Fifth Avenue Box Set: Take MeAvenge MeScandalize MeExpose Me

by Maisey Yates

  “I have no idea. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hunter smiled. “But then, everyone knows what a dumb jock I am.”

  “I don’t think you’re dumb,” she said, and not in a complimentary way. “Whatever else you are.”

  “You may be right,” he agreed, amused. “It takes a certain level of intelligence to remain this committed to my own destruction.” He held her gaze. “But that still doesn’t mean I know what you’re talking about.”

  There was a small pause, and the world crept back in. The insistent pulse of the club’s loud music. The distant sound of laughter. His own heart, pounding hard.

  “You’re remarkably self-aware for a Neanderthal, I have to admit,” she said then, as if she was extending an olive branch.

  “I was a Neanderthal professionally, never socially. It’s a crucial distinction.”

  “Are you telling me you’re the way you are deliberately?”

  “Aren’t we all?” he asked, more harshly than he’d intended. Giving too much away, he saw, when she tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded him with uncomfortable frankness.

  He needed to walk away from this woman. He needed to end this conversation. He didn’t know why he couldn’t seem to do it. Why he stood there before her as if waiting for her to render judgment—when he knew she already had. Before she’d arrived, no doubt, or she wouldn’t have sought him out like this.

  When it shouldn’t matter anyway.

  “I’d be very careful playing this game, if I were you,” he said quietly. Too quietly. Showing more than he should, again. “You might not like where it goes.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, something so sharp in her gaze it looked like hatred, and that shouldn’t have surprised him. Not anymore. It certainly shouldn’t have made him feel so hollowed out, as if she’d done it herself with a jagged spoon while they stood here like this, close enough to touch. “I’m not going to hurt myself because you’re mean to me, Mr. Grant. I’m not her.”

  It was a shot through the heart. Unerring and lethal.

  Zoe Brook smiled again, wider than before.

  “Ten o’clock,” she told him while he stood there like a dead thing, as he was certain she’d intended. Her amused drawl in place and that cool fire in her eyes that reminded him of the sea outside his family’s rambling cottage high on the Maine coast, where he’d seen this precise shade of dangerous gray at Christmas. And that rawness in him that grew the more she looked at him and saw nothing but the dark and terrible things he’d done.

  Hunter preferred himself empty. At least then he knew who he was.

  She reached over and pressed a business card into his hand. “Don’t be late.”

  And when she walked away, he stayed where she left him, as surely as if she’d cut him off at the knees.

  As if there was nothing left of him but shattered pieces. Shadows and lies where his bones should have been. Ruins of the man he’d never been.

  * * *

  This is the life you made, he told himself when he finally pushed his way out of the club into the cold, crisp February morning some time later, the slap of winter harsh against his face.

  Hunter hailed a cab out on the frigid avenue and then stared out the window as Manhattan slid by on the jerky trip back toward his soulless, minimalist penthouse that towered above Wall Street: the perfect crypt for the walking dead, he’d thought when he’d bought it a few months back.

  After all, he’d been the one to punch that smug referee in the face in December in the middle of a hotly contested call; he’d known what he was doing and he’d known what was likely to happen when he did it. He simply hadn’t cared enough any longer to bother restraining himself. His whole career had been an exercise in pushing limits. He’d been benched, fined, reprimanded. He’d once told a reporter that he wanted to see what it took to be ejected from the NFL altogether—and as he’d finally proved, he hadn’t been joking.

  “And behold,” he’d told two of his three college roommates with his typical self-aggrandizing swagger at their depressing annual dinner, before their odd vigil had become even more upsetting than it usually was with an anonymous letter and a host of unsavory accusations he didn’t want to think about.

  He’d shown off his scraped knuckles with the pretense of great pride, fooling neither of the men who had once known him so well, but that was how they’d rolled for years. Big smiles. Great stories. A howling abyss within.

  Or maybe that was him.

  “I am a success in all I do,” he’d said, grinning widely at Austin Treffen and Alex Diaz as if they were all still eighteen years old and bursting with hopes and dreams and grand ideas about what their lives would be. Instead of what they actually were. What they’d let themselves become in these years of silence. Bought and paid for. Complicit. “As ever.”

  But he didn’t want to think about Sarah Michaels, especially now that Zoe Brook had thrown her in his face. He’d been avoiding it since the night she’d died, but fate and that damned letter Austin had slapped down on the table that night in December had intervened.

  Ten years ago, Hunter had suspected that Sarah had betrayed him after their three intense years of dating, from college into their first year of life in New York City. That, he’d thought, was why she’d broken up with him back then. He’d believed guilt over her behavior had led her to take her own life that awful night, and he’d never forgiven himself for his role in her decision. That he’d been terribly wrong about her had been clear after she’d died, and that had been bad enough. But the letter Austin had received had suggested it was so much worse than that—so much more—

  Hunter didn’t see how he could live with what he knew now. With himself, for not knowing it then.

  He was a heartless, soulless man, he knew: blind and selfish to the core. He’d wasted his life as if he’d been on a mission to do so from the start. He’d disappointed his family, his friends, both football teams he’d played for in his career, all of his fans. He’d squandered each and every gift he’d ever been given. He’d let the only girl he’d ever loved walk away from him, straight into the hands of a monster, and he hadn’t noticed anything but his own pain and jealousy.

  And he knew these were the least of his sins.

  Because he still remembered every moment of that night ten years ago, at the annual Christmas party at Austin’s father’s law firm. How Sarah had come to him with all that dark pain on her face and he had liked it.

  Can I talk to you? she’d asked. Please?

  Maybe later, he’d said, making such a show of not caring, of hardly paying attention to her. This is a big night.

  It was about time she’d felt some of what he was feeling, he’d thought. He’d liked that she looked lost and scared and tentative, all things Sarah Michaels had never been. He’d assumed that she was finally recognizing what a huge mistake she’d made in breaking up with him. He’d thought it was so ironic that he’d been entirely faithful to Sarah even though he was the professional athlete—that she’d been the one to cheat on him, and with Austin’s father, no less.

  He’d been so smugly certain he was the victim. So self-righteous that Sarah had done this terrible thing and he—out of respect for who she’d been back in college, he’d told himself piously—had opted to keep it to himself. Because he was such a great guy.

  And because he was all things petty, because he’d thought that shattered look on her face—all about him, he’d been so certain—wasn’t quite enough, he’d taken the whole thing a step further and asked the bimbo he’d been parading around on his arm to marry him, right there in the middle of the Christmas party in all of the elegance and old-money sparkle Treffen, Smith, and Howell claimed as its own.

  He’d watched Sarah leave the room as the champagne was popped, looking small and beaten, and all these years later he was still ashamed of how deeply satisfied he’d felt then. He’d had no idea that that would be the last time he’d ever see her. That he’d spend the rest of
his life wondering if, had he known he’d never lay eyes on Sarah alive again, he might have done something differently.

  One shade up from sociopathic, Zoe Brook had said. She had no idea how right she was.

  Then again, if she knew about Sarah, maybe she did.

  * * *

  Zoe didn’t take a full breath until she shut her apartment door late that night, cutting herself off from the world at last. She tugged off her boots in her entry hall and padded barefoot into the apartment that ambled over the whole of the third floor of a prewar brownstone on the Upper West Side.

  She let herself breathe in deep as she moved through the living room with its commotion of bright colors, letting her Tough Bitch Mask drop away. Here at home, she was someone else. Here, she was the Zoe she might have been.

  The Zoe who hadn’t been ruined.

  She moved into her bathroom as she stripped out of her work clothes, headed for the pretty claw-footed tub perched on the black-and-white checkerboard tiled floor. She turned on the water and poured in a sachet of her favorite bath salts, letting the lavender scent work on her.

  There was more Jason Treffen in her head than usual tonight, and it made her edgy.

  Her interaction with Hunter Grant this morning hadn’t helped. The thing was, she’d wanted to touch him again, standing there in the middle of a strip club, of all places. She’d wanted to touch him, and that didn’t make sense. Not for her.

  Her skin felt itchy. New. As if it wasn’t hers any longer. And that strange notion threw her right back into the past.

  Her grandparents had raised her grudgingly after her own parents took off, reminding her daily that they were doing no more than their Christian duty. And that was exactly what they’d done. She’d grown up in the high desert of southern California, whole worlds and a long drive away from glamorous Los Angeles. It had been bitterly cold in the winter, brutally hot in the summer, and there was always that unsettling desert wind, sweeping down from the stark, brown mountains to keep everyone on edge.

  Zoe had tried her best to love her grandparents and their pinched-mouthed charity they’d never allowed her to forget would end the day she turned eighteen. She’d tried. School hadn’t come easily to her, but she’d applied herself and excelled her way into a scholarship—because she’d had no other choice if she wanted to escape.

  When she met Jason Treffen at a scholarship student function her senior year at Cornell, he was charming and kind. He understood. And because he did, when he offered to help her, she let him.

  She still couldn’t forgive herself for that.

  He’d paid off her student loans because, he said, he knew promise when he saw it. He’d hired her as a legal assistant at his very upscale law firm in New York City, and Zoe had been so grateful. For the first time in her life, she’d felt cared for. Pampered, even. As if she’d been worthy of love after all, despite her grandparents.

  It wasn’t until the second time Jason asked her to go out to dinner with a friend of his—because the old guy was lonely and Zoe was a pretty girl who could be friendly, couldn’t she?—that she got that sick feeling in her gut. It wasn’t until one or two more “favors” ended with increasingly intense negotiations for sex that Jason suggested later she should have accepted, that she finally understood. That she finally saw the wolf in his gleaming sheep’s robes.

  But by then, of course, she was trapped. Jason was good at what he did. And even better at punishing the girls who didn’t play along. He was rich and powerful and connected, and, as he told her repeatedly, no one would believe her anyway.

  It took Zoe three long, horrible years to buy her freedom. She watched other girls give in. To drugs, to despair. She almost wavered herself—it was so hard, and she was so alone, and did she really think she could beat a powerful man such as Jason at his own game?—but then her friend Sarah had taken her own life.

  And that had changed everything.

  Zoe had understood she had to escape. She had to. Or all of it—Sarah’s death, what she’d suffered those terrible years, what had happened to the other girls—would have been in vain.

  She had to escape, or Jason won.

  Zoe twisted her long black hair into a messy knot on the top of her head now, and tested the water in the bath, letting it run through her fingers. And it all rushed back. It flooded into her, demanding her surrender, the way it always did.

  Insisting she remember everything.

  Do you really believe you can run away from me? Jason had laughed at her that last day in his dark wood office so high above the city, when she’d thrown her hard-earned check down in front of him and told him she was done. Leaving. Free at last. I plucked you from obscurity. You don’t have anything I didn’t give you, and you never will. Remember that.

  You made me a whore, she’d thrown at him, hatred and terror and disgust making her voice too thick. Too obvious.

  Whores generally close the deal. He’d looked so pleased with himself. So smug. Not in the least bit concerned that she was getting out from under his thumb. That’s the point of whores. What you do is play dangerous games. You’re lucky there are so many men who enjoy paying for the privilege of that kind of tease.

  But she’d had one or two nights that had tipped over that edge, hadn’t she? When they’d simply taken what they wanted. And the way he’d looked at her then, she knew that he knew it.

  Yes, she’d hissed at him. Lucky is exactly how I feel. I’m overcome with gratitude.

  You will be, he’d assured her.

  Years had passed and she still couldn’t get the ring of his laughter out of her ears, erase that vicious smile from her memory.

  Hello, Zoe.

  He’d surprised her backstage in the green room of one of the nighttime shows that taped locally that time, where she’d been shepherding a client as part of her first job in PR. She’d stared at him, hoping he’d disappear the way he sometimes did in the nightmares she’d refused to admit she’d been having since her escape from Treffen, Smith, and Howell.

  But, of course, he’d only smiled at her.

  It wouldn’t kill you to be polite, he’d said, kindly, but she could see the monster in his eyes.

  In fact, she’d said, it might.

  His smile had only deepened, turned friendlier. Jason Treffen at his most dangerous.

  Enjoy that sassy spirit of yours, he’d said, as if he’d been bestowing a gift upon her. It won’t last.

  Some of her coworkers had burst into the room then and had been wowed at the sight of Jason Treffen, saint of New York, standing there with a lowly new PR associate like Zoe. She’d had to smile politely while he took pictures with them. When he’d slung an arm around her shoulders. While he’d chatted with them, doling out his usual host of platitudes and insights, all of which took on a nightmarish hue should you happen to know what lurked beneath it.

  He’d engineered that meeting, she knew he had. To remind her that whenever he so desired, he could reach out and make her feel slimy and cheap. Used.

  Zoe had already vowed she’d take him down some day. After that run-in, she’d determined that she wanted it to hurt. And her desire for revenge had burned in her, a naked flame, hot and bright. Eclipsing everything else.

  You exist because I allow it, he’d told her at a charity event not five years ago, cupping her elbow in his hand and making her feel as if a thousand insects swarmed over her skin. Everything you own, all you’ve accomplished, is mine. I gave it to you and I can take it away, Zoe.

  She hadn’t been quite so young then. And she hadn’t much cared that she was dead inside.

  I can’t imagine why you’d bother, she’d said, and she’d been so proud that she’d stood there as if turned to stone, as if it didn’t matter that he was touching her.

  Why do I do anything? Again, that nasty laugh. He’d dug his fingers into the tender place above her elbow, making her whole arm numb. She’d remembered that he’d liked pain. Inflicting it, watching others suffer it. But she�
�d only stared back at him, cool and unimpressed, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of reacting. Because I can, Zoe. I can do whatever the hell I want. Remember that.

  The last time she’d seen him had been some months ago. She’d been in a very fancy restaurant celebrating the birthday of one of her former clients, who also happened to be a heavyweight in New York politics. She’d expected to see Jason there, working the party in his usual way, and she hadn’t been disappointed.

  She’d braced herself for the inevitable encounter—but he hadn’t approached her. He’d been reveling in a crowd of admirers until a young woman appeared at his side and whispered something in his ear.

  Zoe had seen the way Jason let his hand rest a moment too long on the young woman’s arm. She’d seen the way he’d turned to look down at her, seen the flash of that repulsive smile of his that had made her stomach lurch from all the way across the room. She’d seen them turn toward the door, the woman stepping out to walk in front of him, so he couldn’t see her face any longer.

  That face which had been a blank except for her eyes, which were dark with self-loathing and sheer, stark misery.

  Zoe knew that expression. She knew. It had been like a kick to the gut, so hard she hadn’t been able to breathe, and she’d had to stand still and watch.

  Then she’d felt something else—that creeping, sickening feeling that told her he’d seen her. Sure enough, when she’d jerked her gaze away from the young woman who hurried from the party and out into the fall night, Jason was watching her.

  He’d held her gaze across the crowd. So arrogant. So superior. She’d clenched her fingers so hard around the stem of her wineglass that she’d left deep grooves in her own flesh. She’d worried that she might be sick where she stood.

  Jason Treffen had merely smiled. Pleased, as ever. Winning, as usual.

  Zoe sucked in a breath now, snapping herself back into her own bathroom. You’re safe, she told herself, again and again, until her heart rate smoothed out. She stepped into the hot water, and sank into its silken embrace until she was submerged up to her chin.