Capital Risk (16 page)

Nicholas seized me, securing me with an arm around my waist.

“You are a monster.” I twisted against his hold. “What are you going to do? Kill my mother? Murder your own
wife
?”

“Nicholas, please.” Darius buttoned his suit jacket. “Control the girl. I won’t have her endangering my unborn son.”

Goddamn him! I struggled, but Nicholas’s grip was as strong as his own iron will. He faced his father with absolute silence. I hardly recognized his stoic, intimidating challenge.

“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.”