Fifth Avenue Box Set: Take MeAvenge MeScandalize MeExpose Me

by Maisey Yates

  “Not about Treffen. About me. You’re angry about how much I made you lose control. You’re scared about how much I make you feel.”

  “Who made you such a psychologist?” she snapped, but he had her against the wall and he knew it. Damn the man for seeing so much. Damn her for revealing it.

  “I know because I feel the same,” he said, his voice even but his gaze glittering into hers. “I’m like you, Chelsea. I enjoy sex, but I leave it in the bedroom. I don’t do relationships. Nothing more than a night.” He bared his teeth in something like a smile. “No repeats.”

  “Glad we’re on the same page.”

  “But this was different. For both of us.”

  Her arms were folded so hard and tight she was hugging herself. Trying to keep the feelings in. “I didn’t think you were one for hearts and roses, Alex.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  And no words came, because she couldn’t. She just stared at him, wanting to stare him down even though that was impossible. He would always win. “What do you want?” she finally asked, her voice turning ragged.

  “I want you to listen. Really listen, and forget about who’s calling the shots between us. This is bigger than that, Chelsea.”

  Her nails dug into her arms as she stared at him, still suspicious and yet also longing to do what he’d just suggested. Stop fighting, if just for a little while. “Fine,” she finally said. “So tell me.”

  * * *

  Alex stared at Chelsea and wondered what the hell to do next. None of that had been planned. Controlled. Yes, he wanted to talk about Treffen, but he hadn’t meant to spout off about feelings. This was different. For both of us.

  He sounded ridiculous.

  And yet he’d meant it. Even so, he couldn’t believe he’d admitted as much to himself, much less to Chelsea.

  He took a steadying breath. “Treffen’s human rights advocacy is a sham, his law firm little more than a front.”

  She just stared at him, almost seeming amused by what she obviously thought was some personal vendetta. “A front? For what?”

  “For a prostitution ring.”

  Chelsea let out a laugh, one hard bark of disbelief. “Are you telling me Jason Treffen is a pimp?”

  Alex felt his jaw bunch. “Basically, yes.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Yeah, right.”

  “Why don’t you believe it?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “How should I know? Maybe your honest news angle is a front, too, Alex. Maybe you play dirty, and this is how you destroy your enemies, or try to.”

  “Why should I want to destroy Treffen?”

  “He discredited you.”

  “Ten years ago he tried to discredit me. Because I knew too much.”

  She still looked amused, which made Alex grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached. “And what did you know, Detective Diaz?”

  “Back then I thought it was just a case of sexual harassment, which seemed bad enough. But recently new evidence has come to light.” Through Katy and the photo she’d found. Just the thought of that damning picture could bring bile to Alex’s throat.

  “New evidence that he’s a pimp,” Chelsea clarified in a disbelieving drawl.

  “He runs a prostitution ring, yes. He handpicks the girls from his firm—”

  “Lawyers, you mean,” Chelsea said, her tone dripping scornful incredulity. It made Alex furious both with her and himself. He’d anticipated resistance, but not disbelief. He should have known better, should have considered this. It did sound crazy. So crazy he’d had a tough time believing it. Believing Austin, believing Katy. Believing Sarah.

  And now Chelsea didn’t believe him.

  “He chooses young women who are drowning in school loans and desperate to prove themselves.”

  “Now you sound like a human rights activist yourself.”

  He took a step toward her, hands balled into fists. “Damn it, this is not a joke, Chelsea.”

  “I’m not laughing. But I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Alex. You want me to buy this sensational story and do what? Confront him on live television?”

  “It could make your career.”

  “If it were true, then maybe. But it would tank my career at AMI, and you know it. Plus I’d be sued six ways to Sunday so thanks, but no thanks. I’m not going to be part of your personal revenge.”

  “This isn’t about me—”

  “Then why do you care so much?”

  He stared at her, silent and fuming. He wasn’t going to tell her about Sarah. That would be too personal. Too painful. “If you knew something like this,” he finally said, “wouldn’t you care?”

  “I still don’t understand how you came to know it.”

  “Treffen’s son Austin was my college roommate. And he’s still one of my best friends.”

  Chelsea remained unimpressed. “And his dad let him in on the dirty family secret? ‘Hey, son, come pimp with me?’”

  “No, of course not. Don’t be absurd.”

  “Then what?”

  Alex let out a long, even breath, tried to hold on to his fraying patience. “Austin found out.”

  “How?”

  Katy, Sarah’s sister, had confronted him with the terrible truth. But Alex didn’t want to bring Katy into it either. “He just did.”

  “Come on, Alex. Now who’s talking about shoddy journalism? If I were going to do this, I’d need facts. Evidence. Preferably a primary source.”

  “But you’ve already said you aren’t going to do this. Confront him.”

  “No, I’m not. You have no basis for anything you’re saying, and I’d rather not tank my career on your whim, thanks very much.”

  “It’s not,” Alex said through gritted teeth, “a whim.”

  “Then show me some hard evidence.”

  “Why do you think Treffen announced the separation from his wife?”

  “Irreconcilable differences, I thought. Plenty of people separate or get divorced, Alex—”

  “He’s going to be ousted from his law firm within the month.” At least he hoped so, if Hunter was successful.

  She just shrugged. “Everyone knows he’s been thinking of leaving. He might run for senator.”

  “No, he won’t.” His voice came out in a savage burst, surprising them both. Alex took a deep breath. This was not going the way he wanted. Expected. Talk about control. He needed it back. Thirty seconds tautly ticked by while he stared at her. Finally he let out a low breath. “A woman showed Austin some photographs.”

  “Photographs?” Her gaze narrowed. “Of what?”

  Of Sarah. “One of the—women.”

  “You mean one of these call girls?” She shook her head, still unimpressed. “And how does one photo of some sexy lawyer prove anything?”

  “It was a photograph of a young woman with one of the law firm’s clients. Treffen was using it to blackmail the man.”

  Chelsea’s eyebrows arced toward her hairline. “So in addition to pimping his employees, Treffen was blackmailing his clients?”

  Alex nodded tersely. “Yes.” He knew it sounded incredible. Absurd, even. Could he really blame Chelsea for not believing him?

  She was silent for a long moment, her expression clouded. Finally she shook her head. “That’s too big a story not to have broken before.”

  “Treffen’s a powerful man.”

  “Not even a whisper, Alex.”

  He should tell her about Sarah, he knew. About how Sarah threw herself from the roof of Treffen’s office building rather than go on living under the man’s sadistic rule. How Katy had come to Austin with so much awful, damning information. Condemning not just Treffen, but all the people who had let Sarah down. Condemning him.

  The words, the knowledge were there, burning in his chest, a hot lump of fury he couldn’t shift. Couldn’t admit to. He wanted to avenge Sarah, but he didn’t want to drag her name
through the mud. The tabloids, the gossip, the endless raking through the media.

  Chelsea’s expression softened into something intolerably like pity. “I’m sorry. This means something to you, I can see. But this interview isn’t about sensationalism for me. It’s about respectable journalism.”

  Alex jerked his head in a nod. “Fine.” There was no point continuing the conversation, not now. He reached for his suit jacket. “So I guess we’re done here.”

  Her eyes widened, and she nodded slowly. “I guess we are.”

  He turned on his heel and left without another word.

  In the elevator his phone beeped with a text and Alex jerked it out of his pocket, stared at the message from Hunter. New information. We need to meet.

  “Damn it,” he said aloud. He should be thrilled that Hunter was keeping up his side of the bargain they’d all made, how each of them would bring down Treffen, but right now his friend’s success just brought his own deficiencies and failing into the glaring light. Austin had exposed Treffen to his family. Hunter would oust him from the law firm.

  And Alex? What the hell was he going to do?

  * * *

  A few days later Chelsea stood by the doors of one of the opulent ballrooms of the Plaza Hotel that was hosting a charity fund-raiser gala. She didn’t attend too many of these dos, but this charity cut close to the bone; it offered support to children who had been abused and removed from their homes, as well as to their current caregivers.

  She was particularly interested in the charity’s efforts to raise awareness of the different forms of child abuse. Not all abuse looked like abuse. Felt like abuse. And she knew more than anyone how you could think it was your choice and it was still abuse. How you could fool yourself into believing you wanted it.

  Still abuse.

  She had to believe that, but the trouble was she knew she didn’t. Maybe for everyone else, but not for her. The same rules just didn’t apply. At least, they didn’t feel like they did.

  Now she paused on the threshold, took a deep, steadying breath. The crowd mingling in front of her was hardly intimidating, about a hundred well-heeled guests, and she had a passing acquaintance with most of them.

  Still she felt her breathing go shallow as her heart rate kicked up and the spots danced before her eyes. Damn it. She pressed one hand against the doorframe and willed it all to recede. You’re stronger than this.

  Then her swimming gaze zeroed in on the one man in the room with whom she had much more than a passing acquaintance.

  A man who still felt like a stranger.

  Alex Diaz.

  And stupidly, inexplicably, she felt better. She had no idea why seeing Alex would calm her, but she’d take it.

  And she’d try not to remember how his hands had felt on her body, his eyes burning gold as he evoked a response from her she hadn’t given to anyone else, ever.

  She’d been trying not to remember that for the past three days. She wasn’t making a great job of it.

  In any case, it hardly mattered whether she thought of him or not. Whether he made her feel or not. She had a terrible suspicion that he’d only slept with her so he could tell her about Treffen. Maybe he’d thought a little pillow talk would convince her to help him with his revenge plan.

  She was glad she’d proved him wrong, even if the realization that he’d been using her made disappointment twist painfully inside her.

  Another part of her insisted he hadn’t been using her, not like that. Admittedly, they’d been using each other. Pleasurably. But Alex’s desire had been real. The intimacy, torturous as it was, had been real.

  Hadn’t it?

  Or had Chelsea lost the ability to judge such things? Her emotional intelligence, admittedly, was pretty low.

  Taking yet another deep breath, blinking the spots back, she strode into the ballroom.

  She spent the next hour moving around the ballroom, keeping an eye on Alex, partly wanting to go up to him and get that first awkward after-sex encounter over with, partly wanting to stay away. And partly wanting him to come up to her first, which made for a lot of want.

  She avoided him.

  Even so she was conscious of his presence, knew exactly where he was without even looking.

  And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the expression on his face change from easy affability to sudden tension, hidden fury. Or not so hidden, at least not to her, because even from fifty feet away she saw how his gaze exuded hatred and his jaw clenched, teeth gritted.

  She followed his gaze and saw who he was staring at: Jason Treffen.

  Treffen looked distinguished in a crisp tuxedo, the lights from the many chandeliers catching the silver of his hair. He was smiling as a group of sycophants fawned around him, but Chelsea noted that his pale blue eyes were shrewd. Not a surprise, really; the man was a lawyer.

  But the look on Alex’s face made her reconsider. She’d shut down the talk about Treffen the other night for a lot of reasons, the main one being the thought of working with Alex on anything was far too alarming a possibility. She was too raw, too revealed, to become some kind of partner-in-crime with him.

  But that, she knew, really was shoddy journalism.

  But neither did she want to believe such horrible things about Jason Treffen. She’d chosen him for her first serious interview subject because she admired his dedication to women’s rights in the workplace. Because she believed, passionately, in what he was doing.

  He couldn’t be a pimp and a blackmailer. He just couldn’t.

  Which was a ridiculous way for her to think, because she knew more than anyone just how low humanity could sink. Including her.

  So maybe she should take what Alex said seriously, or at least consider the possibility.

  Throwing back her shoulders, she headed for Treffen.

  “Ah, Chelsea, my favorite talk show hostess,” he said, his voice a confident baritone with the kind of elongated vowels that spoke of a lifetime of entitlement.

  They air-kissed, and Jason squeezed her hand.

  A few of the sycophants drifted off and Chelsea gave Treffen her sweetest smile. “So I hear you’re lawyering up for your interview.”

  His eyes narrowed a fraction, but his smile didn’t slip. “Just a precaution, Chelsea.”

  “A precaution?” She offered a tiny, pretend pout. “And I thought we were friends.”

  “I have a reputation to protect.” He pitched it just right, regretful but implacable.

  “I didn’t realize your reputation was in doubt, Jason,” Chelsea answered teasingly. “You’re a paragon, practically a saint.” She arched her eyebrows, curved her lips in a flirty smile. “Unless you’re hiding something? Some big, dirty secret?” Her smile widened, inviting him to share the joke.

  Treffen stilled for half a second, no more. Then he laughed, that patronizing chuckle of rich, older men that Chelsea couldn’t stand. “Very funny, Chelsea.” He wagged a finger at her. “Very funny.”

  Which was absolutely no answer at all. And he was still planning, Chelsea noted, to bring a lawyer to the meeting. Staring into his cold blue eyes, she had a sudden, bone-deep certainty that Treffen really was hiding something.

  That Alex might be right.

  Smiling as if it were all so amusing, she stepped back. Felt a gaze on her back, knew it was Alex.

  She turned, and saw him staring hard at her, eyes like fire.

  She let her gaze skip past him and then walked off in the opposite direction. She wasn’t about to make Treffen suspicious. And she wasn’t sure she could deal with a conversation with Alex.

  Get over it, Chelsea. It was just sex. This is your career.

  Pushing aside all that damnable emotion, she approached him a few minutes later when she saw him by the bar. “I think you might be onto something, after all,” she murmured and she felt Alex tense.

  “You mean—”

  “You know what I mean,” she answered, and moved past him.

  Everyone was t
aking seats for the auction whose proceeds would benefit the charity, and Chelsea sat down in the back, flipped through the pages of the auction catalogue. She’d donated a spa weekend in Arizona and a dinner for two at Le Bernardin, as she did every year.

  The bidding started and Chelsea sat back and watched as the first bids batted back and forth between two fleshy corporate types who wanted the VIP box at an NBA game. It went for twenty thousand dollars.

  Next item was a dinner for eight catered by a celebrity chef. Chelsea never bid on anything. Who would she invite to a dinner for eight? Who would she take on a girly spa weekend? She didn’t have people like that in her life.

  She thought briefly of Louise, but knew she wasn’t ready to spend that kind of uninterrupted time with her sister. Everything between them still felt too strange, too painful.

  She supposed she could ask Michael to something, but their friendship was conducted mainly at work.

  And there was no one else, she realized with a funny little pang. No one else at all. She’d never minded before. She’d been glad of her independence, her freedom.

  Loneliness wasn’t a concept she entertained.

  For the better part of ten years she’d told herself she was happy; she had everything anyone could ever want. Money, fame, a beautiful apartment, beautiful clothes, a satisfying—mostly—job.

  Yet now, suddenly, she wondered. Wanted...but what? A relationship? Someone in her life who cared, even just a little bit, and more importantly, who knew her—the real her—just a little bit?

  Could she really want that? Had Alex opened up that desire in her?

  The thought was new and definitely not welcome. Relationships were risky; intimacy meant danger. She had too many secrets to have any kind of honest or real relationship with anyone. She’d accepted that as a price for starting over, but suddenly now she wanted to be real with just one person.

  You were real with Alex when he brought you to the most shattering climax you’ve ever had. You didn’t want to be, but you were.

  Instinctively her gaze moved through the rows of chairs to find him sitting in the second, legs sprawled out as he lazily raised his program. He was bidding, and Chelsea flipped through the catalogue to find out what it was he’d just committed ten thousand dollars to.