Текст книги "Capital Risk"

Автор книги: Lana Grayson

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“You know…” Reed dipped his chopsticks into my container of white rice. I slapped his hand away. “We all had our tonsils out as kids.”

Max chewed his lo mein. “What?”

“Just sayin’,” Reed shrugged at me. I smiled, but I was too exhausted to even eat, let alone decipher what the hell he was talking about. “If we’re all trying to make an heir, I mean…he’ll most likely have tonsillitis. And…” He nudged me. “Is asthma genetic?”

Probably, but I never had cause to worry about it. Now seemed an equally weird time to consider the possibilities. What I thought would be a night to celebrate my discovered inheritance of the Josmik Trust became the beginning of Nicholas’s rededicated plan to breed me.

So far, it had been a very fun plan.

Max hadn’t put a shirt on. They weren’t done with me yet. “I don’t think sore throats and inhalers are a major concern right now.”

My gaze flicked to Nicholas. He hadn’t spoken since offering me to his brothers. He simply…watched. The whole night. Enthralled. Obsessed. Unbelievably passionate when he seized me from Reed’s arms just to take me once more.

His golden eyes captured me, worshiped me, soothed me.

For the first time, my heart panged with regret for my infertility.

A baby might have inherited his eyes.

I wouldn’t let myself cry. I wouldn’t reveal what happened. Not to the men who still possessed an ounce of innocence despite their role in my captivity.

If they knew, I’d lose the calm, rational men who were capable of ending the nightmare. They’d act in bloody impulse and endanger themselves.

Max would consider it his failure to protect me.

Reed would forever view me as a victim he didn’t save.

And Nicholas?

If the baby wasn’t his…

No.

It had to be Nicholas’s.

It wasn’t time for tears. Strength was derived from opportunity. I couldn’t stop Darius when it happened, but we could end it now and save my child from a lifetime of shame.

First, I’d protect myself.

And after?

I pulled from Nicholas’s arms.

I’d learn to survive without them.

“Sarah.” Nicholas frowned as I stepped away. “What happened? Are you okay?”

A tangled chaos of pained words rose from my fluttering chest. Silence comforted me, but it challenged Nicholas—tempted him, angered him, exposed the desperation in his voice only I recognized.

“I told you to wait for me.” Those golden eyes weren’t beautiful now. They hardened in frustration. “Why didn’t you wait?”

I had begged him to stay. Why hadn’t he stayed?

“I didn’t know where you went,” he said. “I thought you were hurt!”

I was.

Max and Reed shared a wordless glance. I preferred their confusion. It was better than their pity. It was better than the helpless rage I suffered each night when the darkness pinned me against the bed without a chance to scratch or punch.

Reed cleared his throat. “Sarah, maybe you should sit down?”

No. Sitting would comfort me, and comfort would only encourage me back to Nicholas’s arms.

Nicholas’s stare tangled me in secrets, lies, and unspoken heartache. He waited, patiently, as though his presence would crack my silence and force me to speak, act, and beg.

Just like Darius.

But I was through submitting to him. To any of them.

My chest tightened.

Why didn’t he stay with me that night?

Nicholas’s voice rumbled in a hard authority. “You left as soon as you inherited the Josmik Trust. I made an agreement with our Board. They let you live if you sold the shares back!”

He thought it was a power play. It wasn’t. For those horrible hours just before dawn, I’d have given the Bennetts every last cent I owned. The farm. The ranches. Everything.

And, in the most shameful moment of my life, I had offered.

Darius declined.

But what was done, was done. I wouldn’t ever beg. I’d never let them see me cry.

And I would never again surrender to anything Darius or the Board willed. I’d have them suffer instead.

“Sarah,” Nicholas said. I flinched as he reached for me. “For Christ’s sake, I had no idea what happened to you.”

Because he didn’t stay with me.

“You didn’t call. You didn’t answer your emails.”

Did he want an apology?

“I thought my father had you killed.”

It wouldn’t have been that simple.

Max exhaled, drawing Nicholas’s attention and breaking the intensity of his demands.

“Baby, you feeling all right?” he eyed Nicholas. “You don’t look so good.”

The understatement of the night. The tightness in my chest hadn’t alleviated, and Nicholas’s crushing interrogation did nothing to ease my queasy stomach.

“Come on.” Reed reached for my hand. I pulled away. “It’s okay. Just sit and rest for a second.”

I didn’t need to rest. The words I longed to say choked over the confession I refused to give. I looked away. Nicholas wasn’t done yet.

“Jesus Christ.” Nicholas’s stillness broke with a frustrated grunt and hand through his hair. His voice turned harsh, the crystalline edge of glass ready to shatter and shred. “I had no fucking idea if you were alive or dead, if you planned to sell the stock and destroy the company, if you left me, if you hated me, if something terrible had happened.”

I said nothing.

“Sarah, I held you in my arms. You said you loved me. I promised I’d be back for you.”

And I asked him not to leave. We both made mistakes. Some hurt more than others.

“Was it a lie?” he didn’t look away. “Don’t pretend you don’t care about me. Don’t act like that night meant nothing to you. I was there. I took you. I felt every goddamned word you said to me, so don’t stand there in goddamned silence like you don’t fucking care—”

“Nick, I’m pregnant.”

Chilled, piercing truth layered me in a quick sweat.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

My step-brothers were threatened with a gun held against my temple. They were forced to hurt me, to kidnap me, to punish me. They suffered through a childhood of abuses at the hands of a monster who raised them to harbor his same cruelties and aggressions.

And yet one word broke them.

One word crippled our fragile alliance.

One single, life-changing word presented Nicholas with everything he once planned to lie, steal, and destroy to acquire for his own.

My life twisted when the test revealed the double lines. I’d have no baby showers and well-wishers, no excited family or darling nurseries.

It wasn’t pregnancy. It was war.

If I wanted to protect myself, my farm, and my child, the truth would follow Darius to his grave. The rape would be forgotten. I carried Nicholas’s son.

And I’d never reveal otherwise.

“You’re…” Nicholas stared. Max hadn’t moved. Reed averted his eyes. “You’re pregnant.”

I nodded.

His breath shuddered. “That night…when you inherited the shares...”

“Yes.”

“That was two months ago. You’re…two months pregnant,” he said.

I nodded. “But the doctors count it like ten weeks because of my cycle.”

Reed counted on his fingers. Max paled. But Nicholas recovered with grace. Then again, he had imagined this moment for so long, months of attempts and plans, fertility drugs and dark hope. Of course he could face it so easily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

A crack formed in my heart. I felt it, bound it tight, and collected every flaking fragment before I lost what precious devotion it beat for Nicholas.

“Why would I?”

His mocha voice smoothed, too patronizing for little more than a sticky layer of authority over me. He beckoned me forward. Like he wanted me to fall into his embrace, like he’d make everything all right.

I wasn’t that weak.

“You’re scared,” he said. “I understand. I just…we didn’t think it was possible.”

“Bullshit.”

“Sarah—”

“You always planned for this to happen. All of you. Every minute of every day, each of you wanted this to happen.”

The harshness of my tone shocked everyone.

Max folded his arms behind his head, eager to witness how his brother would resolve this. He always treated me like a problem to be handled. Or worse. He used me against Nicholas in a relentless sibling rivalry that sacrificed my body as a battlefield. They thought I never noticed.

Reed extended a hand. I’d break it before I let him touch me.

“Just stay calm,” Reed said.

I was beyond calm.

The nausea, exhaustion, and terror spoke for me. Each word sharper, more frustrated than the last.

“You kidnapped me. Fucked me. Held me down and laughed about rutting me until the seed took. You meant for me to get pregnant. And don’t you deny it, Nicholas Bennett. You told me each and every time you fucked me that you intended for it to happen. This—” I gestured to my tummy, flat with the secret it cradled. “—was always what you wanted.”

Nicholas nodded. “You understood that. You agreed to it.”

“Because it was never supposed to happen!” The words punished me with idiocy. “It was supposed to be impossible. I was infertile!”

Max hid a twisted smile. “Apparently not.”

No, apparently not. Apparently I was just fertile enough to get impregnated by either the man I loved or his demented father. I’d forever be remembered as a whore for my step-brother or a victim of my step-father, and both options suffocated me in panic and rage.

I had an opportunity to end the crisis before it got worse, but I left that information at the clinic.

I was an Atwood. For as much as the Bennetts desired their heir, my family line, my blood, was too good for that end.

Nicholas silenced his brother with a glance. “You’re upset.”

“Upset?” I laughed. “I’m not upset.”

My step-brothers disagreed but had the sense to stay silent. I stared at each of them, catching Nicholas’s possessive gaze, Max’s challenging smirk, and Reed’s gentle support.

“This was the plan, right? Capture the girl. Imprison her. Rape her if she was unwilling or seduce her so she’d willingly spread her legs.”

They called to me. I didn’t let them speak.

“Each of you planned to impregnate me and steal my farm and fortune. You’d use the child as leverage to eliminate the threat against the Bennett Corporation.” I lowered my voice. “You all wanted this. You all needed this. You did as Daddy ordered and now…?”

I held my arms out. Shrugged. Gritted my teeth.

“You bred me like a fucking animal. Congratulations.”

Nicholas stepped forward. I batted his arm away, but the motion blurred in the haze of blinded vision. I gasped for a breath that never came and damned the constant threat that bound me in more danger than anything Darius planned.

“Sarah, sit,” he said. “Where’s your inhaler?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“You’re having an asthma attack.”

Of course I was. “That thought never crossed your mind, did it?”

Reed tossed Nicholas my purse. I refused the inhaler.

“You didn’t think about me. Not in any of this.”

“I always thought about you,” Nicholas said. “Every second since you came to the estate.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Sarah, I’m in love with you.”

“If you really loved me,” I spat the word, “you never would have abducted a twenty year old. You wouldn’t have tied me to that bed and stolen my virginity.”

He stiffened, but I didn’t stop. I ripped the inhaler from his hand only to wag it in front of his face.

“You would have considered how dangerous it was to impregnate a woman with this kind of uncontrolled asthma. You would have thought how terrifying it’d be for me to be taken from my home, my school, my life, and forced into a prison where your father—”

The choked cough interrupted me before the memory doused me in weeping fear. I puffed the inhaler. Nicholas stood before me, his eternal, frustrating stillness. I hated it. I envied it. I needed it.

I had to escape from it.

From him.

My words trembled. I met Nicholas’s gaze and adopted his authority as my own.

After all, what did I have to fear?

Darius took what he wanted. My step-brothers fulfilled their obligation to the family name. I was rutted, seeded, and left to suffer the consequences with my life destroyed and another growing in me. Had they considered the baby beyond what rights it would inherit?

Even tiny, hardly a flutter within me, the child was more powerful than any of us—the billions he’d inherit, the names he’d possess. The only thing the Bennetts wanted more than me was their heir.

And while he grew in me, I would own them all. The stock. The child. The future.

It was mine.

“I didn’t come to tell you about the pregnancy.” I held Nicholas’s stare. “I came because I need your help.”

“Sarah—”

I didn’t let him speak. “I’m pregnant, but Darius and the Board don’t know. You will ensure it stays that way.”

Max was always the observant one. “They’ll notice eventually, don’t you think?”

“No.”

Reed tried to be reasonable. “You aren’t running again. You’re pregnant, Sarah. You need to be at home. With doctors and rest and good food and—”

I finished for him. “And a life free of stress and fear and the constant dread that sometime, somewhere Darius will…” The memory sickened me. “Hurt me.”

“He won’t,” Nicholas vowed.

The damned fool. It’d be tragic if his father’s touch didn’t linger like grease over my skin.

“No, he won’t hurt me or this child,” I said. “Because you won’t let him.”

“That is my promise to you.”

Broken without even realizing it.

“I ran because he would have found me. I’m sick. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept a full night since…” Hell if I knew. Not since before the attack. Not since Nicholas saved me from his father and the board. Not since I stole the trust and tried to protect myself with the money and power Darius coveted. “I need to feel safe.”

“You will be safe with me.” Nicholas stepped too close, promised too much. “You and the baby. Sarah, let me help you. Let me take care of you—”

“There is nothing you can do while Darius is still alive.” I retreated from his arms. “If you really want to protect me, you will kill him. As soon as possible. Before…”

Before he found out about the baby.

Before he reveled in the rape.

Before he ruined everything like he tried to ruin me.

The tears and sickness ripped me apart only to force the raw pieces back together in a broken array, just disjointed enough to render me unrecognizable, pained.

Heartbreak struck me harder than any attack, hurt me more than any assault, and left me mourning a love more wonderful than my lost innocence.

“We are going to kill Darius,” I said. “And then I’m leaving you, Nick. It’s over. The captivity. The false promises. I refuse to put myself or my baby in danger.”

I expected Nicholas’s challenge, but nothing he did would force me to submit to him.

Not ever again.

“My son will never know his father is a Bennett.”

It worked.

Sarah Atwood was pregnant with my child.

We left her alone as she requested. The deck jutted into the darkened woods, muffling the words we hadn’t the courage to speak. Max cracked open a beer and pushed it into my hand. Reed leaned against the balcony rail, his perpetual disappointment memorialized in a frown as we, yet again, mistreated the girl.

I hadn’t sipped my beer. I preferred whiskey. We all did. Why hide who we really were? Certainly not now, not when every depraved and monstrous obsession burning in our blood suddenly realized within the tears of the woman we promised to protect.

Reed offered her his bed for the night. Sarah took it without protest, shutting the door behind her.

Then locking it.

Did she honestly believe a wooden door would keep me from her?

Did she think she could hide her pregnancy from me and then cast me from her life?

She threatened to keep me from my son—a word she spoke with such certainty I didn’t know if it was mother’s intuition or her own fear for a male heir that dared us to think otherwise.

I captured her once. I secured a collar around her fragile neck, and I bound her arms above her head while I mounted her morning, afternoon, and night.

Sarah Atwood never had the privilege of escaping from me. Not when we first stole her. Not now that she carried my child.

Not while I suffered in the twisted, agonizing relief that was finally seeing her, touching her, hearing her voice.

Even if she meant to break my heart.

I loved Sarah Atwood. I wanted her more than I ever wanted her heir.

And I had one, but not the other.

This disaster required something stronger than a drink brewed into brown glass.

Then again, we were supposed to smoke imported cigars for this victory. Clink our glasses of vintage brandy and chuckle in satisfaction.

Sarah upped the bet by a thousand dollars. Reed folded. Max swore and chucked his cards over the table.

I matched her bet and called.

“Seriously?” she laughed. “We’re billionaires. This hand getting a little too steep for you, Bennett?”

Tough words for a girl who was down to her panties from our first few rounds of the game. Of course, we ganged up on her. In more ways than one.

“Thinking of changing the stakes.”

She rolled her eyes. “Clothes, money. I’m your prisoner remember? What can I possibly bet?”

I grinned. “Something very important.”

“Name it.”

“Exactly.”

Sarah adjusted her arm, trying to hide her breasts while holding her cards. “I don’t understand.”

“If you get pregnant this month—”

“If.”

“Winner gets to name the baby.”

“Oh, you’re sick.” She rolled her eyes. “But you’ll never beat my hand.”

I held four of a kind, and her eyebrow twitched when she bluffed.

I hoped she liked the name Adam.

“So.” Max chugged his beer. “Who wants to tell her we were about to kill Dad. You know, before that idiot ruined the plan?”

“Hey.” Reed swore. “She called me and asked for help. What the hell was I supposed to do? Tell her to fuck off because we were busy?”

Max shrugged. “She might have wanted to help.”

“No.” Shock and perverse joy bound my words. “I won’t let her be involved in something like this. She’s pregnant. We’re not endangering her or the…my child.”

“You did it.” Max toasted me with a sarcastic nod of the beer. “How’s it feel, Daddy?”

Like I betrayed an innocent, beautiful woman. Like I fulfilled the promise I made each time I took her to my bed, seized her in my sheets, and violated her while pretending to make love.

And yet…

I succeeded.

I took her. I held her. I bred her.

My primal, savage instincts weren’t quelled with a simple rut and the lure of submission. My urges required a visceral proof of her conquering. This was the result I longed for, the product of complete and utter dominance.

Sarah was right.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

I wasn’t supposed to be this way.

I loved her, but Sarah and I never planned for a future together, only for a funeral which had yet to happen.

Max read my thoughts, but he didn’t have the common sense to leave it unspoken.

“How do we keep this pregnancy from him?” Max asked.

“He won’t learn,” I said.

“You gonna keep it secret? I don’t know much about pregnant women, but Sarah won’t look like a twig for much longer.”

Reed grunted. “This is a nightmare. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Nothing to do.” Max shrugged. “Get her some vitamins. Buy a crib. Sarah’s naive, but even she knew this was bound to happen.”

“You heard her. We bred her like an animal. She’s carrying a Bennett.” He slammed his hand against the railing. “She’ll never forgive us.”

“She’d never forgive us anyway,” Max said. “Grow up, Reed. She’s never been your friend. She’s an Atwood. We’re Bennetts. Our families have attempted to ruin each other for generations. You really think she was going to hop back in your bed? Dad held a gun to her head while you raped her. No one recovers from that. She’s just waiting for the right moment to take her revenge.”

“She’s not like that.”

“Then why haven’t you told her I killed her brothers?” he stared at Reed until he broke the gaze. “Yeah. Because you know what she’ll do.”

I wasn’t tolerating this discussion with her in the house. If she learned we were the cause of her brothers’ plane crash, she’d hurt herself just for the chance to avenge those she loved.

If it didn’t destroy her first.

“No one is telling her what happened,” I said. “That secret died with her brothers.”

“You don’t think she deserves the truth?” Reed asked.

“She’s heard enough truths. We kidnapped a girl, let her suffer, and now I claimed a part of her she never meant to give. We should have taken better care of her. We should have helped her.”

Reed wasn’t convinced. “She doesn’t want us anymore.”

“She doesn’t have a choice.”

Max laughed in genuine amusement, as though he expected this complication. “Sarah wants nothing to do with you, Nick. It doesn’t matter how you held her or how much you loved her, bottom line is she only tolerated that bullshit because she never thought she’d get pregnant. And now you’re the man who did it to her. You’re the man who stole her fortune, her farm, and her freedom. She’s going to hate you.”

Like the thought wasn’t hurting every scar I earned for her. “She won’t.”

“She’s going to hate all of us.”

“She won’t.”

“Christ, man!” Max smashed his bottle. The shards showered over the deck. “She’s pregnant! You’ll be goddamned lucky she doesn’t turn a gun on you once Dad is dead.”

“She won’t.”

“Bullshit. We took her family. We took her freedom. We ruined her.”

“She’s stronger than that.”

“Then she’s stronger than me.”

Max cut himself on the bottle. He clenched his fist and shoved the sliding glass door open, leaving a streak of blood in his wake. It hadn’t been his first beer. It wouldn’t be his last.

Now I had two people to care for and neither wanted my help. Reed called to me before I followed.

“Let them be,” he said. “You want to help Max? Give him half of your liver once this is done.”

“I’m not after Max.”

“She should sleep.”

“I have to talk to her.”

Reed didn’t look at me. He stared out over the balcony, toward the ocean and waves Dad forbade him from enjoying after he graduated college.

“If she wanted to talk, she’d be out here. Sarah’s not shy.”

I exhaled. “It’s my baby. I have to…”

“You don’t have to do a damned thing.” Reed pitched a pebble into the woods. “It’s already done. Don’t make it worse, or she won’t call us next time.”

Call us?

She hadn’t called us.

She called Reed for help, not me.

I’d have hated him for it if I wasn’t so damned grateful he brought her back.

Reed surrendered his bed, but Sarah wasn’t sleeping. The light spilled from beneath her door. I rapped against the frame. She didn’t answer.

Any other time, in any other circumstance, I’d have entered anyway.

The situation changed, but I hadn’t. She was mine. She needed me even if she denied just how much she loved me. I wasn’t letting her escape.

I knocked again. Her voice whispered, raw from coughing.

“Go away.”

I twisted the knob. The lock wasn’t sound. I jiggled, and it popped loose. Sarah expected it. She shakily rose from the floor, leaning against the door to the bathroom.

All manner of nightmarish fears passed through my mind. I rushed forward to help her, but Sarah hurried to her feet before I touched her.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Did you fall?”

She didn’t look at me. Instead, she tugged the t-shirt lower. The booty shorts spelled Sexy on her behind. She used to wear them just so Max would have somewhere to aim his occasional smack. Now she hid from me.

Hid everything.

“The floor is cooler than the bed.” She brushed a hand through her sweaty hair but didn’t look at me. “Morning sickness comes at night too…constantly, actually.”

I would have apologized. It felt like the time to apologize. But she wouldn’t have accepted it, and it wasn’t right to ask for forgiveness. Not now.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Sarah curled against the wall, and Hamlet plodded to her side, collapsing with a sigh. His head rested in her lap.

At least she hadn’t been alone.

“You should go,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“It’s just nausea.” Her words hardened. “You knew this was a consequence.”

I hadn’t intended to fight, and I wasn’t ready to leave. “Ginger ale?”

“Nick, please.”

“Saltines.”

“No.”

“You need to eat.”

“I need you to let me rest.”

Why hadn’t she looked at me? She avoided my gaze, flinched from my touch, and hardened with the same shell of anger which shielded her when we first kidnapped her.

This wasn’t the Sarah Atwood who shared my bed and whispered stories of her childhood, the plans for her company and education, and her every secret fantasy.

She trembled with fatigue and stress. Her fists hid within the ginger curls of Hamlet’s coat. For a woman two months pregnant, she looked tinier than ever. Thin, delicate—a little fairy too tired to fly even when danger crept close.

“I’m taking you to a doctor in the morning.”

Sarah refused my hand. She groaned as she stood, leaning toward the bathroom. She breathed deeply, coughed, and steadied.

“I’m fine.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“Don’t.” Now she did look at me, but her warning glance wouldn’t deter me. “Don’t you dare.”

“What?”

“I will not have you tell me how to handle this. I was checked out after I took the pregnancy test. They said I’m fine. It’s under control.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nick—”

“You said it yourself. You’re not feeling well. You’re exhausted. And your asthma is not controlled. You need to get checked over again. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Then why did you come back to me?”

I edged closer. If she refused my comfort, I wouldn’t offer it, but she’d know how serious I was about it. About her.

“You left me. You ran. If you could have handled it yourself, you never would have returned. But here you are, nowhere left to go. So you might as well ask the father for help.”

“Yeah, I want your help to kill Darius,” she said. “But the baby and my health are my concerns.”

“They’re mine too.”

“Not anymore.”

“They will always be my concern, Sarah.”

“You don’t have that right. Not now. Not after what’s happened. Everything’s changed.”

“Then we’ll change with it.”

She turned, sipping from a glass of water on the nightstand. “You don’t understand.”

“Then let me.”

Silence. A refusal.

What went wrong in the two months since I left her bed? Had we hurt her that badly?

“You called Reed,” I said.

That insult hurt, but it was the only admission of my pain I’d give the woman who caused it.

“I did.”

“Why not me?”

She hesitated a moment too long. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You never needed to run from me. I would have come.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple. I love you, Sarah. You should never have gone through this alone.”

Her eyebrow arched. “I never should have gone through this at all.”

I had no counter for our past crimes. “Let me help you.”

“There’s nothing you can do now.”

“Just give me the chance. Midnight craving food runs. Foot rubs. Doctor’s appointments—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” her voice wavered. She couldn’t look at me. “It’s over, Nick. The Bennetts have caused me nothing but pain. You don’t deserve the chance to be a part of my life, and I’ll be damned if you’re part of the baby’s.”

The rage flared, quick and hot. “That’s my child too, Sarah.”

She said nothing. Maybe I didn’t deserve anything more than her silence, but my child did.

“You aren’t leaving me.”

“I won’t let this baby grow up in this madness. He deserves better than what happened to me.”

“I agree. That’s why I won’t let anything harm you or him.”

“It’s too late for that,” she said. “I’ve already been harmed. Many times. Too many times. You did nothing. You still can’t protect me, not while Darius is alive and looking for me.”

“Don’t waste a single thought on him. I’ll take care of it.”

“I’ve lost myself in fear of your father for too long,” she whispered. “But not anymore. You and I will end him, and then I’m gone.”

“And you plan to…what?” I asked. “Have a baby alone?”

“What alone?” she shrugged. “I am Sarah Atwood. I am a goddamned billionaire. I have farms, ranches, land, and control over two companies. My farm is one of the wealthiest top ten private companies in the fucking world.”

“So?”

She scoffed. “So? My child will have the best of everything. The best home. The best clothing and toys and opportunities. The best education. The best tutors in languages and business and art and any topic he’d ever want to learn. He will want for nothing.”

“What about a father?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I had a father, and the only thing he did was make me feel unwanted and unappreciated.”

“You don’t think I’d be as cruel as Mark Atwood.”

“No, you’re a Bennett. You’d be worse.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve made my decision.”

“And you didn’t consult me.”

“You don’t have a say in it, Nicholas.”

“I have every right! You are carrying my child!”

I didn’t let her move away. The guilt lacerated me with every backwards step she took to flee from me. Her back pressed against the wall, and I’d forever hate myself for pinning her there, my arms on either side of her body.

“Do you think I’d let you leave me? Do you think I wouldn’t spend every dollar to my name, call in every favor my family is owed, and slit any throat to track you to the ends of the earth?”

“You sound just like Darius.”

The accusation was meant to hurt, and it did. I clenched my teeth. “I was taught family was worth more than any stock, land, or company.”

“We aren’t a family.”

“We could be. You and me and the baby.”

“It will never work.”

I leaned down to feel the warmth of her body. God, I missed this woman. “How do you know?”

She squirmed against the wall. “Please, let me go.”

“No.”

“Damn it, Nick. You didn’t kidnap me because you wanted to start a family. You raped me to get an heir to my family’s farm.”

“I never raped—” The memory struck both of us. I buried the truth. “I never intended to hurt you. It’s not the same now as when we first took you. We’re meant for each other.”

“We’re not.”

“We’re both broken. The only time I feel remotely human is when I’m with you. My heart stops when I’m near you, but it’s because of you I even have this empathy. You saved me from becoming a monster like…”

I couldn’t say it. Neither could she.

I continued, dragging a breath just to smell her sweet scent. “I could spend every day for the rest of my life trying to earn your forgiveness, and you’d have the right to hate me. I only ask that you let me try. Let me be part of this. Let me…”

I reached for her, gently brushing the back of my hand along her stomach, pressing just enough to feel her warmth through the shirt. Somewhere, deep inside her, the greatest miracle and the most dangerous complication to our lives snuggled safe and warm.