Silence.

Not that I hadn’t considered it, but the thought terrified me.

My son or my daughter, it didn’t matter.

I didn’t want an heir. I wanted a family. I wanted her, happy and smiling and proud to carry my child. I’d save her from further bloodshed just for a chance at that perfect-ever-after.

I paused, pulling my phone and calling for her guard to meet us downstairs. Max frowned as I gave him the instructions.

“Robert hasn’t been guarding her,” I said. “He’s following her.”

Reed tensed, but Max expected it.

“Dad’s probably paying for him to stay close,” I said. “Find out how much he spent.”

Max nodded. “And then?”

“If you want to earn Sarah’s forgiveness?” I said. “Keep her safe. Nothing will endanger her or the baby. I’ll check on her first, and then I’ll follow.”

“What? You want to warm up with her bodyguard? Get a practice kill?”

I didn’t need the practice anymore. The war had already begun.

The toxicity website highlighted it’s warnings in bold, blocky letters. Pesticide poisoning was a cruel and harsh way to die.

Headaches and cramps, nausea and shortness of breath. It read like an acute form of morning sickness coupled with the ugly weaknesses caused from my asthma.

How fitting, punishing a man who had inflicted me with the same symptoms, the same pain, the same humiliations?

I’d make Darius Bennett suffer, and the idea thrilled a dark part of me. Like an illness strengthening in each passing hour, the desire to hurt, to cause him pain, burrowed from the hidden fantasies. First it was simply a secret in the night. Now it burst into my waking thoughts. Visions of revenge suffocated my mind—crippling every desire, every honest joy, every moment of rest.

Never before had I dreamt of harming another person.

But he caused the vile thoughts. He forced me to demand blood for blood and pain for pain.

And so I would deliver it.

Darius threatened my mother and nearly overdosed her on the medications that kept her senses dulled and judgement clouded. He ordered his men to shoot Max, strangle Reed, and gun Nicholas down in the street like an animal. He raped me and promised either more torment or a violent death.

He meant to take my child.

Every minute he lived trapped me in a new agony. It ended now.

And the irony of it—of using the Bennett Corporation’s own products to erode him from the inside out—delighted me.

My father, a man just as cruel and barbaric as Darius, would have been proud. The first and only time he’d be honored by the daughter who sacrificed so much to avenge his name, safeguard his legacy, and protect our futures.

He didn’t deserve my efforts.

But I needed that peace. I needed something to dull the racing, jarring, enraged thoughts that stole every moment of rest from my exhausted and weakened body.

I planned to murder a man.

And no matter how many times I thought of him as a demon, a monster, an animal, I still imagined the blood on my hands.

And it sickened me.

And it excited me.

And it would ruin me.

It would finally free me from the Bennett nightmare.

If I only could gather the courage to do it. If the implication didn’t lace me with shivers, smother me with panic, and coat me in the same filthy grime that created Darius Bennett.

My father once said if revenge were easy, peace wouldn’t be so hard.

I closed the website—the same specs I requested for the Bennett chemicals I used to treat my farm. The words faded, but it felt like the entire world saw through the innocence I once had. Like they knew the choice I’d made.

I ran a bath and, for the first time in three months, actually enjoyed the bathroom without needing to cuddle on the tile with my sickness. The last days of my first trimester forged a truce between me and Bumper. I snacked on carrots and the occasional plate of mushroom lasagna, and he let me be.

A bath usually calmed me, and Nicholas’s penthouse offered the sleekest, most modern bathroom, complete with a Jacuzzi tub, warmed floors, and selected aroma therapy candles. Dark granite and harsh angles wasn’t my preferred style, but it fit Nicholas.

Would it fit me?

After Darius was gone, after the baby came, after we controlled the Bennett Corporation and my farm, would I eventually think of the penthouse as a…home?

The night with Nicholas did more than grant me confidence. It made me hope.

I wanted him. I loved him. I needed him. But could I risk the danger? I doubted I’d survive the heartache of leaving him.

The bath did nothing to soothe me, and thoughts of Nicholas only flushed me warmer than the water. That heat didn’t pass, even as I brushed the towel over my body.

I glanced to the mirror.

The towel dropped.

I didn’t recognize the reflection.

“That’s new.” I swallowed. My hand traced the barest swell of my belly. “Uh-oh.”

I was used to the darkening of my nipples, the tenderness in my breasts, even the mood swings and fatigue. But…this was different.

Real.

I dressed quickly, tossing on a strappy shirt with a pair of thin shorts and snuck from the bathroom.

My step-brothers crowded the penthouse. Five thousand square feet, and they all descended on the living room—Reed with the pregnancy books by the window, Max rummaging through the refrigerator, and Nicholas working remotely on a desk in the corner.

I hesitated, earning their attention all at once. My cheeks burned.

Nicholas closed the laptop. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.” I bit my lip. “Kinda.”

Reed tossed the book aside. He pointed to his abs, tight against his shirt. “More nausea? Round ligament pain? It’s common. Are you hurting?”

“What? No.”

Max pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and slammed it on the counter. “Drink it.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Sick?” Reed asked. “Tired? Are you feeling any tenderness?”

“Reed, I’m fine.”

That drew Nicholas’s attention. “What is it?”

It was embarrassing. It was natural. It was everything that would continue to happen to me for the next six months. Why was it so hard to admit?

“Bumper gave me a…bump.”

They didn’t get it. All three lurched to their feet, each scattering in three different directions to gather my things. Reed seized my purse. Max my shoes.

They thought I had to go to the hospital.

Only Nicholas waited for the explanation.

The confession.

“I’m showing.”

Reed and Max stilled. I squirmed as their collective gazes centered low on my belly, like they expected it to suddenly balloon up. I lifted my shirt. They didn’t react until I turned to the side. Their heads angled. Reed snorted.

“That’s it?” he laughed. “Christ, I look like that after I eat a pizza.”

I bit my lip as Nicholas approached. He made no such joke, didn’t shake his head like Max. His eyes narrowed in concentration, brightened with excitement, and studied the tiniest swelling with rapt attention. I stilled as his hand brushed my exposed skin. His palm covered the bump and hid the secret once more for us and us alone.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

And he meant it.

The raw amazement in his words banished my embarrassment. It fueled me with the same heated intensity that simmered the caramel smoothness of his voice.

One word and he’d burn me. One promise and he’d trap me.

One command and he’d seal me forever within the warmth of his palm.

I swallowed, cascading from anxious to shamed to empowered in a single graze of his fingers. It didn’t take much for my heart to flutter and core to clench, but Nicholas’s touch tickled from the barest, faintest of promises. Suddenly, my thoughts twisted into something dark and utterly sensual.