Capital Risk (30 page)

Darius built a nursery. I saw a prison.

And it
relieved
me that Bumper would never rest within any crib in Darius Bennett’s possession.

“You disappointed me, my dear. I told you I expected a son.”

“I live to disappoint you.”

“Not for much longer.”

I held his gaze. “And if the baby
is
yours? You’d kill her before she’s even born?”

“Why should I tolerate inferior blood blending with the Bennett line? I should earn something in my sacrifice.”

“
Your
sacrifice?”

“The only reason I let an Atwood within my home, at my table, in my
bed
was to breed her like a common
bitch
.” Darius exhaled. “And even that was too complicated for you.”

He was on me before I reacted. His hand tightened over my throat, and he slammed me against the wall.

“You failed me, child.” His growl sliced through me. “For the
last
time. No more second chances. No more begging. No more alliances with
my
sons. It’s just you and me, Sarah Atwood, and you will answer for your every failure.”

The leash choked the air from me. He hauled me from the nursery like an errant dog through the halls, deliberately watching me twist and gasp to match his awkward gait. The collar dug into my neck.

The humiliation would be over soon enough.

The elevator was too easy a trip for me. Darius forced us through the narrow stairwell to the estate’s roof—half designer garden, half-helipad. The helicopter waited, and Max handed his father a set of ear-muffs for the ride. He didn’t afford me the same courtesy.

“I’ve decided to take you home, my dear. Back to the farm, back to Daddy and the ashes of your brothers. Consider it my last kindness.” His sneer would forever etch into my memory, worse than any touch of his lips or fingers. “If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even kill you before I stuff you in their graves.”

My words didn’t waver. I lifted my chin, a hope for the final blow.

“I hate you.”

Darius sneer, his arm raised to strike.

The slap never landed.

The crack of Darius’s skull shattered the night with a sickening crunch.

His eyes met mine in a moment of utter confusion, pain, and dismay. The leash released from his hand just as his worthless body crumbled at my feet.

Soundless.

Harmless.

And still I lurched away. Still I let even the spreading shadow of an unconscious man force me to hide my body, my face, my
fear
.

I told myself I would never again
fear
Darius Bennett.

Standing over his vulnerable body made me more terrified than ever.

One last thing to do. One last crime to commit. One last injustice to be sated.

The lights flipped on, flooding the helipad with artificial brightness. Nicholas stepped forward, the butt of his gun stained with his father’s blood. He touched my cheek.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The tears came now, weepy only from the surge of adrenaline that threatened to topple me.

“Why did you wait so long?” I pushed him away. “I thought you’d get him in the house.”

“We didn’t have a clear shot.”

“I used my safe word.”

Nicholas nodded. “And I was there, like I said I would be.”

God, this was a horrible plan.

And, of course, it had been my idea.

“Darius thinks he’s broken me,” I said.

My step-brothers did too. They sat in silence within the penthouse. Reed sullen. Nicholas still. And Max, half-drunk with bruises and the fat lip it took for his brothers to drag him back to me.

“He expects that I’ll kill Max.” I didn’t look at him. Speaking his name was difficult enough. “That I want
him
to answer for my brothers. But this isn’t about an eye-for-an-eye anymore. This is about chopping the head off the snake. Now’s our chance.”

Nicholas agreed. “Max, you have an opportunity to get close to Dad. If you go to him—”

Max sneered. “He’ll kill me.”

“Not if you offer him what he wants.”

“And what’s that?”

I spoke for him. For them. For Bumper.

For the only way we’d ever secure our future.

“He wants me.”

Reed burst from the shadows, tucking a gun into the waistband of his jeans before approaching. He didn’t smile, but the burden eased from his shoulders. He bent down to grab his unconscious father. Max hopped from the helicopter to help. Together they stuffed Darius into the cabin and slammed the doors.

Just as I planned. Just as we wanted.

But I didn’t feel any better.

The fear didn’t fade. The pain. The grief.

It was all still there, tucked in deep and pounding at my heart.

“He hurt you.” Nicholas touched the bruise on my cheek. I held his hand.

“Wasn’t him.”

Max didn’t apologize. “She’ll heal.”

I was tired of healing. I didn’t want to hurt anymore.

Reed brushed beside me, offering me the gun. I took it. Just the feel of the metal left me sick and trembling.

Nicholas’s voice hollowed. “I won’t take this from you. If you want, Max will lead you somewhere…quiet. You can pull the trigger yourself.”

The thought excited and sickened me. “How many bullets in this gun?”

Max tightened his jaw. “Enough to take out me and Dad, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was. I swallowed.

Eight months of torment and rage, captivity and pain.

How many more of my brothers needed to die before this feud ended? Before our revenge was sated?

Dad would’ve demanded it. Forced it. My brothers died because of Max Bennett. But killing Max wouldn’t bring Josiah and Mike back. Killing him wouldn’t give my baby the uncle she needed.

And killing Darius?

I trembled, rocked with guilt and rage and the hopeless fear that we’d forever torture ourselves, trapped in a mire of regret and remorse and revenge.

It would never end, not until the last drop of Bennett and Atwood blood stained the earth.

I lowered the gun.

“You do it. I don’t want to know. Do it and we’ll never speak of him again.”

Max nodded. “Baby—”

I turned without listening for any words he might have said or apologies he might have given or insults he might have thrown.

Peace only meant blood wouldn’t spill. It dictated nothing about
forgiveness
.

Nicholas and Reed followed as the helicopter’s lights seared the rooftop. Max slipped in the cockpit as the monster roared to life. I didn’t bother watching.

I saw everything I needed to see.

Darius lay across the floor of the helicopter. Not dead, yet. Max would finish that and ensure his body was never recovered.

Then Max promised after it was done, he would never come near me again.

I hadn’t asked him for that concession.

I wept in exhaustion by the time I reached the stairs, but the tears only aided my escape. I burst from the front doors as the tremors and aches, wheezing and coughs, grief and despair rolled through me.

Nicholas held me, but I wasn’t prepared for his touch. For his closeness.

To even think it had
worked
. A hasty plan, drawn in the night. Without subtlety, without remorse.

One chance to end it all, and we were free.

Was that it? Was this
freedom
?

It hurt more than ever, especially knowing Max risked his life to approach Darius, to set the plan in motion, to betray his father from inside the estate.

This plan was nothing but danger, but Max didn’t hesitate. He agreed to help. No questions asked. He only wanted another chance to ask for my forgiveness.

And I didn’t give it to him. I couldn’t. Dad wouldn’t have wanted it. Mike and Josiah wouldn’t have understood it. The weight of my name suffocated me under the burden of our revenge. Max wouldn’t die, but they’d
expect
me to forget that he lived.

And I couldn’t.

Reed helped me into the car. Bumper bumped as Nicholas quietly gave instruction to his brother. She was too used to her father and uncles’ voices. Loved the sound.

She wouldn’t remember them once she was born. Once it was over.

Once I was gone. If I could leave.

It was too much to think of now, not while my hands shook and the chills overwhelmed me in shock.

The car pulled from the estate and passed through the redwood forest, clutching at the shadows in spindly branches. I let my eyes drift to the mirror. One last look at the source of my nightmare, and then it’d be over.

The orange fireball filled the sky, spreading over the top of the mansion in ghastly flames.

The harrowing soundwave of the crash followed.

“Nick!” I gripped his arm. “Oh, God, the
helicopter
!”

The car squealed to the stop as Nicholas jammed the brake and spun us one hundred and eighty degrees to face the Bennett Estate once more.

Flames leapt into the sky, and a quick spray of metal debris rained against the front yard.

The helicopter crashed in a dire ball of flames.

The Bennett Estate was burning.

The flames lashed the estate.

Thick, enraged towers of crackling orange and violent gold rippled over the roof of the mansion, blazing waves of fire into the sky.

Nothing remained of the helicopter.

Chunks of charred metal littered the front lawn. Nicholas parked, but he pointed at me.

“Stay in the car.”

I rarely listened to him before. I wouldn’t start now.

But it was a mistake. The acrid smoke soiled the air. I tasted the grimy, oil-soaked particles in my throat. My chest ached without the bitter thickness.

I coughed and ignored it.

“Fuck!” Reed stared at the roof. “Jesus…did he…is Max—”

Nicholas shouted. “Sarah, stay here! Reed, let’s go.”

“Max is a better pilot than that,” Reed said. “He wouldn’t crash…no one could survive that.”

Fire tinted the world a terrible orange—charred and ashen and cratered with pitted rage.

No. It wasn’t about survival. It wasn’t about death.

The flames didn’t carry Darius Bennett home.

They heralded his return.

“He’s alive.” My words blazed with despair and finality. “He survived.”

Nicholas pushed Reed, shaking him from the trance that trapped him within the flaring orange. “You go look for Max.”

Reed didn’t answer. He bolted into the house, sprinting to the stairs to reach his brother.

I knew what he would find, and it wouldn’t be Max. Only evil. Only a monster strengthened by the hell he wrought on earth.

Nicholas pinned my arms at my side. “Sarah, stay here—”

“He’s alive.” I shared Nicholas’s gaze, fierce and gold, fueled by the same flames that roared from above. “I can feel it. Darius is
alive
.”

“He’s not—”

“I was wrong to let him go. I thought it would end without me. I was
wrong
.”

“Sarah, you aren’t making sense.”

“He killed my
brothers
.” I broke down and screamed the word. “Josiah and Mike and
Max!
He killed my
brothers!
And now he’s waiting for me.”

“Sarah, no.”

“I thought we could escape it, but I was wrong. This feud consumes us. Every minute of every day. People get hurt. People
die
. It ends now. Like it should have ended before.”

“What
end
, Sarah?” Nicholas grabbed my hand. “There is no
end
to this. There’s only more blood and murder and nightmare.”

“That’s all there’s ever been!” I didn’t let him hold me. Didn’t let him stop me. “There has to be something
else
in this life!”

“There is! There’s us!” He followed, shouting, forcing me to listen to words I couldn’t handle and a truth I refused to accept. “Stay here. Wait for me.”

“He’s not yours to kill.”

“He’s isn’t anyone’s to kill! He’s only a monster to those who let him control them. His death won’t bring your brothers back. It won’t save
Max
.” His voice cracked over the name, jarred and broken. “He has a power over you because
you
let him possess it.”

Then why shouldn’t I be the one to end it?

His power, the fear, the
rage
. The
feud
between our families.

It answered in vengeance and revenge and blood.

I had no other way to accept what had happened. I couldn’t grieve and mourn and
hate
if I didn’t kill Darius myself.

Because otherwise, the forgiveness and pain and healing had to come from
me
. And no matter how much I survived, no matter how many times I faced the devil and scarred from his touch and stood up after I had been tossed to the ground, I wasn’t strong enough to
accept
what happened.

The Bennetts stole my family.

They humiliated me, hurt me, raped me.

They forced me to betray my name.

I loved them.

I hated them.

And the obsession consumed me just as the fires chewed through the barren estate filled with vile truths and bloody memories.

I needed Darius’s death because I had
nothing
else.

The flames leapt through the rooms and halls, feasting on the wooden frames, warped and rotted beneath the pristine stones. The fire spread too quickly. Rolling, thick smoke poured from the floors above. The electricity popped, plunging the estate into unnatural blackness.

I rushed for the stairs.

Damned my lungs. My coughing. The aching agony.

Reed’s gun trembled in my hands, loaded with a terrible purpose.

Nicholas followed me through the estate, his hands wrapping over me as I faltered, tripping over the darkness and sinking to my knees in a blinding cough. The hacking wheeze dizzied my vision and wracked me in a quick pain.

I didn’t stop. Nicholas called for me, and the desperation in his voice turned to a shout.

I knew where to find Darius.

And he waited for me.

I burst through the parlor, a smoking room, where the Bennetts had first captured me and forced me to present myself, my body, my very pride. The room was dark, haloed by the only contained fire in the estate, tucked within the mammoth stone hearth.

Darius limped, bloody and bruised and weakened. He hobbled, almost broken, covered in burns. He survived the crash by a curse of pure hate and sin.

He turned from the mantle, rearranging the delicate garland that had reserved a hallowed place for a silver framed picture I thought he displayed only to insult me.

His wedding picture with Mom.

The frame clutched in his swollen, gnarled hand, and the image of their first kiss as husband and wife defiled everything good and holy that existed in marriage.

Why had he come to save it?

In a burning mansion of extravagance and fortune, Darius saved a silver framed photograph. A
memory.

A memento of an
Atwood
.

The gun rose. Trembled in my hand. Smoke coiled within the estate, blackening the grand hall and threatening to descend from the upper levels.

What was I doing here? Endangering myself? Endangering
Bumper
.

I chased a specter of blood. I hunted for vengeance.

I channeled my father.

This
wasn’t the end I wanted.

“This isn’t about the feud anymore,” I said. “It’s not about Atwood and Bennett. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not avenging an evil or forgiving your sins.”

I pointed the gun at him.

“This is about
me
.”

“Then perhaps your aim is off, my dear.”

It wasn’t. I tightened my finger over the trigger. “This
obsession
is all that’s mine. It’s my true inheritance. I’ve done nothing in this world except serve my family’s pride. But there is none. Not for the Atwoods. Not for the Bennetts. I’ve honored bloodshed and misery and
hatred
. I’ve sacrificed
everything
for this pain.”

Darius hadn’t moved, couldn’t move with the injuries that should have claimed his life with his son’s. The slimy graze of his words coiled over my arms, my neck.

“Then
end
it, Sarah.”

“There is no end. There will never
be
an end. My brothers are dead. Your
son
is dead.”

“There is no rationalizing vengeance, Sarah,” Darius said. “It simply
is
. It’s owed. It’s redemption of one’s failures and a responsibility to family—the most important element in this godforsaken world.”

“I won’t serve the burdens of those dead and buried anymore.” I swore. “I spent my
life
living in my father’s shadow, answering for his crimes and damning myself to his sins. Everything I did, everything I ever was, became an extension of this violent feud. My father didn’t give me a
purpose
in this world. Only a task. I had to make a male heir in case the worst happened and there were no more
real
Atwoods to protect our name.”

“And you couldn’t even do that right,” Darius hissed.

Nicholas answered for me. “The child is no mistake.”

“The child is worthless.”

“She’s better than all of us,” Nicholas said. “Safe from this madness. She’s innocent.”

Darius scowled. “No one is innocent in this world.”

“Then I’ll change the world or protect her from it.” The gun trembled my hand, despite how tightly I clenched against the grip. “She’ll never know this rage, this
obsession
, this false pride and demand for blood. No one deserves a life created just to end another.”

A heavy, spine-tingling groan of wood against stone roared through the estate. From above, a dangerous shatter and thudding heralded a collapse. The ceiling rattled, dislodging chunks of plaster. Thick smoke rolled the stairs behind us.

Was Reed trapped upstairs?

The flames in the fireplace burst quick, pulsing and hot. The threatening flicker of orange pierced the darkness of the hall with a ghastly glow.

We had little time.

And the gun had yet to be fired.

Was this what I wanted? I choked over the grimy air, clutching my belly as Bumper quieted and ceased kicking in my stress and fatigue.

I carried a child. I held a gun. My prison burned to the ground around me.

And my
vengeance
threatened to consume us all.

The man I loved shielded me from falling debris, and the man I hated baited me with a sick grin and eager posture.

Max was dead. Reed was missing. The child cradled too still within me.

Tears rolled over my cheek.

“I won’t fear you anymore,” I said. “I won’t fear
this
. I won’t bear the guilt of loving a Bennett. In my life I’ve mourned the wrong people and suffered because of the hatred of others.”

I exhaled, coughing, aching, trapped.

“I won’t
hate
anymore.”

“You can’t help but
hate
,” Darius whispered. “It’s in your blood, just as it’s in mine. You will never be free, my dear. Kill me. I’ll live on. Every time you hold the child. When she cries in the night. When she nurses at your breast. Every sacrifice you make to care for her
innocence
, you’ll remember how I won. You carry a
Bennett
, Sarah. And every second she spends within your womb will eat you alive.”

The gun fired, but I didn’t aim for his blackened heart or the perverted, twisted mind that existed only to plot my inevitable torture.

I aimed for his right leg. His hip.

And he fell in the crippled agony Max endured every day of his life.

“You can’t threaten me with a
daughter
I love.” I watched as Darius limped and swore, bleeding his way into the leather wingback before the fireplace. His body cast in shadow, writhed in the growing flames bursting from the hearth. “I won’t let you hurt me anymore. I won’t let your name, your
life
, become my obsession.”

Darius pulled the weapon he concealed from his pocket. Nicholas moved, but I didn’t flinch.

“I bear enough of your scars,” I whispered. “I won’t let your blood stain me too.”

Darius didn’t aim for us. He looked through me, his stare forever searing a darkening, terrible place within my mind, my memory, my heart.

“You will never be free of this.” His every word fell upon us as a curse. “You wanted to start your new family?”

The gun pointed.

Fired.

Shattered through the study’s window.

A burst of cold air flooded the room, howling as it coiled within the heat of the flames. The rushing oxygen punched over us. The fire from the hall trapped us within the parlor as it twisted, danced, and exploded.

Nicholas shouted, shielding me from the burst of heat, smoke, and ravenous inferno.

Darius’s laugh rattled within the fire, calling him home.

“Then, my dear, we will die as a
family
.”