Takeover: A Step-Brother Romance (The Legacy Series Book 1) (39 page)

I doubted it, but I knew better than to argue with Sarah Atwood.

The silence pierced my head in a migraine of regret. The fear still held me. I’d forever endure nightmares about what might have happened. Reality finally struck both of us. She realized her fate. I saw what would become of my beautiful, brave Sarah once my father sated his lust.

The one thing she asked of us was to protect her from my father.

I failed her.

I should have protected her. She wasn’t hurt because I was too preoccupied with my own plans for her and my company. My father hadn’t outplayed us. I wasn’t weak or out of options.

I failed Sarah because I hid from her.

Nothing used to frighten me in this world, not when I had the wealth, power, and ambition to overcome any challenge. But I met my match.

I surrendered to Sarah Atwood.

She bound me so tightly in beauty and gentleness and grace I’d relinquished every means of escape. Her words teased. Her lips enthralled. Her body tempted.

My enemy. My opponent. My step-sister.

She’d forever destroy what had been the Bennett Empire, and, for the first time,
I didn’t care
.

I lost myself within her, and I’d give my name, my inheritance, and my last breath just for a chance to hold, taste, and love her.

Even if it was only for the fleeting moments while I kept her captive in my life.

I trapped her at the estate, scooping her into my arms and carrying her into her prison. She squirmed. She wanted to scrape her pride together, patchwork but functional. How she always survived.

Sarah protested, but her fingers curled into my suit. She held on as tight to me as I clung to her.

I’d never let her go again.

I hadn’t allowed her to trespass in my wing or explore my suite, and I didn’t grant her the opportunity now. I locked the door behind us and delivered her right to my bed.

Sarah trembled in the center of the classic poster bed—king sized for me but absurdly large for my captured fairy. She sunk onto the black sheets, her hair the only bit of pale brightness I’d permit in my bedroom. She glowed within the dark walls and draperies. My decor didn’t suit the little farm girl clutching the blankets. Then again, nothing inside the Bennett estate did. Sarah adapted to everything we forced upon her—her room, her schedule, her body.

I approached, cupping her face and studying the damned bruises that stained her perfect skin.

Who could mar such beauty?

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Can you forgive me?”

Sarah straddled the edge even when no one challenged her. She wept with desperation, but her voice hardened with every foolish resistance she reserved for me.

“Depends,” she said. “What are you apologizing for?”

Dangerous question.

“For my father. For letting him take you. For him almost hurting you.”

I leaned in. She permitted my closeness, but the kiss broke over her rasped sigh. I cursed myself for forcing it, but she pushed forward, taking a deeper, gentler press of my lips.

She’d draw the very blood out of me with that kiss.

“Give me more than that apology, Nick,” she whispered. “Tell me there’s a soul in there somewhere.”

My soul died, broken, bruised, and hurt than the girl trembling before me. She wasn’t ready to hear my true confession, and I wasn’t ready to reveal it.

“I’m sorry that I need you to be mine.” I touched her cheek. She leaned into my hand. “Nothing else makes sense. You are more than my captive, Sarah, but every beat of my heart is a living agony when you are not trapped under me.”

She looked away. I hated losing that kindness.

“I want to trust you,” she whispered.

“Then trust me. I know I am a monster, but I’m
your
monster. I swear I will do everything I can to protect you.”

“Tell me why I’m really here.” Sarah didn’t realize she gently rocked herself. “You stole me. Imprisoned me. Kept me here. Planned to
breed
me, but it isn’t just to steal the company. I know it isn’t. Tell me. What are you hiding from me?”

I wasn’t the only one with secrets. Mine would ruin lives. Hers?

“You have to share yours first,” I said.

“Who says I have a secret?”

I searched her expression. “Today was the first time you showed any real fear.”

“And today was the first time you dared to oppose your father.”

It was the truth, and I didn’t know what would come of it.

But she wanted secrets, and I couldn’t give them. It wasn’t just her at risk. My family, our future, the very livelihood of a multi-billion dollar business rested upon our decisions and depended on our crimes. If she knew, if she
acted
, my father would do worse than rape her.

I knelt beside the bed, pulling her close. “I can’t tell you. It isn’t safe.”

“
Nothing
is safe, Nick. Not here. Not trapped between restraints and floggers and passed around for three men to be used and fucked and…”

“I’ll protect you. So will Max and Reed. I swear to you, Sarah. Trust us. Do this for us. Be here for us, and I’ll find a way to free you.”

“Do it
now
.”

The soft plea refueled the helpless rage simmering under my skin.

“Nick, please, I’m asking you as a sister and a friend and someone…” Her voice trembled over the aching truth. “Someone who is falling in love with you. Please, let me go.”

“Sarah…”

“I can’t be here anymore. I thought I had this under control. I thought I’d handle it.”

“You
can
.”

She dug her fingers into the bed. Why was it so damned dark in here? I couldn’t see her face, I didn’t know if she was crying. How was I supposed to console her?

“Everything is wrong.” Her words choked. “I thought I was doing this for my father. I wanted to redeem him. I tried to honor him.”

The crushing heartache in her voice tempered my rage. I pulled her close, letting her wrap her arms around me in whatever way she needed—friend, brother, lover. It didn’t matter anymore. I let her cry, and she let me see her weakness without fear.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t have learned like this.”

“I could survive this when it was to protect the Atwoods. But now?”

“You can still survive this.”

“But
why
?” Her voice hardened. “Why put myself through this torture?”

“Is it torture?”

“Your father tried to rape me.”

It was selfish. I held her tighter.

“I won’t ever hurt you,” I promised.

“Every minute with you is pain.”

“But you’re strong enough to take it, Sarah. I know you are.”

She sank deeper into my arms. “You aren’t giving me a choice, Nicholas Bennett. Am I always going to be your prisoner?”

“If that’s the way to keep you here, so be it.”

“That’s not fair.”

No. It wasn’t, but I was beyond
fair
. The rules of the world—the laws and morals, principles and ethics—didn’t apply to us. To me. My name, my money, and my power offered something more than what normal men possessed. Sarah Atwood could beg and plead, and I would never let her go.

If only because I feared that she wouldn’t come back to me.

And that made me more of a threat to her than even my father’s vengeance.

Sarah’s whisper begged for the wrong things. She should have asked for affection, devotion, and seduction. Those I offered. But
mercy
?

Mercy didn’t exist within my embrace, and forgiveness would never rest within her heart.

“Nick, if you love me—”

“I do.”

She shuddered. “Then
please
.”

She couldn’t support herself any longer. I laid beside her, cradling her against my chest. She clutched at me, the tears damp on her cheek. I stoked her hair, rubbed her back, accepted her warmth.

But I wouldn’t let her escape from my possession.

“I hate to cause you pain,” I whispered.

“It will always end in pain,” Sarah said. “Nothing can survive this, Nicholas. Our families have hated each other for generations. Your father will stop at nothing to break me. You refuse to let me go.” She rolled over only to bury her head in my chest. “Even if this were different…you’re my
step-brother
. God, everything about this is wrong. We have nothing to keep us together and everything that will drive us apart.”

“Trust me.”

“We’ll never trust each other. We’ll never let ourselves.”

“Then depend on me. Know that I will find a way to keep you safe.”

“Even from you?”

“Especially from me.”

Sarah burrowed deeper. She fit perfectly against me, snuggled against my jacket and digging her fingers in my shirt. Her breathing shuddered only as she drifted into a fitful sleep. The horrors of her day hadn’t stolen her courage, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been scarred.

The Sarah Atwood who challenged me, fought me, and forced me to confront the depths of my sins hadn’t escaped unscathed.

I feared for her.

It was the wrong thing to fear.

Sarah never needed my pity or my strength, my kindness or my pledge of foolish love.

She needed only to wait for me to fall asleep.

***

I woke suddenly. She was gone, and, in the hazy panic of my fatigue, I burst from the bed fearing she had been taken by my father.

I rushed from the bedroom.

She wasn’t in my suite, and the door opened into the hall. My blood chilled.

Would she always refuse stay where I put her?

I prepared for battle, already texting my brothers with an order to find her before my father did. I was wrong to worry for her. My office door propped open—the lock picked by a clever hand of someone who learned her lesson from the last time she spied on what wasn’t hers.

This time, she didn’t focus on Darius’s office.

The heir had the same information.

I was too late to stop her from finding it all.

She sat at my desk—papers strewn across the top, folders opened, the computer on and my email displayed for her to study.

Her scowl darkened with every step I took. I waited before the desk.

“
A secret
trust
,” she said. “My brothers had a
secret trust
built specifically for an inheritance in my name when I turn twenty-one.”

And so we began the descent into Hell.

“Josmik Holdings,” I said.

“Josmik
fucking
Holdings.”

I waited as she pitched a folder at me.

“My brothers negotiated with your
Board of Directors
.”

I exhaled. “Your father and brothers held a proxy takeover of the Bennett Corporation. They contacted our private investors and offered them an exorbitant amount of money to betray my family and promise their shares to the Atwoods.”

Sarah’s voice shrilled with shock, rage, and utter surprise. “And they
succeeded!
”

“Some of them. When your brothers died, the deal stagnated. You were named the beneficiary of a secret trust only to be accessed when you turned twenty-one. They tried to protect you by limiting your involvement.”

“This isn’t happening.”

“In less than a year, the trust will be available to you.” The words bittered in my mouth. “Your brothers secured a large quantity of our stock. That’s why we’re holding you here. That’s why we planned to keep you.”

Sarah laughed—a frantic, frightened laugh that crippled her against my desk. She stared at me, her voice a light waver against the darkness.

“You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You knew this all along.”

“I did.”

“In ten months, I’ll possess a
controlling interest
in the Bennett Corporation.”

I said nothing. I had nothing to say, nothing to do, and no hope to offer my family save for the depravity we forced on Sarah Atwood.

We could hurt her, terrorize her, abuse her, and it wouldn’t make a damn difference.

In less than a year, it would be us begging for her mercy.

Sarah Atwood would control the Bennett Corporation.

My step-brothers paced Nicholas’s office.

Reed sunk into a chair and held his head in his hands. Max stole a bottle of whiskey from a hidden cabinet under the window. Nicholas remained still, as always.

He was the only one who dared watch me.

“You hid this from me,” I said. The realization refused to stick.

They didn’t answer. I pitched the folder and all its damning contents on the table.

“You
hid
this from me!”

I didn’t know who I yelled at—my step-brothers or my real family.

Stocks. Investments. Secret trusts and hidden agendas and proxy wars to steal and punish and humiliate.

And my father won.

My brothers won.

They secured the deals.
Somehow
. They approached the right members on the board and convinced them to hand over their stocks in exchange for…

So
much money.

Damn it.