over my throat, and he slammed me against the wall.

“You failed me, child.” His growl sliced through me. “For the last time. No more second chances. No more begging. No more alliances with my sons. It’s just you and me, Sarah Atwood, and you will answer for your every failure.”

The leash choked the air from me. He hauled me from the nursery like an errant dog through the halls, deliberately watching me twist and gasp to match his awkward gait. The collar dug into my neck.

The humiliation would be over soon enough.

The elevator was too easy a trip for me. Darius forced us through the narrow stairwell to the estate’s roof—half designer garden, half-helipad. The helicopter waited, and Max handed his father a set of ear-muffs for the ride. He didn’t afford me the same courtesy.

“I’ve decided to take you home, my dear. Back to the farm, back to Daddy and the ashes of your brothers. Consider it my last kindness.” His sneer would forever etch into my memory, worse than any touch of his lips or fingers. “If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even kill you before I stuff you in their graves.”

My words didn’t waver. I lifted my chin, a hope for the final blow.

“I hate you.”

Darius sneer, his arm raised to strike.

The slap never landed.

The crack of Darius’s skull shattered the night with a sickening crunch.

His eyes met mine in a moment of utter confusion, pain, and dismay. The leash released from his hand just as his worthless body crumbled at my feet.

Soundless.

Harmless.

And still I lurched away. Still I let even the spreading shadow of an unconscious man force me to hide my body, my face, my fear.

I told myself I would never again fear Darius Bennett.

Standing over his vulnerable body made me more terrified than ever.

One last thing to do. One last crime to commit. One last injustice to be sated.

The lights flipped on, flooding the helipad with artificial brightness. Nicholas stepped forward, the butt of his gun stained with his father’s blood. He touched my cheek.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The tears came now, weepy only from the surge of adrenaline that threatened to topple me.

“Why did you wait so long?” I pushed him away. “I thought you’d get him in the house.”

“We didn’t have a clear shot.”

“I used my safe word.”

Nicholas nodded. “And I was there, like I said I would be.”

God, this was a horrible plan.

And, of course, it had been my idea.

“Darius thinks he’s broken me,” I said.

My step-brothers did too. They sat in silence within the penthouse. Reed sullen. Nicholas still. And Max, half-drunk with bruises and the fat lip it took for his brothers to drag him back to me.

“He expects that I’ll kill Max.” I didn’t look at him. Speaking his name was difficult enough. “That I want him to answer for my brothers. But this isn’t about an eye-for-an-eye anymore. This is about chopping the head off the snake. Now’s our chance.”

Nicholas agreed. “Max, you have an opportunity to get close to Dad. If you go to him—”

Max sneered. “He’ll kill me.”

“Not if you offer him what he wants.”

“And what’s that?”

I spoke for him. For them. For Bumper.

For the only way we’d ever secure our future.

“He wants me.”

Reed burst from the shadows, tucking a gun into the waistband of his jeans before approaching. He didn’t smile, but the burden eased from his shoulders. He bent down to grab his unconscious father. Max hopped from the helicopter to help. Together they stuffed Darius into the cabin and slammed the doors.

Just as I planned. Just as we wanted.

But I didn’t feel any better.

The fear didn’t fade. The pain. The grief.

It was all still there, tucked in deep and pounding at my heart.

“He hurt you.” Nicholas touched the bruise on my cheek. I held his hand.

“Wasn’t him.”

Max didn’t apologize. “She’ll heal.”

I was tired of healing. I didn’t want to hurt anymore.

Reed brushed beside me, offering me the gun. I took it. Just the feel of the metal left me sick and trembling.

Nicholas’s voice hollowed. “I won’t take this from you. If you want, Max will lead you somewhere…quiet. You can pull the trigger yourself.”

The thought excited and sickened me. “How many bullets in this gun?”

Max tightened his jaw. “Enough to take out me and Dad, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was. I swallowed.

Eight months of torment and rage, captivity and pain.

How many more of my brothers needed to die before this feud ended? Before our revenge was sated?

Dad would’ve demanded it. Forced it. My brothers died because of Max Bennett. But killing Max wouldn’t bring Josiah and Mike back. Killing him wouldn’t give my baby the uncle she needed.

And killing Darius?

I trembled, rocked with guilt and rage and the hopeless fear that we’d forever torture ourselves, trapped in a mire of regret and remorse and revenge.

It would never end, not until the last drop of Bennett and Atwood blood stained the earth.

I lowered the gun.

“You do it. I don’t want to know. Do it and we’ll never speak of him again.”

Max nodded. “Baby—”

I turned without listening for any words he might have said or apologies he might have given or insults he might have thrown.

Peace only meant blood wouldn’t spill. It dictated nothing about forgiveness.

Nicholas and Reed followed as the helicopter’s lights seared the rooftop. Max slipped in the cockpit as the monster roared to life. I didn’t bother watching.

I saw everything I needed to see.

Darius lay across the floor of the helicopter. Not dead, yet. Max would finish that and ensure his body was never recovered.

Then Max promised after it was done, he would never come near me again.

I hadn’t asked him for that concession.

I wept in exhaustion by the time I reached the stairs, but the tears only aided my escape. I burst from the front doors as the tremors and aches, wheezing and coughs, grief and despair rolled through me.

Nicholas held me, but I wasn’t prepared for his touch. For his closeness.

To even think it had worked. A hasty plan, drawn in the night. Without subtlety, without remorse.

One chance to end it all, and we were free.

Was that it? Was this freedom?

It hurt more than ever, especially knowing Max risked his life to approach Darius, to set the plan in motion, to betray his father from inside the estate.

This plan was nothing but danger, but Max didn’t hesitate. He agreed to help. No questions asked. He only wanted another chance to ask for my forgiveness.

And I didn’t give it to him. I couldn’t. Dad wouldn’t have wanted it. Mike and Josiah wouldn’t have understood it. The weight of my name suffocated me under the burden of our revenge. Max wouldn’t die, but they’d expect me to forget that he lived.

And I couldn’t.

Reed helped me into the car. Bumper bumped as Nicholas quietly gave instruction to his brother. She was too used to her father and uncles’ voices. Loved the sound.

She wouldn’t remember them once she was born. Once it was over.

Once I was gone. If I could leave.

It was too much to think of now, not while my hands shook and the chills overwhelmed me in shock.

The car pulled from the estate and passed through the redwood forest, clutching at the shadows in spindly branches. I let my eyes drift to the mirror. One last look at the source of my nightmare, and then it’d be over.

The orange fireball filled the sky, spreading over the top of the mansion in ghastly flames.

The harrowing soundwave of the crash followed.

“Nick!” I gripped his arm. “Oh, God, the helicopter!”

The car squealed to the stop as Nicholas jammed the brake and spun us one hundred and eighty degrees to face the Bennett Estate once more.

Flames leapt into the sky, and a quick spray of metal debris rained against the front yard.

The helicopter crashed in a dire ball of flames.

The Bennett Estate was burning.

The flames lashed the estate.

Thick, enraged towers of crackling orange and violent gold rippled over the roof of the mansion, blazing waves of fire into the sky.

Nothing remained of the helicopter.

Chunks of charred metal littered the front lawn. Nicholas parked, but he pointed at me.

“Stay in the car.”

I rarely listened to him before. I wouldn’t start now.

But it was a mistake. The acrid smoke soiled the air. I tasted the grimy, oil-soaked particles in my throat. My chest ached without the bitter thickness.

I coughed and ignored it.

“Fuck!” Reed stared at the roof. “Jesus…did he…is Max—”

Nicholas shouted. “Sarah, stay here! Reed, let’s go.”

“Max is a better pilot than that,” Reed said. “He wouldn’t crash…no one could survive that.”

Fire tinted the world a terrible orange—charred and ashen and cratered with pitted rage.

No. It wasn’t about survival. It wasn’t about death.

The flames didn’t carry Darius Bennett home.

They heralded his return.

“He’s alive.” My words blazed with despair and finality. “He survived.”

Nicholas pushed Reed, shaking him from the trance that trapped him within the flaring orange. “You go look for Max.”

Reed didn’t answer. He bolted into the house, sprinting to the stairs to reach his brother.

I knew what he would find, and it wouldn’t be Max. Only evil. Only a monster strengthened by the hell he wrought on earth.

Nicholas pinned my arms at my side. “Sarah, stay here—”

“He’s alive.” I shared Nicholas’s gaze, fierce and gold, fueled by the same flames that roared from above. “I can feel it. Darius is alive.”

“He’s not—”

“I was wrong to let him go. I thought it would end without me. I was wrong.”

“Sarah, you aren’t making sense.”

“He killed my brothers.” I broke down and screamed the word. “Josiah and Mike and Max! He killed my brothers! And now he’s waiting for me.”

“Sarah, no.”

“I thought we could escape it, but I was wrong. This feud consumes us. Every minute of every day. People get hurt. People die. It ends now. Like it should have ended before.”

“What end, Sarah?” Nicholas grabbed my hand. “There is no end to this. There’s only more blood and murder and nightmare.”

“That’s all there’s ever been!” I didn’t let him hold me. Didn’t let him stop me. “There has to be something else in this life!”

“There is! There’s us!” He followed, shouting, forcing me to listen to words I couldn’t handle and a truth I refused to accept. “Stay here. Wait for me.”

“He’s not yours to kill.”

“He’s isn’t anyone’s to kill! He’s only a monster to those who let him control them. His death won’t bring your brothers back. It won’t save Max.” His voice cracked over the name, jarred and broken. “He has a power over you because you let him possess it.”

Then why shouldn’t I be the one to end it?

His power, the fear, the rage. The feud between our families.

It answered in vengeance and revenge and blood.

I had no other way to accept what had happened. I couldn’t grieve and mourn and hate if I didn’t kill Darius myself.

Because otherwise, the forgiveness and pain and healing had to come from me. And no matter how much I survived, no matter how many times I faced the devil and scarred from his touch and stood up after I had been tossed to the ground, I wasn’t strong enough to accept what happened.

The Bennetts stole my family.

They humiliated me, hurt me, raped me.

They forced me to betray my name.

I loved them.

I hated them.

And the obsession consumed me just as the fires chewed through the barren estate filled with vile truths and bloody memories.

I needed Darius’s death because I had nothing else.

The flames leapt through the rooms and halls, feasting on the wooden frames, warped and rotted beneath the pristine stones. The fire spread too quickly. Rolling, thick smoke poured from the floors above. The electricity popped, plunging the estate into unnatural blackness.

I rushed for the stairs.

Damned my lungs. My coughing. The aching agony.

Reed’s gun trembled in my hands, loaded with a terrible purpose.

Nicholas followed me through the estate, his hands wrapping over me as I faltered, tripping over the darkness and sinking to my knees in a blinding cough. The hacking wheeze dizzied my vision and wracked me in a quick pain.

I didn’t stop. Nicholas called for me, and the desperation in his voice turned to a shout.

I knew where to find Darius.

And he waited for me.

I burst through the parlor, a smoking room, where the Bennetts had first captured me and forced me to present myself, my body, my very pride. The room was dark, haloed by the only contained fire in the estate, tucked within the mammoth stone hearth.

Darius limped, bloody and bruised and weakened. He hobbled, almost broken, covered in burns. He survived the crash by a curse of pure hate and sin.

He turned from the mantle, rearranging the delicate garland that had reserved a hallowed place for a silver framed picture I thought he displayed only to insult me.

His wedding picture with Mom.

The frame clutched in his swollen, gnarled hand, and the image of their first kiss as husband and wife defiled everything good and holy that existed in marriage.

Why had he come to save it?

In a burning mansion of extravagance and fortune, Darius saved a silver framed photograph. A memory.

A memento of an Atwood.

The gun rose. Trembled in my hand. Smoke coiled within the estate, blackening the grand hall and threatening to descend from the upper levels.

What was I doing here? Endangering myself? Endangering Bumper.

I chased a specter of blood. I hunted for vengeance.

I channeled my father.

This wasn’t the end I wanted.

“This isn’t about the feud anymore,” I said. “It’s not about Atwood and Bennett. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not avenging an evil or forgiving your sins.”

I pointed the gun at him.

“This is about me.”

“Then perhaps your aim is off, my dear.”

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.