Takeover: A Step-Brother Romance (The Legacy Series Book 1) (40 page)

Mike and Josiah didn’t waste the money. They spent every cent they could get—every penny that might have been reinvested in the farm, in crops, in
research
—and they used it to punish the Bennetts.

Our families would do anything to hurt the other. Burn money. Murder. Ruin futures.

Kidnap and betray the one innocent person who had no idea any of it was happening.

“
This
is why you stole me,” I said. “You kidnapped me and devastated my life because of this deal.”

Nicholas nodded. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I covered my face. “You’ve beaten me. Fucked me. Kept me locked in a goddamned basement. You father almost raped me today.”

Reed and Max stiffened.

“Yeah.” I lost my nerve as they paled. “When he took me to your company and told me all the dirty little secrets about my father and what a monster he was. He tried to rape me. He almost f—fucked my…my…”

I couldn’t say it.

Had Nicholas not been there, not saved me, held me, and hid me away within his arms, I wouldn’t have survived both the revelations about my horrible father and the torment of Darius’s touch.

I thought my life was over.

Instead?

“I’ve won,” I said. “You can’t do a thing to me now. I’ve won.”

Nicholas’s whisper was gentle, but it didn’t dull the pain of loving a man who held me captive. His every word enthralled me, but the darkness and mistaken trust would damn me forever.

I didn’t care.

The excitement burned within me.

I won. I had nothing to fear from the Bennetts.

And the surge of raw, uncompromising victory sealed my first real smile in weeks.

My step-brothers didn’t share my excitement, but they didn’t understand. All the battles, all the stubborn defiance, and all the endless warring now had an
end
.

Why did Nicholas hold me prisoner when I’d be his willingly?

“Sarah,” he said. “Forget what you saw. It makes no difference.”

I grinned. His words resonated within my head, twisted to punish him instead. “Why are you fighting me, Nicholas Bennett? It’s over.”

He took my hand. The heat from his touch burned through me, surging with the whirling, coiling emotions of my discovery. I’d cry. I’d laugh. I’d leap into his arms and let him comfort me and take me in the promise of our newfound freedom.

“It’s never going to end,” he whispered. “You know what we have to do to you.”

“You aren’t serious.”

“We wanted Atwood Industries out of greed, but we
need
it for our security.”

My stomach dropped.

Now I understood.

“You’re trying to breed me so I’ll trade the
baby
for Josmik Holdings.”

“Unless we find a way to block the trade and retain our investor’s shares, keeping you was always a failsafe to ensure the company didn’t fall.”

Max said nothing, sipping his whiskey. Reed paced without looking at me.

I let Nicholas pull me into a hug, holding me tight as he plotted his ways to force my surrender.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hated to deceive you. But I swear, you
will
be kept safe. Protected. Loved. Even in this ugliness, I won’t let you get hurt.”

I didn’t answer.

Had none of them listened to me? Watched me?

Why hadn’t they tried to understand a single thing about me?

They freaked about the asthma and obsessed over the calendar for the proper time to fuck me, but they never stopped to
think
.

To
ask
.

Why didn’t they realize how strange it was that I’d let
three
men—my step-
brothers
—force me into bed with the intent to breed me like an animal?

“You guys…don’t know, do you?” I shifted from Nicholas, holding each of their gazes. “I mean, you never thought it was possible.”

“That what was possible?” Nicholas asked.

“That you could rape me as many times as you wanted, and it wouldn’t matter.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I am. But it will happen. It has to happen.”

I didn’t answer, not because I feared the finality in Nicholas’s decision or because, regardless of how wicked his words were, I felt coveted in his possession.

The game had been frightening and seductive.

But now it was done.

They should have realized. So much suffering might have been avoided.

Did I ruin everything or save myself?

How to begin?

“When I was eleven years old, I was rushed to the hospital for severe abdominal pain,” I said. My step-brothers shared a puzzled silence. “My father didn’t believe me when I said I hurt, so I didn’t get to the hospital quickly enough.”

They didn’t answer. I perked an eyebrow.

“Ovarian cysts are unusual for someone that young.”

Nicholas darkened. I waited. They didn’t move. They still didn’t understand.

“There were complications. Internal damage to my fallopian tubes from when the cysts burst.”

I tensed until I thought every bone in my body would crack under the strain of their stares.

“I’m
infertile
, guys. There won’t be a male heir for Atwood Industries because I can’t get pregnant. And
that
is a secret only my mother knows. I’m surprised she didn’t tell Darius.”

I expected victory to taste sweeter. Reed was the first to start laughing. A rushed, bewildered laugh that muffled as he rubbed his face.

“Holy shit.” He grinned. “We’re
fucked
.”

Max poured another drink. “No. She is.”

I extended my arms. “There is nothing you can do to me now. I have every advantage. Atwood Industries still belongs to me, and in a year, I’ll have the controlling interest in your company.”

Max didn’t flinch. “We can stop some of the sales. You’ll only retain a portion.”

Reed tucked his hands behind his head. His wink stunned me to silence.

“No. I’ll give her control. She has one of my shares. She can buy the rest.”

Nicholas spun, his eyes a molten, charred amber. “
What
?”

“Fuck it.” Reed said the words slow, staring at his brother. “I’ll take the money and run. Get as far from this fucking lunatic asylum as I can. I told you, I’m not going to be a part of this. When Sarah turns twenty-one, she’ll get my stock too, and she can burn this fucking family to the ground for all I care.”

Max leapt over the couch and reared to punch. Nicholas hauled him off before Reed took aim for Max’s bad leg. He forced them apart and turned to me with a wild stare. He ripped his jacket off, but his motions weren’t meant to frighten me.

They frightened him.

“Everyone stop.” He ordered. “Stop and
fucking
listen to me.”

I hated the frustration in his voice. “Nick, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but—”

“Quiet.” The snap in his words struck like a whip. “You have no idea what you’ve just done. No idea at all. You’re still thinking of this as a
rivalry
. As a way to punish the Bennetts and redeem some sort of pride for your family.” He swore again. “You just lost whatever chance you had of surviving this.”

“But it’s over—”

“My father will never let the Bennett Corporation fall to Atwood control.”

“He doesn’t have a choice.”

Nicholas’s expression hardened, fierce and shadowed with rage.

“Yes, he does.”

I retreated as Nicholas stalked toward me, his words punctuated with each echoing step.

“My father will torture you. He’ll beat you, starve you, rape you, and inflict every horrific torment he can devise to force you to sell.” He breathed, wild and fierce. “There won’t be a damn thing I can do to save you.”

“Saved from what?”

“He’s going to kill you, Sarah.”

The shiver rocked me. I fell against the desk.

“You said your father wasn’t a murderer,” I whispered.

“I said he
hadn’t
murdered.” Nicholas curled his hands into fists. “Not that he wouldn’t. He wants the heir, but he’ll protect the family first. If he finds out you’re infertile and there’s no way to trade for the stock, he will kill you to save the company.”

“Christ.” Reed stole the whiskey from Max. He swore after the gulp. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“He’ll kill you too, Reed,” Max said. “Selling your shares? Are you an idiot? If you die, your portion reverts back to the family. He’d slice your throat before letting you make a deal with Sarah.”

“He’ll do it anyway,” Nicholas said. My heart thudded with a newfound sorrow. I didn’t want to think about it—didn’t want to imagine them in danger. “Dad forced me to convince you to help. That’s why I pushed you to take Sarah. If you didn’t, he said he’d kill you. I believed him.”

Enough blood threatened to spill. Reed and Max stared at their brother. My tears prickled.

Would
any
of us survive this?

What was left to win?

Nicholas sighed. “Sarah, if you aren’t pregnant by the time you’re twenty-one, my father will murder you to avoid losing the company.”

“But…I can’t. The doctors said…”

“Did they say there was a chance?” Reed asked.

“Slim, if any at all.” I wasn’t about to give them hope. “But it won’t happen. I have to get away from Darius. That’s the only thing we can do.”

Max snorted. “You can’t hide from my father. No one can. There’s too much money and power. He’ll hunt you like a dog. If he found the man who killed our mother hiding in the middle of Central America, he’ll find a little Atwood billionaire, no matter where she goes.”

“Then I’ll sell the stock. You can have your fucking company.”

“It’s not about the stock.” Nicholas approached, gently stroking my cheek. “It’s about
your
family. He’ll protect the Bennetts until his dying breath, but he’ll kill to hurt you.”

Christ.

Nicholas was right.

I saw it in Darius’s eyes. Felt it in his urge to degrade me. He tried, and he failed, but I knew the Bennetts well enough to realize they’d never stop, never surrender, and never allow someone like me—a woman they saw as no challenge—to gain control over them.

I gritted my teeth.

I’d never surrender to Darius Bennett.

And neither would Nicholas.

“We should kill him,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe the words slipped from my lips. “Darius. Before he kills me.”

“Darius Bennett is the CEO of one of the largest and wealthiest privately owned corporations in the world,” Nicholas said. “He can’t be murdered. Not without starting major investigations into our family and company. It would be a media phenomenon, and every law enforcement agency on the West Coast would descend on us.” He exhaled. “His will is clear if he dies of unnatural causes. We’d lose everything.”

Max narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?”

“You don’t think I’ve planned it? Thought about it?” Nicholas gestured towards me. “He kidnapped an innocent woman and plotted with her innocence. That isn’t a man who deserves to live, but he’s a man who must if we want to save our company and inheritances.”

“So what do we do?” Max asked.

“We’ll move on the takeover. My father doesn’t know that Sarah’s learned about her inheritance. We’ll keep it a secret.”

Reed swore. “That means we can’t give him reason to believe she’s infertile.”

“No,” Nicholas agreed. “We can’t.”

The silence hung.

I knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t to free me.

The excitement fueled his strength.

“Sarah.”

He brushed his hand over my cheek. I wished I hadn’t shuddered. I was strong, but I’d never be strong enough to resist him, to fight him, to deny my every surrender to him.

And he knew it.

Max and Reed knew it.

And that was why my victory would ultimately end in defeat—a sweet, desperate defeat that’d forever bind me within his clutches.

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “We’ll all protect you.”

Promises. Always promises.

Only this time, I believed him.

Without the secrets restraining us, and with the ticking clock measuring my life in single, frightening moments of possession, I had no reason not to trust Nicholas Bennett.

“But it won’t work,” I whispered. “Keeping me here is a mistake.”

“It’s only our option,” he said. “The longer you’re here, the easier we can convince my father that you are our prisoner, the easier it will be to keep you alive.”

“And when I don’t get pregnant?”

“Leave that to me.”

“We can’t
fake
it.”

“Who said we’d fake it?”

The panic and fear, adrenaline and excitement poisoned me into quivered confusion. Nicholas’s touch provided the simple antidote.

Trust.

Devotion.

Passion.

I stilled. “But…you can take me as often as you can—”

“I plan on it.”

The fierce dedication in his words blistered me with heat. I blushed, but my perked eyebrow offered him a challenge.

“How?” I whispered. “You’ve all had me, and I didn’t get pregnant.”

“Then I try again.” Nicholas’s voice rumbled low and thick. “And again. And again. Every day.”

“Every day?”

He seized my hair, pulling my head back to expose my neck. His lips pressed hard against my throat, and I flushed as I caught the gaze of my step-brothers, stunned to silence.

“You’re not going anywhere, Sarah Atwood.” His breath heated my skin. “The safest place for you is right here. In my arms. In my bed. I’ll protect you. I’ll take you, and I’ll ensure you’re carrying my child before my father has cause to harm you.”

“You’re insane.”

“And you’re mine.”

His hands tightened against me, capturing me in a kiss before I could struggle away. Max and Reed watched in silent shock.

Nicholas didn’t care.

I gasped as he pushed me against his desk. He forced me down with that Bennett arrogance promising a dark, twisted, and primal act. It dominated us both.

Reed called our names. Nicholas didn’t look at him, his jaw clenching as he explored my prone body. He palmed my thigh, but I knew better than to refuse him.