by Maisey Yates
“Thank you, Mr. Treffen, that will be all. I’ll be handing over my case to another events coordinator. I’m sorry that the party of the other night wasn’t to your specifications.” Her tone was tight, stiff.
“Not at all, Ms. Michaels. I apologize that the complaint found you in trouble with your firm.”
A sliver of ice wound down Austin’s spine.
Jason wasn’t sorry at all. He had that tone in his voice, when he spoke to a victim. A woman he intended to draw in. Austin recognized it now, and he had no idea how he hadn’t seen it before.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Treffen. I’ll do other accounts.”
“Of course it’s not nothing,” his father responded, his tone cajoling. “I know that Treffen, Smith and Howell is a big account. Losing it would be difficult for anyone. I imagine you receive a commission per event?”
“In addition to my regular salary, yes.”
“So you’ll be suffering financially.”
“A bit,” she said, her voice clipped. “But I’ll soldier on.”
“If there’s anything I can do, let me know. I have other work.”
Austin tightened his hand into a fist. What the hell was this? What was her game? What was his father’s? Did he know who she was? It wouldn’t be hard to place her. Michaels was a common enough last name, but Austin had figured out the connection easily.
And as for Katy...had she been using him to get to his father? Was that why she’d given him her virginity? So that she could maneuver her way into a better position?
Of course, their night together had gone to hell, so it hadn’t worked that way, but he could see the logic in it.
“Thank you,” she said. His father was seemingly unaware of the edge in her voice. Sharp and cutting, and, Austin had the feeling, prepared to verbally castrate him at a moment’s notice. “Mr. Treffen, perhaps we’ll see each other again soon?”
“I hope so, my dear.”
Austin curled his hands into fists. To keep himself from pushing the door open. To keep himself from storming into his father’s office and committing acts of violence he would regret later.
He moved back in the corridor before she opened the door and closed it tightly behind her.
Then she froze, her eyes round as she looked up at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I might ask you the same thing. But I realize that both of us never asked why exactly we were attending the Treffen, Smith and Howell Christmas party the other night. We forgot, I think, that we have someone in common between us.”
He watched as her face changed. Horror lighting her eyes, her top lip curving upward into something like a snarl. “We do, don’t we?” she said. Her voice was monotone, not reflecting any of the war of emotion raging behind those blue eyes.
But she couldn’t hide it from him.
“I suggest we take this elsewhere.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I have to go back to work,” she said.
“And do what? You’ve lost a major account.” Which he suspected was by design. One of his father’s sick, sadistic designs. “And we need to talk.”
“I don’t think we do.”
He reached out and took her arm, held her there, and hated himself for doing it. But he had to hold on to her. She was Sarah’s sister and she’d walked right into the lion’s den. And he didn’t even know if she knew it.
She was stupid enough to come back to his hotel room, either by design or by accident. She was stupid enough to come into his father’s office today. Alone.
Or maybe naive was the better word.
He thought about how tight she’d been when they’d been together. The fact that she’d never been with another man...
Yes, perhaps naive was the word.
“You will speak to me now, or I will march you in there and we can have this conversation in front of Treffen. Which do you prefer?”
“What’s your connection with him?” she asked, her voice breathless.
“It’s genetic, I’m afraid. Now, let’s go outside.”
She didn’t argue this time. She let him lead her. Past reception—and a wide-eyed Stephanie—and into the elevator.
The doors slid shut behind them and she rounded on him. “We seem to spend a lot of time in elevators,” she said crisply.
“We’ve spent a vast amount more time in bed, but yes, some time in elevators. But what we haven’t done is talk.”
“We talked. About shrimp, and you told me to get on my knees.”
“So we did,” he said, his tone clipped. “But I think we skimmed over something very important. Katy Michaels.”
“You remembered. I would have thought it would have sunk down into the annals of your memory by now. Just one of the many women you’ve deflowered in that ridiculous hotel room. It looked like a vampire brothel, by the way.”
“One, I have never used that particular connection before. But a man would have to be an idiot not to keep said offer in his back pocket. Because he never knows when he might need a vampire brothel, as you called it. Two, I’ve never been with a virgin before, and I never do one-night stands.”
“I have one nightstand but that’s completely different.”
“Entirely.”
The doors opened to the lobby and he waited for her to go first. Like he had that night. Except he didn’t own the right to do that now. He never had. To give her orders. To make her his.
He shook his head and continued behind her, out the front door and to where his driver was waiting. “Get in.”
“This is like bad déjà vu.”
“Would it be so bad?” he asked, and then he closed the door and took a deep breath of the cold air before rounding to the other side of the car and getting in.
When he closed the door and settled in, she looked at him. “I think, after the way things ended between us, yes, it would be so bad now that you mention it.”
“You like bad, though,” he said, his eyes fixed firmly ahead, on the divider that kept his driver out of the conversation. “I remember.” And so did he. A slug of desire hit him in the gut. Wrong time. Wrong place.
“Could we not?”
“Sure. Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you’re doing? Because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you’re here in New York. And I don’t think it’s random you ended up doing event coordination for the firm.”
“Oh, no, Mr. ‘it’s genetic,’ it’s your turn first. You tell me who you are, and what your connection to Treffen is. And then you hope I don’t see your name anywhere in the invoices that I snagged.”
“My name is all over it,” he said. “On every single one. My last name, anyway.”
He looked at her, at her waxen face, and felt a twinge of guilt over not just telling her who he was. Not just laying it out. But he felt guilty by association. By blood. And by deed.
No matter how much he might want to absolve himself of this entire situation, he couldn’t. He’d failed to really listen to Sarah. He’d failed to keep her safe.
And now...and now here he was with Sarah’s much beloved sister. Sweet Katy, whom he’d...
Well, yes, he remembered exactly what he’d done to her. In perfect, graphic detail.
He would never forget it.
But then...he wanted to see her response. To gauge whether or not she’d been using him the other night.
Like you weren’t using her? To get your sense of control back through her submission? You sick bastard.
He had been. He’d used her. But he still needed to know what her game was. So he could try to...protect her. Yeah, that was what he wanted to do. Because he’d failed in protecting Sarah. He’d failed her in every way. The most basic of ways. She was dead,
and who had taken care of Katy since then?
Yes, they’d gotten a payout. But what then? Money didn’t replace a smile. It didn’t replace the light in someone’s eyes. Didn’t answer the phone when you called.
It didn’t breathe life back into a broken body.
He’d grieved for his friend. But Katy had been grieving a sister. A sister he’d failed. In so many ways. And now he had to try to make it right.
Otherwise...otherwise there really wasn’t anything separating him from his father.
Katy closed her eyes. “Oh...no...please don’t...”
“He’s my father.”
“Oh.” She bent over at the waist, her face between her knees. “I’m going to be sick.” She straightened. “Do you buy women, too? Do you whore them out? Are you a pimp just like your dad? You’re a lawyer, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes. To the lawyer part.”
“And do you advocate for women?” she spat.
“Yes,” he growled. “I do.”
“You’re just like him, aren’t you? Should I be asking for payment for my services? All things considered, your little domination game, my virginity, I think I could have commanded a pretty high price.”
Panic was building inside of him. Even though he hadn’t put every piece together yet, he could feel them locking tight, the picture starting to form. He could tell that what she was saying was true. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You don’t know? Do you expect me to believe you don’t know?”
“I know that my father is a bastard. I know that he...sexually harassed a woman, to the point where she felt so distressed that she... I know he did that to a woman we both cared about. And I suspect there are others and he’s been paying them off.”
“Don’t talk about Sarah,” Katy said. “Don’t talk about caring for her. You’re his son.”
“I am his son, but I didn’t know what he was doing to her.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Why didn’t she tell you? Why didn’t you see? If you cared for her, why didn’t you see?”
Every question hit its target. Because they were questions he’d asked. Over and over again. And he had no answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “No, I do know. Because I was a selfish, entitled asshole who never looked past himself or his own achievements. Because life was always good for me, so I didn’t look for suffering because I’d never really seen it before.” Because he hadn’t wanted to see it. “But it’s not an excuse. It’s just the answer I give myself when I get in bed at night. So I can sleep.”
“Well, I don’t have a neat answer that helps me sleep. So that’s nice for you. I just have to lie there and wonder what they did to her...what they did that was so bad she thought the only way out was to throw herself off a building.”
“My name is Austin Treffen,” he said.
“Great. Now we’re all acquainted.”
“It seems so.” Silence fell between them in the car.
“I don’t think we have anything we need to say to each other.”
“No, we have a lot to say to each other. Starting with why you’re here. Moving on to what it is you think is going on with my father, those women and the payouts.”
“Do you honestly not know?”
“I don’t know,” he insisted.
“Have you had your head up your ass for the past, what? Thirty-five years?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Sorry. Did I wound your ego?”
“I’m not going to run off and get BOTOX. So don’t worry.”
“Yeah, it would make that scowl you have going on a lot more difficult to accomplish.”
“Stop deflecting. Katy, I need to know what you’re here for. What you think you’re going to get from my father.”
“Why should I tell you?” she asked. “You’re his son. Why should I trust you at all with anything?”
“You trusted me quite a lot that night we were together,” he said. “You let me take you to a hotel and tie you up. The fact that you won’t tell me anything now...”
“Stop. I didn’t know who you were then.”
“But I was the same man I am now.”
“Well...I didn’t know that then. So it’s not the same.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “It’s not the same.”
“No. Nothing is the same.”
“You want me to believe that you aren’t like your father?”
“Yes. Sarah was my friend, Katy, and it’s an empty thing to say because my friendship didn’t do anything for her. Not in the end. But I’m trying now. I need to know what you know, and until I do, I can’t risk telling you too much.”
“And you think I can?”
“I think you’re one woman, Katy, going up against a man who has ruined hundreds of women. Women who were more well connected than you. Women who had more money than you. Women who were stronger than you.”
“And you’re going to bring him down with your big muscles? But I can’t because I’m a woman?”
“I’m going to bring him down with a hell of a lot more weight behind me. With connections, with status and money and the inside track to his wife—who happens to have a large amount of influence in the community. And who, if she divorces him, will end up with half of what he has since he had less than she did when he came into the marriage. That’s not the case now, obviously, but back then... Let’s just say things change.”
“And you want to bring him down?”
“Do you?”
“I want his head on a pike out in front of the city gates. Barring that? I’d like to see him rot in jail. For what he did to Sarah. For what I think he’s done to a lot of women.”
“What is it you’re thinking?”
“This may be where I pull a Jack Nicholson and say you can’t handle the truth,” she said.
“Are you trying to protect me?” he asked, something warming inside of him.
“Protect you? Not really. But I’m really not sure you’re going to be able to handle this.”
“Because?”
“Because prostitutes, Austin. That’s where all this has led me. I’ve been working my way around the edges of his circles for months. As a server first, then as an event coordinator. I’ve talked to people. A lot of people. I contacted a pro bono law firm....”
“Dammit,” he said, putting his head back on the seat. “That was you? Did you not do any research?”
“What?”
“I own that law firm. It’s an arm of Treffen, though I keep them very separate.”
“What?”
“I got your letter. It’s the thing that mobilized me. And my friends.”
“Wow...”
“You—” he said, raising his hand and pointing, shaking his finger like he was a concerned parent or something and he couldn’t seem to stop “—you are a hazard to yourself and to others. What if that had managed to get into my father’s hands?”
“I didn’t sign it. I just wanted to...test the waters.”
“To what end?”
“So that maybe there would be some investigating. So that when I found some concrete evidence I wouldn’t be going in cold.”
“Trying to make it look like more than one person was involved, maybe?” he asked.
“When the system isn’t going to do you any favors, sometimes you have to game it,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Granted,” he said. “However, for all intents and purposes, I’m ‘The Man,’ so if you want to work the system from the inside, you might want to start by giving your information to me. You were going to anyway. Even if it was going to be unintentional.”
“I’ve been speaking to some people. But Stephanie the receptionist was the biggest help.
I found her crying one day when I was scoping things out for the party and asked her what was wrong. She’d just been propositioned by your father,” she said, the words dripping with disdain. “He’d asked her if she needed extra money because he knew she had some big student loans and also major credit-card debt. He asked if she felt like he’d helped her, giving her the reception job, working it around classes... Of course, she felt like he had. Then he offered her a full payoff of her credit card if she would go on some...dates. With some of his associates. She agreed and...and it became clear very quickly that these were supposed to be something more than dates.”
Austin felt dizzy, like he might vomit on the leather seats of his very expensive car. “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing full well what she meant.
“She was meant to sleep with them.”
“And?”
“She said no the first time. But it was made very clear that she couldn’t ever do that again. Not if she wanted to keep her job. Not if she ever wanted to get a job after college. At least in any sort of high-powered law firm. She knew too much, so it was either go along with it, keep her job and have her debts paid off...or lose everything.”
“I don’t really want to guess which she chose.”
“She’s working at the reception desk, so it’s pretty clear.”
“So, what? My father is running a full-on prostitution ring?”
“Escort service,” she said. “No sex demanded up front. But the expectation is there. There’s a lot of money, a lot of gifts. And a lot of invoices. Your father is paying for these debts by wrapping them in expenses and charitable donations. He’s shielding the money he’s taking in from it, as well.”
“How many women?”
“Right now? I’m counting about eight if the invoices are complete. And if it’s current.”
“How did you get ahold of the invoices?” he asked.
“Again, Stephanie. She doesn’t want her name on any of this. That’s the thing.... She’s already told me she can’t testify. Her loans are paid off. This is her last term. She’s not bringing her name into this. She wants nothing to do with it. And I’m afraid that’s...by and large what we’re going to find.”
“It seems like the women would want to help bring him down.”
