by Maisey Yates
Anyway, this was a better view.
Maybe that was how Sarah had gotten sucked into all of this. It was easy to see how it might have happened. This life was so different from the one they’d grown up in. And Sarah had always told them that they could get out, if they did well in school. If they worked hard. If they stayed away from drugs.
She’d instilled things in them that their parents hadn’t. Things their parents had been unable to do for themselves.
Today was horrible. And it didn’t matter that it was only six in the evening—she just wanted to go to sleep and call it done.
For a few minutes she needed to just check out of the world and forget everything. Forget Sarah. And Jason. Those pictures. Forget Austin Treffen, and all the things he made her feel. All the anger, all the desire. All the everything.
Forget that he’d made her lose her job. Forget that she was in a bedroom in his home. Forget that she lived here now, and for the foreseeable future.
She even almost wished she could go back to that dirty little house in Connecticut. Because at least there the dangers were simple. At least there she’d had her brother and sister.
And now she was alone.
She wanted to forget that. Everything that had happened in the past ten years.
Too bad when she closed her eyes she saw a room with black velvet wallpaper, and felt strong hands on her wrists. A commanding voice in her ear, hot breath on her neck.
Too bad she couldn’t escape the fact that everything in her was changed.
Even in her dreams.
Chapter Five
“Damn, Austin, a conference call. We must really be in trouble,” Hunter said.
“It was either that or you get your lazy ass over here right now, and I doubted you wanted to do that.” Austin looked out the window of his home office and down at the city, lit up and busy despite the cold and the late hour.
“No desire at all,” Alex said.
“Then deal with the conference call. This couldn’t wait.” He’d waited a few hours. Until he was sure that Katy was asleep. Until he was sure he could recount what she’d told him without throwing something through a window.
“About Jason, I presume?” Alex asked.
“Yes. It’s bigger than we thought. I’ve had some suspicions the past couple of weeks but I...I met her sister.”
“Sarah’s?” The question came from Hunter. He would remember hearing about Katy. Sarah had talked about her brother and sister a lot, and if Austin remembered, as her ex-boyfriend Hunter surely would.
“Yes.” He was not going into the details of how they’d met, that was for sure. “She’s been doing some digging into Jason’s life, too, it turns out.”
“How did you find her? Or did she find you?” Alex asked.
“We sort of ran into each other.” Naked, repeatedly and on purpose. “She was coordinating my father’s annual Christmas party. And she told me...she told me that she has every reason to believe that my father is running an escort service.”
“What?” That response came in unison.
“I didn’t exactly want to believe it, but I don’t think you can argue with the kind of evidence we have. Combined with...” He started to tell them about the photos of Sarah, then stopped. It wouldn’t benefit anyone to know she’d been sleeping with Jason. Most especially not Hunter. He could use it for his purposes, but in terms of the legal case...it meant nothing.
Why drag every ugly thing out into the light?
“Combined with my own suspicions,” he said.
“Wait,” Hunter said. “Are you f— Austin, are you kidding me? Escorts? As in hookers?”
“Paid dates is more like it, from what I understand. But sex is definitely not off the table. And if the girls refuse...there are consequences.”
“So hookers,” Hunter said. “Your father is a pimp.”
Austin gritted his teeth. “I suppose so....”
“Why sanitize it?” Hunter asked. “It’s money for sex. That’s what it boils down to.”
“Are they all college students?” Alex asked. “Interns?”
“I don’t know,” Austin said. “But Katy told me some of what my father’s secretary told her. Basically do it, and have student loans paid off and connections forged in the business world, or...be discredited, lose work and still have all the loans.”
“Coercion,” Alex said.
“Yeah, a bit,” Austin said.
“So we’re on the edge of a major scandal here,” Alex said. “Because there are clients. And they’re high-powered, I would guess.”
“As if my father would touch anyone who wasn’t.”
“What proof do you have?”
“Besides cryptic invoices, a story from a woman who won’t testify and the suspicions from a victim’s very angry sister? Nothing. I have jack nothing that will stand up in court.”
“So there’s no way we can take this public right now? Plant seeds of doubt?” Hunter asked.
“No,” Alex said. “There’s no point giving Treffen any time to clean this up before the evidence is incontrovertible. In other words—don’t shove him off the damn building with enough time to get a safety net installed. Make sure he hits the concrete.”
“Thanks for putting it in terms I understand,” Hunter said drily. “I’ve taken a lot of hits to the head over the past ten years.”
“Just thought you’d appreciate the mental image.”
“Oh,” he said, “I do.”
“Could we please bear in mind,” Austin said, his neck starting to sweat beneath the collar of his dress shirt, “that I have a last name in common with my father.” He looked down at his hands, and remembered again, the way he’d gripped Katy’s hips when he’d had her. Her wrists bound... “I don’t like the image of myself hitting the concrete, thank you.”
“Sorry,” Alex said. “I think of him when I say it like that. Not you. You’re not like him at all.”
The problem was, Austin wasn’t sure that was true. He’d spent his entire life trying to emulate his father. Had gone to law school and become a lawyer because he’d wanted to be like the man who’d raised him. The man he’d looked up to more than anyone.
He’d wanted to advocate for women. To make sure that those who were at risk of being taken advantage of would have a voice.
He liked his scotch neat. He watched baseball on TV like it was a compulsion. He rooted for the Yankees and despised the Sox. And it was all because of his father. They were things that had made him the man he was. Pieces of himself he couldn’t change now, because they were an integral part of what held him together. Things that had come from his father.
Things he’d been proud of until he’d realized the manner of man Jason Treffen truly was.
And there’s the fact that you took so much pleasure in having her on her knees. Sure it was a game, but isn’t that what he likes? To control people.
That didn’t even bear thinking about.
“Well, I appreciate that,” Austin said, even while he couldn’t stop running all the similarities through his head.
That sense of crushing inevitability that seemed to be his new best friend these days.
“So what is Katy doing now?” Hunter asked. “She’s not...involved in any of this on a personal level, is she? I mean...she’s safe from Jason?”
Austin thought of the woman sleeping down the hall. Of how he’d manipulated her into coming here. It was for her own good, though. It was to keep her safe. Even Hunter was concerned, because he was right in fearing that Jason might pose a threat to her.
“She’s safe,” Austin said.
From Jason, anyway. Even if she wasn’t strictly safe with him. He would make sure he kept his hands off. He would.
“Good.”
/>
“Do either of you have any leads? Any contacts?”
“I’m working on an idea,” Alex said. “I have a connection that I’m thinking could be made a bit tighter.”
“Good. Let me know if you find anything. Hopefully we can reconvene and pool what we’ve found into something that resembles actual evidence,” he said, drawing a hand over his face and wishing he had some alcohol to dull the ache that was spreading through him, starting at his chest and working down to his fingertips.
A little alcohol could replace that with numbness.
Of course, he’d want a scotch. Which brought him back to the source of the ache.
He got off the phone with Alex and Hunter and stalked out of his office and down to the living area, going to the bar and pulling out a bottle of whiskey that he could hardly muster any enthusiasm for.
He poured some into a glass and knocked it back, wincing. It burned now. And if he drank enough, it would pound on him tomorrow.
So he decided to go ahead and make that a goal. A little suffering. For his sins.
And for the sins of the father.
How poetic. The world’s most damn poetic hangover.
It was better than thinking of those pictures. Better than remembering how Sarah’s eyes had sparkled before his father had come in and stolen them.
Better than wanting the woman upstairs.
Yeah, anything was better than reality. And tomorrow his head would hurt so bad the rest of him might not hurt at all.
* * *
“I’d imagined you’d be at work,” Katy said, pausing in the doorway of the kitchen when she saw Austin, sitting at the small breakfast table by the window, his chin in his hand, his eyes red, a cup of dark coffee in front of him.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He looked like she felt. Exhausted. Defeated. The brackets around his mouth carved deep, pulled down into a frown. Lines around his eyes showed how tired he was. His dark hair was rumpled, like he’d been running his fingers through it. Over and over. He was a mess. And he was beautiful.
“Not today,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t have a case. Right now. I’m shoving off as much work as I possibly can because I have a timeline ticking on this thing with my father.”
“You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell, too.”
“What did you do?”
“I drank a lot. And this morning I’m paying for it. As planned, I might add.”
She frowned. “Okay, two questions. Why?”
“Because I was in the mood to punish myself. And if you have to ask why to that, you haven’t been paying attention to the fact that I’m into some weird shit.”
She felt her face get hot at the mention of the sorts of things he was into. She remembered them well. “Question number two—do you drink like this a lot? Because you were drunk the night we met. And you got smashed last night, which is only the second night I’ve spent near you. I have a low tolerance for addiction and self-destructive behavior and I don’t particularly want to be around yours.”
“I don’t usually drink like this. I promise.”
“Those pictures...”
He winced. “I drank a damn lot of alcohol to try and forget them. So I don’t really want to discuss them at the moment.”
“They were of my sister. They’re hardly my favorite thing of all time.”
“No. Of course not.”
“You did care about her,” she said, realizing the truth as she spoke the words.
“I did. She was my friend. One of my best friends.”
“How did you meet her?” she asked, coming a little bit farther into the room but still keeping her distance.
“When I first got to Harvard, I was rooming with a bunch of guys I’d never met before. Hunter Grant—”
“Her Hunter,” Katy said quietly, remembering the way Sarah had lit up when she’d spoken about him.
“Yes,” Austin said. “Alex Diaz, who’s a big-shot journalist now. And Zair. The spare to a sultanate somewhere in the Middle East. At least that’s how he described it. As though the details didn’t matter at all, because what’s interesting about being Middle Eastern royalty?”
“That’s...an eclectic mix.”
“It was. Anyway, Sarah was in a dorm the block over from ours. She and Hunter connected quickly. And...then she was just a part of us.”
“Did she like school?”
“Yeah, she seemed to. She excelled. She always had a lot of friends, more than just us. Even when she and Hunter were serious, she was friends with a lot of other women. She didn’t talk much about her childhood, but after what you said yesterday...” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know how bad it was.”
“It’s why school mattered so much,” she said. “Why the life she was building at Harvard mattered so much. People like us don’t get those chances, but...she did.”
“And she did well.”
“She...she was happy?”
“For a while,” he said, thinking of how sad that last year had been. She and Hunter splitting up. How distracted and dull she became.
The calls for help he missed. And the one he’d ignored.
“I’m glad to hear that because I just need to be able to think of her having some happiness. Our life was... Well, it sucked.” She walked over to the table and stood behind the chair across from Austin’s. She didn’t quite want to just sit down with him. Not yet. “I always hoped she had some real happiness in those few years away from us.”
“She did.”
“She should have had more,” Katy said, angry now. “She should have had a lifetime of it.”
“Yes, she should have. And that’s why we’re stopping this. Because no one should ever be put in the position she was put in. Never again.”
Their eyes locked, a short burst of electricity sparking between them. She didn’t know how that happened. How they were able to talk about the most dire, horrible things and still feel the current between them.
Shame crawled over her skin. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. How she could want him now. How she could want him the way she did.
It was twisted.
“So, what am I supposed to do here?” she asked, gripping the back of the chair. “Unemployed and living with a stranger.”
“A stranger?”
“Yes. A stranger.” She met his eyes and dared him to disagree. He didn’t.
“Well, obviously you’ll be working for me. If anyone asks what you’re doing here. And by anyone, I mean Jason or one of his cohorts.”
“Living with you and working for you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “You have a good point there. So why is it you think that you would live with me after meeting me at a party, sleeping with me, then losing your job?”
Her face heated. “No. You have to be joking.”
“Hopefully we won’t need the excuse. But there’s every chance we’ll be seen together. And there’s every chance you’ll be discovered living here. In which case, why make up an awkward, convoluted story?”
“But what a fricking coincidence! You’re suddenly doing it with Sarah’s sister?”
“Had my father connected the two of you yet?”
“Probably not. I didn’t work for him. I worked for someone else. There’s a very good reason I put myself in his general vicinity and not in direct contact. But finding out would be easy. As you said yourself. I mean, that’s why you’re so worried about my safety. That’s why I find myself homeless and jobless.”
“At least you’re here and not alone,” he said. “At least you’re under some kind of protection. My building is secure. You’ll be safe with me. The alternative is to have no protection at all.”
“But in this scenario, you and
I are somehow together just when you’re looking to reconcile with your father? Wouldn’t the entire thing scream ‘setup’ to him?”
“You’re missing something very important in my father’s character,” he said. “In the character of every man who strikes up a deal with him. These are men who buy and sell the bodies of young women. Who have set up a modern-day whorehouse in a law office dedicated to protecting women from unwanted advances.”
“So they’re assholes. I get that.”
“No. What you don’t get is the arrogance. You’re just a woman—one related to Sarah, in point of fact. How could you possibly be involved in bringing my father down? When he holds all the cards. When he has all the power. He is above the law, above suspicion. He can see men jailed for sexual crimes then go straight back to his office, rifle through a file and sell a girl he has ‘on staff’ to one of his buddies. He believes he is smarter than all of us. Better than all of us, but you most of all. Because you were poor. Because you’re a woman. And he would never believe, even for a moment, that you could outsmart him.”
She swallowed, her throat dry, her body feeling weak. Shaky. “He thinks all of that?”
“You know he does. Look at what he chooses to do in order to get into the spotlight. All while abusing his power behind the scenes. He’s a comic-book villain.”
She laughed, a hollow, breathless sound. “Well, that’s a good thing. Because I sort of consider myself to be Batman.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes tragedy turns us into superheroes,” she said. “Or, if not that, then maybe twisted vengeance monsters hell-bent on some form of justice. Even if it’s the vigilante sort in the end.”
“He’ll underestimate you, Katy. He’ll underestimate me. And that will be where we win.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If he starts to suspect...” Austin smiled, an empty, dark expression that seemed further removed from the traditional meaning of a smile than any frown ever could be. “Well, I’ll just remind him that an apple rarely falls far from the tree. After all, he liked your sister. I like you. I bet he’d enjoy that.”
A shiver went through her, a chill crackling over her skin like spreading frost. When he said it like that, she almost believed it was true. That his seduction of her had been calculated. That his desires were somehow connected to those of his father.
