Controlling Interests: A Step-Brother Romance (The Legacy Series Book 2) (26 page)

But Reed would do it for me.

“Sarah left.” Reed shrugged. “I don’t know where she went.”

My father tapped the blade in his hand. “I’m disappointed in you, son.”

“Aren’t you always?”

“Hold him down.”

Max refused. I forced Reed forward instead. He swore, though the word aimed for both me and our bastard of a father.

I deserved more than his profanity.

I deserved more than my brother’s ire, Sarah’s distrust, and my father’s gratitude for pinning my youngest brother to the desk as the knife raised.

I deserved the tearing slice to my face.

Reed screamed.

I’d remember that sound too.

And I’d ensure it was the last pain my father ever caused.

“Mom!”

The front door slammed behind me. I let Reed’s car idle in the driveway, practically steaming from the three hour speed run from San Jose.

I made a two-hundred and fifty mile detour before my meeting with Roman Wescott.

I hoped it’d be worth it.

“Mom?” I sprinted through the halls. “It’s Sprout! Where are you?”

The patio door opened. Mom brushed the dirt from her hands and dropped the garden trowel in the coffee can tucked in the corner.

“Sarah, no yelling in the house. I heard you all the way in my flower garden.”

Her voice slurred, and an orange pill bottle jingled out of her pocket, but I didn’t care. I wrapped her in our first honest hug in three months, our first real embrace since Josiah and Mike’s deaths.

It was our first touch which didn’t mourn a lost husband, father, or hope.

“Sarah, what’s gotten into you? Is Darius here?”

I shuddered. “No. Look, Mom. I can’t stay long.”

“You haven’t stayed long in months.”

Her disappointment chided me. A sharp pang of sorrow struck me to the core.

“Mom…I haven’t been living here.”

“Right, right.” She waved a hand. “So kind of Darius to offer to take you in.”

 Kind was not the word I would have picked, but it wasn’t the time to argue. I herded Mom into the master bedroom and opened the closet. The clothes piled high, but she had always bribed a farmhand to help her fold the laundry.

“Mom, pack a bag. You have to stay with Aunt Sharidan for a while.”

“Shari?” Mom made a face. “Oh no. I haven’t seen my sister since the wedding, and even then I had two glasses of wine too few to deal with her.”

But Aunt Sharidan was the closest relative I could think to take her in, though San Francisco would plop into the bay once they started to fight.

“Why are you running around?” She asked, “Honestly. Put my bag down.”

The clock on the wall ticked entirely too fast for me to pack more than a few pairs of jeans, a couple shirts, and a random assortment of her toiletries.

“Sprout, stop. What are you doing?”

“Mom, I need you to go visit Aunt Shari. Don’t argue with me, please. I can’t explain now, but I will later. I promise. Just…go get your shoes on.”

“I’m wearing shoes.”

I glanced down. “Mom…two of the same shoe.”

Mom held out her foot, cackling as she realized her mistake. “Oh, look at that. Serves me right for not wearing my glasses.”

I wasn’t so sure.

Her bag zipped tight. I’d call Aunt Sharidan from the car. It’d take a bribe to keep Mom there, especially since her relationship with her sister only worsened with age, but I’d sell half the corn fields if it meant Mom could be safe.

If only for a little while. If only so Darius wouldn’t be able to hurt her for what I was going to do.

I sighed. It was stupid to even return to Cherrywood Valley. Stupid and reckless and utterly selfish.

I meant to drive straight to Roman Wescott’s office, plead my case, and convince him to amend the agreement. I planned to collect my trust and find a way to defend myself from Darius.

But I didn’t make it close to San Jose.

I left the estate and immediately headed south. Toward home. Back to Mom.

A desperate part of me needed to sink in her arms and cry, to reveal everything horrible and frightening and disgusting that had happened at the Bennett Estate. I wanted to beg for Mom to be my mother again.

We’d hire security, find a safer home, and then finalize her divorce.

Darius would slit her throat if I so much as whispered about his treatment, but if she were free of him, we could try to rebuild our life and farm.

Maybe then we’d be safe. I would inherit my trust. I’d help Nicholas depose his father.

And then?

I searched the house to find her cellphone charger. My steps slowed in the kitchen.

There was no more
then
.

I was an idiot. Idealistic fool.

A little girl who denied that anything was wrong in the storybook fantasy of her family.

The pilot light flickered on the stove with no pots or dishes near.

“Mom?” I called. “Are you making tea or something?”

Mom followed, still fretting about my rampage through her drawers.

“No. Why?”

I didn’t answer. Mom brushed her hands.

“Where did all this dirt come from? Heavens.” She tisked her tongue. “Did you want tea, Sarah? Good gracious, you come bursting in here shouting all manner of nonsense, trying to get me to visit Shari of all people, and now you want tea. I swear, sometimes I think you are just a clone of Mark.”

I flicked the knob on the stove. “You…left the stove on.”

“Oh. Whoops!”

Whoops
? She might have set the house on fire, and all she could say was
whoops
?

My stomach dropped. She hadn’t been the most level-headed woman since the funerals, but I thought it was the depression. The medications.

Darius was right.

She fluttered to the cabinet. “Well, now I’m tasting tea anyway. Put some water on, Sprout.”

I hesitated, but Mom flipped a towel at my behind. She laughed as I visibly flinched against even the smallest nip of the cloth. She didn’t ask why I feared a strike.  I wouldn’t have told her anyway.

I filled the kettle. Mom set tea bags and sugar on the table. She hummed as she worked.

When was the last time she hummed?

Three months ago, Mom could hardly get out of bed, torn between the excitement for her new marriage and the crushing despair of her mourning. The pills helped, until they didn’t. They stole the once vibrant and vivacious woman who was my only companion in the family.

A family that didn’t want me.

No.

My father didn’t want me.

Josiah and Mike loved me. They were older and far busier with Dad, but they snuck me sweets when I was sick and let me sleep in their rooms if I had nightmares of earthquakes.

I hadn’t visited their graves since they died, not after Mom took the razor to her wrists just as the funeral procession arrived at the plot in our far field where they’d rest next to Dad.

I hadn’t visited Dad either, not that he deserved it.

My chest tightened.

Coming here was a mistake.

It’d be the first place Darius would look, and Mom the first person he’d hurt. I tried to defend my family, but at my first opportunity, I lured danger to it.

We weren’t going anywhere. I couldn’t
trust
Mom to go anywhere.

She offered me a fruit salad wrapped from the fridge.

“Fresh from the garden.” She pushed the fork toward me. “Bet you miss that. Darius doesn’t appreciate good fruits and vegetables.”

Neither did his carnivore sons.

Sons who would be on their way to find me. To capture me. To imprison me with him again.

I had no idea what would await me when I returned or how angry Nicholas would be.

I savored a bite of the watermelon and aimed for the honeydew immediately after.

“Sprout, tell me why you’re so worked up?” Mom spun her spoon in her tea. “You aren’t yourself.”

I didn’t even know who
myself
would be anymore.

I left the Bennett Estate terrified and enraged, but the revenge I sought wasn’t as righteous as before. I demanded blood, not for the sin perpetrated against my family but the darkness Darius forced me to endure.

Did that make me as ruthless as Reed thought?

The way he looked at me crushed my heart in mounting guilt. I never meant to hurt him. I’d probably hurt them all before it was done.

Except they hurt me
first
.

What was I supposed to do?

Mom hovered. “Looks like you could use a treat too.”

She tucked a plate of chocolate chip cookies under my nose. I abandoned the fruit.

“Your father loved those cookies,” Mom said. “They were the only compliment he’d ever give.”

The cookie fell to the plate. Almost a year of mourning, and she never once said anything disparaging about Dad.

I tried my hardest to remember anything she
ever
said bad about Dad. I couldn’t. Then again, until a few weeks ago, I had nothing negative to say either.

I blinked away a damning tear.

“You never told me what a monster Dad was.”

Mom’s teacup lowered. She hesitated.

“He wasn’t a monster.”

I nibbled the cookie. “Helena Bennett?”

“So you’ve spoken with Darius.”

“Nick.”

“It was a long time ago, Sprout.”

“That doesn’t forgive what he did,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. “But Mark never asked for forgiveness.”

“You never said anything.”

“No.”

“Did Josiah and Mike know?”

Talking about Dad no longer weakened her, but her voice slipped when I mentioned my brothers.

“Yes, I suppose they did.”

I hated to think it. “Didn’t they care?”

“You know your brothers.” She trembled. “Knew. They thought they’d change the world.”

“They might have.”

She nodded with a pursing of her lips. “Some things aren’t meant to be.”

And some things in the world were cruel and unfair. The house stood too silent without my brothers rumbling down the stairs, late for school, late for a date, late for work. Dad called them irresponsible. They were the greatest men in the world.

They never should have died.

Too many things went wrong, and too many lives destroyed with theirs.

It should have ended with Dad.

I hated myself for considering it.

I hated him for writing me out of the will, out of the company, out of the family.

“Dad never thought I was as good as them,” I said. “Did he?”

Mom stirred another lump of sugar into her tea. It was her third cube. She must not have remembered dropping the last one.

“He never saw
you
, Sprout,” she said. “Had he looked, he would have realized you were so much like him.”

“That’s not a good thing.”

“It can be. Mark was successful because he was shrewd. He saw his opportunities and did what he had to do. He provided for the family. Some people would call that ruthless. He considered it life.” She paused. “He died before his time. And your brothers…”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s in the past. No sense dwelling on such sadness. We have a new family to care for.”

Even half a state away, Darius Bennett turned my stomach.

“Mom, I want to take you far from here. I’m going to get you away from Darius.”

“Away from Darius? Whatever for?”

I stood, casting the cookie into the sink. “He’s evil, Mom. Absolutely evil.”

She gave me the same look she always did, as though my overactive imagination concocted another crazy story.

“You’ve never had any love for the Bennetts, but I hoped you’d
try
to come to terms with this—”

“If you knew the man he truly was—”

“Sarah, I’ve known Darius Bennett since I was thirteen years old, and I’ve loved him nearly as long.”

I stilled. “You
what
?”

“Darius and I were childhood sweethearts. Had his family not moved to San Jose and mine not entwined with the Atwoods…my life would certainly look very different.”

“You aren’t serious.”

“Our lives took separate paths, but nothing has made me happier than reuniting with the first man I ever loved. It’s healed a lot of wounds I thought impossible to mend. He’s given me a new hope.” She tapped her fingers over the teacup. “I’m not well, Sarah.”

“Don’t say that.” Any of it.

“Your brothers knew. They tried to help me, but I said they were being foolish. However, all the mourning and stress has only…strengthened the condition. I didn’t tell you. I don’t want you to worry.”

“Mom—”

“Darius is a loyal husband. And you see he is a devoted father. He cares for me, and he cares a great deal for you. Please give him a chance, if only to grant me a bit of peace while we battle this next hurdle for our family.”

She was serious.

Every word, every hallowed implication, every failing hope.

She believed Darius would save her. I didn’t have the heart to warn her what happened when she trusted a Bennett with her life.

“You should have sold the company.” Mom stared only into her teacup. “You don’t need this stress. This hassle.”