by Maisey Yates
“Very true,” he said.
“This little happy family chat won’t take long, will it?” she asked.
“It’s best that it doesn’t. Since I don’t know if there’s enough booze at the bar to make it bearable. Why?”
She looked across the room, at the double doors that led to the corridor. That led to Jason’s office. “I have a plan.”
He quirked a brow. “Should I be afraid?”
She lifted her own brow in response. “No. Yes. Maybe. Let’s find out.”
“Fair enough.” He started to guide her toward the knot of people that were surrounding Jason Treffen. Her heart began to pound, hard and loud in her ears, her shoulders knotting with tension.
Being near him...it was like being in the presence of evil. He was a chameleon. A man who could make himself as good or as bad as he wanted to appear to be. But she was far too aware of the artifice of the good to fall for any of it.
Some people only saw the shiny red apple. She knew there were maggots inside. And that meant no matter how enticing it looked, she would never be tempted to take a bite.
“Great party,” Austin said, the crowd parting in a wave for him, as though he gave off some sort of magical power beam that warned everyone of his importance.
“Thank you,” Jason said, a half smile curving his lips. “Very kind of you to grace us with your presence. The second Treffen event in a row. Unusual.”
“As I said, I’m interested in bringing the family closer together again.”
“Good of you to say, Austin.” This came from Lenore, and she could feel Austin tensing up beside her at his mother’s words. Because, of course, he was planning on proving those words a lie very, very soon.
“It’s been too long,” Austin said. Katy could hear the layering to those words, and it resonated in her. Yes. It had been too long. Too damn long that Jason Treffen had been allowed to go on with his life.
“You’re the event planner,” Jason said, his eyes, far too sharp, far too interested, landing on her, looking her over. It felt like a slug crawling over her skin, leaving a visible trail behind.
“I was, rather,” she said.
“No hard feelings, I hope,” he said.
“None at all,” she said.
“How could she have any?” Austin asked, shifting his stance, his fingertips drifting across her arm. “If she were still working on these events, she couldn’t be here as my date. And that’s important to both of us,” he said, his eyes on her. Intense. Sensual. Far too believable for her liking.
“You’re...together?” his father asked, one eyebrow raised. He was still looking too intently at her.
“Yes. And can you blame me? I’m afraid I was responsible for her absence at the last event. She didn’t feel at liberty to say. But she’s left the company now, so it’s not a problem.”
He’d skimmed through all that easily.
“Interesting,” Jason said, taking a sip of champagne.
“Wonderful,” Austin said, tightening his hold on her. “I’ve never met a woman like her.” He turned his focus back to Lenore. “Mother? Are you and Addison free for lunch sometime this week?”
“Yes, dear, I’m certain we are. You haven’t been out to the house in ages. Perhaps...?”
“Of course.”
“And bring your friend...”
“Katy,” Katy said, offering her hand to the older woman. “My name is Katy.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling, the expression curving her lips but not making a dent in her makeup.
“Very much.”
Katy felt a twinge of guilt lying to the woman whose life they were about to upend.
But she didn’t have a moment for guilt. She had to have guts now. Guts and glory and all of that crap.
She looked Jason Treffen right in his snake eyes. “I’m going to have to steal your son away now. I have plans for him. It’s our first Christmas Eve together and I intend for it to be...special.”
She’d never had a special Christmas Eve in her life, but if she did...well, there was no doubt it would include Austin wrapped up with a bow.
Unfortunately for her hormones, that was not on the docket for the evening. But Jason didn’t need to know that.
Jason’s answering smirk made her skin crawl.
Gah.
She wouldn’t let him see how it unnerved her. Wouldn’t let him see her sweat. He’d broken her sister. He would never, ever break her. Austin took his cue from her, and acted like any man might do when promised a naughty Christmas Eve. He tightened his hold on her and nodded at his parents, steering her away from them.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
She sucked a breath in through her nose, eyes on those double doors. “I’m about to take you home and screw you senseless, baby,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
Her face burned, but she kept her eyes on the prize, on the doors, held on to him tight and dragged him along with her like she was about to do just that—throw him down and have her way with him.
“You heard me,” she said, weaving through the crowd.
“I heard you,” he said. “But I don’t believe it.”
“I have ulterior motives,” she said. “Surprise, surprise.”
He shifted their stance and wrapped his arm around her waist, his fingers resting just above her ass. She tensed. She couldn’t help it. Because his touch was like fire, burning her, turning her insides into molten liquid.
It made her dress feel too heavy, too itchy, too thick. Made her want to strip it off and press herself against him...
“Don’t react like that to me,” he said quietly. “Not in public. You’ll spoil the show.”
He thought he made her nervous, but that wasn’t it at all. Still, he was right. This was all about the show.
She wasn’t taking him home to do it with him. This was all for the people, and that meant allowing herself to melt into him, not fighting it.
Her heart started thundering hard, and part of her wished that sex was all they were leaving for. Not because she wanted him, but because more breaking and entering chez Treffen was nerve-racking in a serious way.
She really didn’t want Austin.
No, she didn’t.
She had more self-preservation than that.
“What are we actually doing?” he asked as they exited the ballroom.
“We’re digging for evidence, of course,” she said, craning her neck to get a look down the hall.
“More?”
“Yes, more. If there’s an iceberg tip, the rest of that bitch has to be around somewhere. And your father is a fan of pictures.”
“Yes, that’s true,” he said, his tone grim.
“I also know he has a safe in his office. I put in a call to Stephanie earlier, so I have keys. Or rather, they’re waiting for us, under her weird daisy-ladybug-clock thing. Her preferred location for covert exchanges. Weirdly.”
“Yes, I know about that safe.”
“Well, I think we need to get into it, don’t you?”
“It’s not a bad idea. Though, you seem to have a fondness for breaking and entering, it has to be said.”
“Better than a fondness for whoring out women, I say.”
“Touché.” He approached the reception desk and skimmed his hand for a moment before lifting the little clock shaped like a flowerpot, with electronic daisies in the top that ticked from side to side, ladybugs nestled in the stems. “Funny,” he whispered, pulling the key from beneath it. “How this is in here, on her desk. Like this is some friendly fun place to work.” He set it back down and straightened. “What a load of crap.”
Katy had to take short fast steps thanks to her dress and heels, and thanks to Austin’s long legs, whi
ch ate up ground at a much quicker pace than hers could.
They paused at the door and she took a deep breath. “I think this is where it will all be,” she said. “All the evidence.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “We’re more likely to get shot with poison darts.”
He opened the door and they slipped inside, closing the door behind them. “This is all so cloak-and-dagger,” he said.
“Yeah, I feel a little like I’m trapped inside a Murder, She Wrote episode.”
“Let’s hope we avoid murder,” he said, crossing the room and going to the bookshelf. “Ready to feel even more like you’re on TV?” he asked.
“Oh, sure. Okay, how do we do this thing? Do you know? Don’t tell me—you crank the arm on a statue and a false wall falls away.”
“Not so dramatic.” He went to the middle of a bookshelf and started counting shelves, then put his hand on an upper one, in the center, and pulled out six books, which weren’t books at all. “Just fake literature.”
The books were hollow, and fitted around a safe, set back into the wall.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Your father really is a comic-book villain.”
“That’s why the potential for poison darts seems a legitimate concern.”
“How do you know about all this?”
“From back when I was heir to this evil empire,” he said.
“So...the combination,” she said. “A birth date. His birth date? I know it. A...social security number? That I don’t know. Random? Maybe we can tell by which numbers are most worn?”
“You’re prepared,” he said drily.
“I’m acting. I’m getting it done, and I’ll do it however I can.”
“Fair enough.”
He stepped up to the safe and assessed it, then touched the keypad, frowning slightly before putting in the numbers. Then he tested the handle and nothing happened. “Not his birthday,” he said.
“Your mother’s?”
He tried that, too. “No. And I’m afraid if we’re wrong too many times we’ll alert someone.” His frown deepened. “I wonder...” He typed in a series of numbers quickly, and this time, when he tested the handle, it gave.
“How did you guess that?” she asked.
“It is a date,” he said, the words leaden. “On that you were right. I hoped I was crazy but...I was right. I’m not sure you want to know it.”
Silence fell between them and he started to pull contents out of the safe and put them on the desk.
“It’s the day she died, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It is.”
“How did you know?”
“I guessed. I don’t like that I was right.”
“It’s pretty twisted,” she said.
“Like a serial killer keeping a memento of a victim. A piece of her. Of what he did to her. And I’m sure there’s more in here. That arrogance we talked about. That’s why I was able to guess the number. That’s why I think there will be evidence of some kind in here.”
He started to rifle through the documents that were in there and paused at a small white envelope. He opened it and took out a stack of pictures. He started to sort through them, and she could see a tremor in his fingers.
“Are they the same?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “Oh...there are more of them.”
“More?”
“More girls. With different men. The men’s identities are protected.... The women...” He shook his head. “This is sick. He’s holding this over them, holding evidence because he knows in the end they’ll be the ones hurt by it and not him. Because he is that arrogant.”
He flipped through the pictures and paused, his hands trembling.
“Sarah?”
He nodded slowly. And then he held the photo out to her. It showed the profile of a man’s face, leaning down to whisper in the ear of a naked woman, whose head was facing the camera, her expression distressed.
Jason and Sarah.
It was from the same series of pictures. They were obviously engaged in intercourse. And while the man in the picture had only part of his face showing, he was recognizable as Jason Treffen.
Again, not enough evidence to get him locked up but...
“I think this is all my mother will need,” he said. “And in that sense, it serves my purposes.”
“Not mine,” she said, feeling pale, defeated and on the verge of passing out.
“It will in the end, Katy. Trust me.”
“I want him in jail, Austin. More than that, I want him destroyed. This won’t do it...this...”
“This is another stick of dynamite.” He turned and looked at the desk. “You need a lot of dynamite to bring down a fortress. We need as much as we can get.” He put the photo on a newspaper that was sitting on the otherwise pristine surface and snapped a picture with his phone. “For the date. To show when I found it. And...” He snapped another shot with his father’s nameplate in the background. Then he took photos of each and every picture.
“Put these back,” he said, handing them to her, while he continued to go through the papers he’d pulled out of the safe. “Nothing I can decode here. And it could all be nothing. His favorite fishing spots upstate, for all I know.” He put them all back in order and stuck them in the safe, locking it and putting everything as it was.
“We should go,” he said. “Quickly.”
“Agreed,” she said, releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
He took her hand and squeezed it, leading her from the room and closing the door behind them, making sure he locked it.
They made their way through the halls of the office, deposited the key back where they’d gotten it and then headed toward the elevators. And they nearly bumped into Lenore Treffen.
“I thought you’d left,” she said, a smile brightening her face.
Katy looked at Austin, saw the color drain from his face. “Sorry. You know how it is,” he said, his voice tight. Stilted. “We were delayed.”
She arched a well-groomed brow. “I see. Well, you will come up for lunch next week?”
“Yes,” he said.
“To the house, not a café in Manhattan. I’m glad to have you back at the estate. It’s really been too long, Austin. Whatever happened between you and your father, I’m glad you’re setting it aside. So that we can be a family again. We’re so much stronger together. Maybe you can unite the law firms? Treffen and Treffen. That would be something. I would be so happy to see our name in the media with that attached to it. With both of you getting the credit you deserve for all the good work you do.”
She could feel the tension move through Austin’s body, could feel everything in him locking up.
“I look forward to it,” Katy said. “Lunch, I mean. It was very nice to meet you. Really. And I’m sorry to rush, only I’m not feeling well—” which made no sense since they were still lingering instead of already being gone, but who cared “—so we really do need to go. Come on, darling.” She tugged at Austin’s hand. It felt like ice.
She pushed the button on the elevator and shot his mother an awkward smile. She smiled back, seemingly unaware of just how strange it had gotten. Then waved as she headed toward the restrooms.
The elevator doors opened and she all but dragged Austin inside.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He leaned back against the elevator wall, his breathing ragged, his body shaking.
“That was really unfortunate timing, all things considered. But she didn’t know and...and I know it makes things really uncomfortable but—”
“Stop talking,” he said, his words rough.
It might have hurt her feelings if she hadn’t been able to see, ve
ry clearly, that he was having some sort of a breakdown. So, all things considered, she wasn’t going to take a little bit of grumpiness personally.
She stayed silent in the elevator, and all the way to the car. Then from the car, all the way back to the penthouse.
She could feel his tension growing, could feel it building in him like a raging beast. His hopelessness, his grief. His anger.
And when they got inside his penthouse, something broke inside of him, and it all poured out.
Chapter Eight
Austin hadn’t been able to breathe since they’d left his father’s office. Seeing his mother, hearing her talk about happy times, about a togetherness that would never, ever be, had left him feeling like he was breaking apart from the inside out.
Which, when he really thought about it, was about right.
When he’d found out about Sarah, about his father harassing her to the point of death and hopelessness, it had felt like a spanner had been inserted into his ribs. And since then, it had been spreading. Pulling him into pieces, and he had no control over it.
Everything was being torn, ripped to shreds. His family, his name, his very being.
In a few days, he was going to take his mother’s life, his sister’s life, and break them into shards so small nothing would ever be able to put them back together.
And there was no other course to take. The ball was rolling, the truth giving it weight, momentum. There was no stopping it now.
It was bigger than he was. He had no control over it; he had no say in its movements.
And when it came down to it, nothing in his life, nothing familiar, nothing his, would remain the same.
He was a Treffen. The destruction that would be left behind after the bomb was dropped would be his inheritance.
It would be his life.
A hovel where a palace had once stood.
He looked across the room, at Katy, standing there in that beautiful gown, the heavy satin strips wrapped around her body like stark, black binding.
I’m about to take you home and screw you senseless, baby.
Her words echoed in his body, in his blood.
She was so perfect, so lovely. She was like a Christmas present. She could be his Christmas present.