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.”