Текст книги "Capital Risk"

Автор книги: Lana Grayson

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I couldn’t live without her.

I wouldn’t live without the child.

She let me touch her only because she had no other escape, but I wasn’t losing the chance to feel her once more.

I leaned in. Her breathing hitched. She stilled as I pressed my lips to hers. That was honest. That was genuine. The swelling hardness and her wavering sigh wasn’t a reaction we could deny.

Her kiss answered with the same ragged desperation—two months of loss and struggle and exhaustion shattered in the shared heat that drew us together. The nibbled pleasure strengthened me. Her touch, her shiver, every supple quiver of her body belonged to me and me alone.

I lost her to fear, but she wouldn’t push from my arms. Not when she promised more in the reluctant brush of her lips than any words she had spoken since she returned to us.

I might have pressed hard against her. Held her against the wall and cupped her thighs, her ass, her breasts. In another time, without the hesitance and uncertainty, I wouldn’t have waited. Sarah would’ve landed on the bed, spread beneath me in a murmur of protests and the relentless heat of a vixen waiting to be taken.

But my hand rested on the vulnerable, quiet part of her. I wouldn’t jeopardize her or him, not when they were both so fragile. I savored the kiss but pulled away, holding her pale, widened eyed gaze.

She hid secrets and fears and pain from me. It tore me apart.

“Let me love you,” I whispered. “Let me show you that I can protect you and pleasure you and be a father to my—”

The touch was too much. Or maybe it was the promise.

Sarah cried out, batting my arms and rushing to the center of the room.

Away from the bed.

She fought the harsh coughing that stole her breath and shoved me away when I wanted nothing more than to help her.

“Don’t. No.” She closed her eyes and murmured the words once more to herself. “I can’t.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to go.”

“Ask me anything else.”

“There is nothing else, Nick. You know what we have to do to free ourselves from this nightmare.”

“It’s not a nightmare with you. Not for me.”

“That’s the difference then, isn’t it?” she hadn’t cried yet, but the tears slipped now. “I’m living in the hell you caused. The only thing you can do for me is to help punish the one responsible and then let me go…” Her words broke. “If you cared for me at all, you won’t have me say it again.”

“It’s because I care for you so much that I’d make you say it, again and again, every minute of the day, until you realize the mistake you’re making.”

“It will only hurt you.”

“I’m in love with you, Sarah Atwood. And nothing you say or do will hurt me more than my own guilt. I want you to be mine. I’m asking you to be mine.”

“You can’t give me a choice now. Not after everything that’s happened. Not now that you’ve gained everything you and your father wanted from me.”

“I have an heir,” I said. “And my name will live on, but Sarah, my life is meaningless without you.”

Her words echoed with heartache. “Why do I wish we’d never met?”

I encroached again, tipping her chin, taking a kiss salty with tears from lips numb with sorrow.

“I wish I hadn’t either,” I said. “If only so I could start again, right here, right now, and love you the way I should have loved you from the beginning.”

I released her, giving her the space she needed. She should have been held, warmed, caressed. Instead, she cradled herself. Alone.

“I’ll take care of my father. Trust me. You’ll never have to think of him again.”

Her hand covered her stomach. “I won’t let you take this revenge from me.”

Taking a life while nurturing a life. She thought it was her right. I would never let it happen, never let the blood stain her hands or that final innocence be lost.

Once my father was gone, nothing would prevent me from earning her trust, rebuilding our love, and beginning our family.

Sarah carried my son.

And soon, my father would never again haunt her.

Sarah Atwood didn’t go to war. She scorched the earth, salted the ground, and stained what remained with blood.

Even her most devious plan encompassed solid business sense and a practical eye for details. But she hadn’t the experience to know when to slice the throat instead of gutting her target for pleasure. If I had it my way, she’d never learn.

But her revenge was plotted long before she called Reed to bring her home. I hadn’t expected it. I didn’t approve of it.

I didn’t have a choice.

The Bennett Board of Directors assembled under the pretense of a quarterly fiscal report. They stayed for the beginning of their end.

If they suspected anything, they didn’t speak of it. We discussed the upcoming quarter and hid the soured profits within promised terminations and restructuring.

As we had done for the past five quarters.

The board was beginning to notice.

And that made our meetings…complicated. Even more complicated when the woman I loved willingly antagonized the men who needed no reason to end a problem before it cost them more money. Sarah was an expensive mistake.

Worse, her absence made a fool of my father.

And yet, his temper hadn’t lashed. He never troubled himself with the lost Josmik shares. And Sarah no longer feared his retaliation.

Why?

The board room silenced as a secretary set up the screen to display Sarah’s fatal mistake.

My father’s attention fixed on me rather than the press release from Atwood Industries. His chosen board members grumbled as this inconvenience interrupted their tee off time.

“Nick, can’t you just fill us in?” Peter Hannigan checked his watch. “Christ, we’ll miss lunch.”

I said nothing. For the past two months, I endured their every humiliation. They mistreated my name, rank, and power within the company to award pet projects, fully expensed yacht parties, and terminations of employees to ensure a greater profit for the next quarter.

Worse, they showed no remorse for how they treated Sarah. They voted on her life as though it were a decision to buy a smaller competitor or break for lunch.

It would end soon enough.

“What the hell is this, Darius?” Bryant Maddox was a rat-bastard who turned on my father and cast the final vote to murder Sarah. I never met a man more slime than skin and bone, but he’d bleed like any other board member. “I thought we had this problem under control.”

My father waited as the secretary closed the door behind her. He didn’t dismiss the two security guards poised in the corner, waiting for another shot at my kidneys.

“It’s been brought to my attention that Sarah Atwood has reappeared.” My father met my gaze. He baited me to anger. He didn’t deserve any reaction.

Bryant chuckled. “The whore needed another taste, huh, Nick? I thought the last time the Bennetts got their fill she wasn’t very happy.”

My father’s lip twitched, a cross between satisfied smile and irritated scowl. “Oh, I can assure you, Sarah Atwood…suffered.”

“Good,” Bryant said. “That slut cost us millions of dollars. We need to earn it back.”

The Board nodded. Stanley, our oldest member, had a heart weakened with age and blackened with power. His voice cracked, choked on his salivating thoughts of what we’d forced Sarah to do.

“Bryant,” he said. “I’m sure she has her reasons for reneging on our arrangement. If she wants to live, she’ll provide the promised shares. A fair trade, I should think.”

My father taught us never to retreat from a challenge. We punished the fool who dared to flex instead of bow.

It wouldn’t be a fair trade until she bled.

He pressed play on the recording emailed to the executives of both Atwood Industries and the Bennett Corporation. Only I noticed Sarah also uploaded the video to YouTube.

She did it without consulting us. Without considering the implications.

What might have been a push for power would become her Last Will and Testament.

The video began with a bright, smiling, beautiful vision of the woman I loved, grinning at the camera with a feminine grace laced with her family’s thorns. She sat at a desk, palms folded, in a perfectly professional blouse. She had curled her hair, dabbed modest makeup over her cheeks, and disguised the flush of her nausea with raw enthusiasm.

She fooled everyone but me.

Everyone but my father.

“Good morning.” The recorded Sarah spoke delicately, sweetly, and as if the teeth she bared in her smile wouldn’t bite and punish. “I wanted to issue this announcement myself, as head of the Atwood family and company.”

The board shifted, eying the screen and wishing they could rip her from the recording just to bind her at the table.

“I wish to thank you all for your patience and compassion during these past few months as I’ve recovered from various health issues. I’m pleased to say, thanks to the loving support of my step-family, I am completely rejuvenated. They’ve offered me a new outlook on life, this company, and how best to secure our futures. I am eager to return to work.”

I steeled my expression. It wouldn’t save me. Either the board would believe I organized Sarah’s disobedience, or they’d assumed the truth—that I had absolutely no control over the woman who owned a significant portion of the company.

Neither scenario endeared me to the board.

In fact, it endangered me more than Sarah. I possessed enough of the company to challenge my father, but I was an easier, less volatile target than Sarah. If I died, my shares reverted to him.

Sarah spoke to the camera with a smile of genuine confidence. Her speech rolled with ease. She assumed everyone, everywhere listened, as if her words were the most important in the world. It was a trait she inherited from her father.

“My first order of business will be a…challenging one.” Sarah breathed deeply, to prove she had no lingering symptoms of the asthma attack we had claimed forced her from her position. “For years, Atwood Industries has strived to maintain a positive, wholesome, and family-oriented business plan. After the tragedies that stole my father and brothers this past year, I’ve been searching for a reason to end the mourning. I found it, finally, right where it always was. With family.”

Goddamn it. I remembered this speech, though it wasn’t first delivered by Sarah Atwood. Months ago, my father spoke of family as we attempted a takeover of Atwood Industries. We offered Sarah far more than the company was worth, and she answered a perceived insult with a clause.

Only a male heir could control her company.

And so we made it happen.

“The Atwoods and Bennetts are united in marriage.” The artificial cheer forced through her words. “It’s time we extend that unity beyond our families and into a mutually beneficial business plan. It’s no secret that I am now a large stockholder in the Bennett Corporation. Like my step-father and step-brothers, I am committed to ensuring continued profits for both our companies.”

Bryant snorted. “What the fuck is she doing?”

Stanly waved a wrinkled hand. “Hush.”

“I am pleased to announce, for the first time since the founding of Atwood Industries, we will be using Bennett agrochemical products in all of our fields and for all of our crops.”

My father paused the recording. The board erupted into a rage.

“Why would the little whore want our products now?” Bryant swore. “Her family has consistently slandered our company.”

“She’s doing it for the money.” Peter Hannigan was the least likely of the board members to be an accessory to murder. He shrugged. “She has her investments in the Bennett Corporation, and she’ll do whatever she can to maximize profits.”

“That’s not it,” Bryant said. “The Atwoods valued their feud over money. Mark Atwood spent millions to sabotage us.”

“Mark Atwood is dead.” Jacob Fisher heaved his bulk into his seat as he poured another cup of coffee. He added too many sugars for a man already diabetic. “And his troublemaking sons are also dead. This girl has their spirit, but she’s foolish and impulsive. A liability to the Bennett Corporation and Atwood Industries.”

“Screw her farm.” Bryant slammed a hand against the table. “Nick, what the hell is your whore doing? Why does she want our products?”

My father waited in silence. I offered him nothing. “It’s a sound business decision.”

“Bullshit,” Bryant scoffed.

“And it’s a great deal for us.”

I measured my voice with talk of profits and fortunes. My father passed a proposal to me, dragging his fingers across the table as though he’d claw through the wood like her flesh.

“Atwood Industries owns hundreds of thousands of acres,” I said. “Her proposal names us sole agrochemical supplier for the entirety of her farms—corn, alfalfa, almonds, plus the rest of their cash crops.” I paused, waiting for their full attention. “Tens of millions of dollars every harvest, and an end to the slander. It’d be an entirely new facet to the Bennett/Atwood relationship. We’ll earn more customers and money than if we had simply taken over Atwood Industries.”

“You’re not seriously considering this proposal, Nick,” Bryant said.

“Atwood Industries has always been the dream customer. We built this company to capitalize on the mega-conglomerate farms, and now we might take on the biggest in the country.” Christ, I hoped Sarah understood how much she risked making this offer. “If you want her to give the accounts to Montgomery Petrochemicals again…”

The board grumbled. Now they understood.

I continued. “If you want to secure our stocks, forge a profit, and open the company to more customers by virtue of the Atwood name, then you see the opportunity we have here.”

Bryant practically snarled. “What’s her real plan?”

Jacob chuckled. “She thinks she can buy us off.”

“That time is passed.”

Stanley coughed, his frail form wavering under the weight of his amusement. “The girl is bargaining her farm for her life. She won’t give up the land or her body, but she’ll insult the memory of her family to save her own hide.”

Peter took the proposal from my hand and whistled. “This is…substantial. We can’t afford not to bid on this project.”

“No,” Bryant said. “Absolutely not. The little whore is wasting our time. We should have found her the day after she skipped town and ended this. I don’t want her as a customer, I want her dead.”

“Easy.” Stanley tisked his tongue and looked to me. “There are those among us who would disagree.”

I said nothing. Bryant didn’t meet my gaze.

“Now,” Stanley said. “Let’s consider our options. The girl is frightened. She’s ensuring she’s visible within her company to discourage anyone from taking her life while she is so public. So let’s be reasonable for a moment. Nicholas, does she intend to sell her stock?”

No. The lie came easily, for both our sakes. “She’s waiting on the right price and terms.”

“There now. She’s negotiating for a better deal. She’s offered us the contract for her farm which will generate millions in new revenue for us, and she wishes to secure her future.” Stanley nodded. “I am willing to look beyond the events of the past. Mistakes were made, and our plans were executed without the…attention to detail they required. We hadn’t planned for certain contingencies.”

Contingencies being my love for the woman they intended to exploit, harm, and rape. I stayed silent. His words attempted to cleanse the sin of their planned murder as though they could simply wash their hands of whatever evils they committed.

“The only way we protect the Bennett Corporation is if we kill the girl and take the stock,” Bryant said. “We don’t need another customer. We need our liabilities secured. If she dies, the problem resolves itself, right, Darius?”

My father said nothing, watching over the table with mild amusement. He stared hard at the image of Sarah paused over the screen. I hated his expression.

Lust.

Sadism.

Cruelty.

He hadn’t his chance to attack Sarah, despite his promises of horror and pain and suffering. He’d never have the opportunity. His end was near, and then Sarah would be free of him. Forever.

“I’ve spoken my piece before,” my father said. “Sarah Atwood is not to be killed. I’ve grown fond of my daughter, even if she is difficult to break. She lives, and we accept her offer.”

“Darius, she owns a significant portion of this company,” Bryant said.

“And I wish to see what she would do with it.” He leered at the screen once more. “She’s been missing for two months. That is a long time for a young girl to be alone with her nightmares. Perhaps she’s had a change of heart.”

Despite my revulsion, I seldom had cause to vote against my father. In this case, I eagerly sided with him, sparing Sarah’s life yet again.

“You’re making a mistake.” Bryant kicked his chair as he stood. “Your bitch will destroy us.”

He merely smiled. “Not if I destroy her first. It’s a family matter, Bryant. I’ll handle my little girl the best way a father can.”

The rest of the board seized the opportunity to escape from the talk of murder and money. They planned to reconvene for their weekly golf game that afternoon.

I stood once we were alone, save for my father’s bodyguards looming between us.

“Where is she, Nicholas?” he asked. “Our little Sarah wouldn’t do this without your help.”

He had learned nothing about Sarah Atwood during her captivity beyond what color panties she wore and when her cycle was due. Had he paid the least bit of attention, had he respected the Atwood instead of obsessing over the crest between her legs, he’d know.

Sarah was exactly the type to seize her revenge without help.

“She’s come back to you then?” he chuckled. “Right when she presents the Bennett Board of Directors with a proposal to make herself richer from the investments she stole. What did she tell you? That she loved you? That she needed you?”

I wished she had.

“What will you do for her?” he said.

“Anything she asks.”

“I taught you better than that, son.”

“And it’s taken months to unlearn it.”

He folded his palms. I recognized his intimidating stillness. I wish I hadn’t inherited it. “I respect you, Nicholas. I always have. You are the best of both me and your mother. I never doubted the man you’d become.”

“You gave me no choice. You molded me after yourself.”

“No. Not quite. You never accepted everything I taught. Max…” He nodded. “Max might have been worth my time, if he hadn’t ruined that leg.”

As if the injury from the crash was his fault. “Max would never have done your bidding. Not like me. I tried for years to impress you.”

“Max lived to impress me. Every minute of every day, but I had no use for a crippled son, just as I had no need for an emotionally weak child like Reed. Your mother babied him. I should have put a stop to it, but Helena always insisted Reed was special.”

“Why?”

“Because he was the least like me.” My father paused. “Did you know your mother feared you?”

He said it to force a reaction from me. He’d get none. “Is that so?”

“Max was impressionable and desperate for attention. Reed was too kind-hearted. But you? She recognized that spark in you that I see every day.” He studied me as if acknowledging my maturity for the first time. “You did as I asked, capturing Sarah Atwood. You bedded her despite your reservations. You insisted your brothers seed her as well. But I saw it, son. That lust. The need. The drive to be the man who finally broke her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You wanted her child as badly as I did, and you still do. That’s why you stormed my office. That’s why you’ve plotted to kill me.” He grinned. “You realize the only chance you have at finally conquering Sarah Atwood is if I’m dead. You don’t want me to breed her first.”

I fought the urge to lunge for his throat, but returning to Sarah bleeding and broken wouldn’t convince her that she was safe by my side.

“You are as cruel as I am. Don’t pretend it’s love or compassion that hardens your cock. You’re my son. You inherited my instincts.” His voice grated my conscience, scouring every defense that separated his evils from mine.

“I never hurt her.”

“Didn’t you? Even when Sarah told you no? Don’t lie, Nicholas. The first time, when you bound her to the bed and stole her virginity, she said no. And despite how she might have wetted for you, the fact remains you couldn’t help yourself. You saw a woman, fertile and helpless, and you drove into her with the same ruthless desire that makes me the monster you say I am.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’m just more honest than you. You rutted that girl. Even if she had fought you through an asthma attack as you suffocated her with a pillow, even if she had clawed so hard against your chest she ripped a nail, even if she offered you everything to her name to let her go, you would have fucked her. Her refusal would have excited you as much as if she willingly spread those pretty pink petals.”

“Stop.”

“I’m sure she told you that too.” My father rarely smiled with genuine amusement. My discomfort delighted him, his own private joke. “Nicholas, you and I are men who understand true dominance. That girl might have convinced herself she loved you, but we both know the truth.”

“What truth?”

“You didn’t give her a choice in any of this. You told her she’d love you. You told her she’d submit to you. You told her you would fuck her and try to breed her and take her even if she didn’t want it. And what was her response?”

She ran from me. She escaped when she could and returned only as a last resort.

She left because she saw in me the same monster she hated in my father.

“Don’t let her go this time, son,” he said. “She needs only another mounting and she’ll crumble for you, permanently. She’s just as fragile now as she was that first day I stripped her and offered her as the ultimate gift to my loyal sons.”

“She was no gift.”

“Yes, she was. It brings me joy to spoil my children, even my daughter.” He patted my shoulder only to elbow my tender, broken ribs. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

“I know.”

“You don’t, but I’m sure you’ll understand eventually. Tell Sarah that her Daddy misses her.” His threat riddled with insincere warmth. “And I’ll be visiting her again very, very soon.”