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brutality. I was twenty-nine years old, and he yet surprised me.
    Horrified me.
    “Nicholas, you are my eldest son. You are my heir, my legacy to this world.” He spoke softly, intentionally forcing me to hold my breath just to listen. “But understand, I have two other sons.”
    “Perhaps they’d prefer to do this crime,” I said.
    “Doubtful.”
    “Then you realize this is a mistake.”
    “Nicholas, you will control the company and this family alone , as it has been set for generations.”
    “I understand.”
    “I have no real need for two additional sons.”
    The implication struck like a blade to the throat. I didn’t doubt his threat. A Bennett lost his naivety at a young age. My father had no cause to lie.
    “You would harm your own flesh and blood?” I asked.
    “You would deny your family the ultimate wealth, security, and vengeance?”
    My father stood, a lurking devil.
    “I love this family,” I said.
    “Then protect it.”
    “From you?”
    “From any danger. The decision rests with you, Nicholas. Convince your brothers to capture and breed Sarah Atwood, or...” His pat to my shoulder suddenly gripped, pinching hard against a nerve he favored to bring me to my knees as a child. I didn’t wince. “You will be responsible for what happens to this family.”
    He sipped the rest of his wine and left me to the silence of the study.
    What choice did I have?
    I would always put my family first.
     

 

     
     
     
     
    I fell asleep at the lab.
    My first time at the facility in weeks, and I wasted it collapsed on the black laminate table, trapped between a microscope, a couple test tubes, and Lady Gaga blaring on my laptop.
    I checked for drool and groped for my phone.
    Midnight.
    What a productive four hours.
    I stretched. The perpetual ache in my shoulders wouldn’t ease if I didn’t get some sleep in a bed. Last night I curled up in the university library, but I hadn’t studied a word for my midterms. Instead, I blinked through as much of the new agreement Anthony’s office worked up to announce the trust. It granted me executive power to operate the company in lieu of whatever imaginary baby I concocted, but it wouldn’t help me pass Ecology.
    At least Atwood Industries was safe from Darius Bennett. That made the exhaustion, misery, and complications worth it. Nothing was going to tarnish my father’s legacy—certainly not any empire the Bennetts shaded with their vulgarity.
    I blinked at the laptop. The measurements were supposed to upload directly into the program.
    “Damn.”
    I alt-tabbed through the open applications. Facebook. iTunes. An Amazon product confirmation for a case of K-Cups I didn’t remember ordering but made sense. My head throbbed with a horrible caffeine withdrawal. I spaced out, but I swore I opened the correct spreadsheet.
    My Biosystems Design coursework stared at me.
    Great.
    I was such a mess I wasn’t even doing the right work in the right lab.
    Frustrating.
    I closed out the program. My back ached, my laptop overheated, and I was pretty sure I forgot to eat lunch and dinner.
    Something had to give.
    And I had a bad feeling about what it’d be.
    The state-of-the-art lab belonged to Atwood Industries—and Dad promised my own office once I earned my PhD.
    It wouldn’t happen now.
    No matter how much work I had done in the lab, no matter how much I researched and developed, I had a bigger responsibility. When it came time to publish, patent, and sell, the credentials were more important than the private, basement lab.
    Dad forbade me from working on anything for Atwood Industries at school, and I understood. Less risk for the campus to claim experiments at the university belonged to them. But peer reviews and testing and all the hassle that came from developing a commercial product— especially anything genetically modified—turned into a nightmare and a half.
    What started as something fun and exciting became an exercise in litigation, patent wars, and