by Pam Godwin
Jesus. My fingers clenched at my sides. “You’re disgusting.”
“Lighten up, Kaci.” He shifted further into the office and gestured inside. “Come in. We were just getting started.”
Right. A meeting. Probably with my mother. Actually, I was feeling spunky enough today to enjoy her presence. I’d chosen her least favorite dress—tight around the chest, flirty at the knees—because fuck her. She wouldn’t know her poor little celibate daughter was highly sexed this morning. But I’d love to shove my well-loved glow in her face and watch the Botox harden with envy.
With that energizing thought, I followed him in and turned the corner.
And everything froze. My feet, my breath, my heart.
The last person I expected to see glared at me from across the room. Wide shoulders encased in a black suit. A strong neck that didn’t belong in a thin tie. And beneath the white shirt, I knew there was an eight-pack of polished, hairless abs.
My stomach dropped, and my lungs slammed together.
Hands behind his back, legs in a wide stance, Logan stood behind Trent’s desk like he owned it. His face was cleanly shaven, but a shadow darkened his features. A dissonance of unreadable emotions furrowed his brow and shaped his jaw into a cinder block.
My mind raced through all the possible reasons he was here. Did I forget my driver’s license? Did he search me out because he decided to stay? Or was this all a coincidence and he was just as surprised to see me?
He didn’t look surprised.
My blood began a slow trickle downward, chilling everything between my face and my feet.
Trent shut the door behind me, locking the three of us in, and slipped in beside Logan behind the desk.
Logan seemed disinclined to step back or shift his stance in any way. They were the same height, but Logan’s surly bearing dwarfed the man beside him.
“This is Logan Flynt.” Trent lowered into the chair, his eyes calculating. “But you already knew that.”
Sweat formed on the back of my neck. What did he want? What had he told Trent? Maybe not everything, which meant I needed to measure my response no matter how desperately I burned to attack him, to scream and demand answers.
I caught him looking at me, his eyes creased with tension and something else, something I hadn’t seen last night. Whatever it was, it explained nothing and hinted at everything.
Pushing that to the back of my awareness, I softened my face into what I hoped was a cordial expression. “Logan.”
His lips formed an angry line, and his eyes turned to golden glass.
Not good. I cleared my throat and said to Trent, “We met at The Watch last night.” Damn that quiver in my voice.
Trent leaned forward, his fingers clicking over the keyboard on the desk. “You did more than meet.”
The plasma screen on the wall beside me blinked on. My heart raced, and a sick swirl of nausea curdled in my gut.
I glanced at Logan. The sudden rigidness in his body shoved my thundering pulse past my ears.
The mouse pointer wiggled on the big screen as Trent maximized a video window and clicked play. I knew it was coming before I saw it. I felt it like fire on my skin and ice in my veins, right before it burned into my eyes.
The horrifying aftermath of my decisions, magnified on fifty-five inches of hi-def resolution, played out across the screen. My body bent over a bed. My mouth gaping in ecstasy. A blurry-faced man standing behind me. His cock ramming like there was no tomorrow.
The betrayal stabbed a jolt of pain through my chest and tunneled through the emptiness there, stretching it wider, deeper, hollowing me out. I let it spread through my body, absorbing its soundless devastation, like the video on the wall.
All of it captured with various camera angles. Cameras that had been set up in advance. Premeditated. Everything about last night had been planned.
My stomach erupted, angry and vengeful, forcing its misery up my throat. I fisted my hands, fighting it down. Goddammit, I fought to breathe, and when my lungs finally released, my anguish vented in a seething whisper. “Turn it off.”
When the screen blanked, the blunt ache of relief tried to push me to the floor. But it was nothing compared to the gravity of Logan’s gaze.
I locked my legs, refused to give him my eyes. Not until I pulled myself together. As much as I wanted to bloody my knuckles on his fucking face, that would solve exactly nothing. And I needed something. Answers.
The other dick in the room watched me the way he always did, his leeching gaze attaching and feeding. His unruffled posture reeked of satisfaction. He showed no signs of anger about my contract violation. No surprise by the content of the video. He’d arranged this.
Nausea simmered through me, fevering my skin. “You hired him.”
“No,” two voices answered. Though Logan’s was louder and punctuated by the aggressive lean of his body and slam of his hands on the desk.
Trent glared up at him until he straightened and stepped back. Then Trent looked at me. “I hired someone else. You remember Holden.”
The man I’d turned down. My only coup in a night of mistakes.
The shooting stabs of failure burned the backs of my eyes. My promotion. Collin’s freedom. And the excruciating knowledge that I was fucked by a man as part of some plan.
“Why did you set me up?” I asked Trent, struggling to keep the pain from pitching my voice. “Because you didn’t want to pass your CEO title to me?”
“Yes.”
God, I felt the waste of my career in the depths of my soul, but there was another, more harrowing ramification. “Collin…”
He glanced at Logan and back at me. “We’ll discuss that privately.”
Sweat formed on my upper lip, and chills racked my body. I breathed through it, gathered my backbone, and forced all my energy into blanking my face and straightening my stance. He couldn’t send him to prison. How could anyone do that to their own son? And why would he want to?
I dragged my eyes to Logan. He glared back with his chin angled down, his jaw set in warlike belligerence. What was his role in this? He had moved in and replaced Holden in the club. If he wasn’t hired by Trent, he had his own agenda.
Dismissing him like a piece of furniture, I turned my attention to Trent. “What does he want?”
“Your promotion,” Logan answered, his voice a corrosive abrasion across my nerves.
When I met his eyes, the slight arch of his right brow made my nails dig into my palms. Who the fuck was this guy? “Trent would never agree to that.”
Logan bent over the desk, arms bracing his upper body, his suit jacket stretching to contain the angry flex of his muscles. “He already did. I’m your boss.”
At Trent’s nod, my rage exploded. Venom coiled around the line of my spine, propelling me forward. When I reached the desk, I matched Logan’s lean, bending over the wide surface to shove my face in his. “No way in hell I'm working for you. I quit.”
Fifteen years I busted my ass for this job. All of it gone. And Collin’s freedom dangled on some unknown thread. Because of this man, who had given me his word in a hotel room, who had looked at me and touched me in ways that couldn’t have been faked.
He used me, used my need for connection against me. He couldn’t have hit me in a more vulnerable spot. And I let him. Which only made the hurt more nauseating.
Bile rose through my chest, gnawing at the back of my throat. My lungs cycled air without nourishing my body. I was going to be sick. But I locked it all inside. Emptied my face. Swallowed the pain. And stood tall.
“Kaci.” Trent’s voice pushed against my shivering skin. “The unsettled matter with Collin is contingent on your cooperation. You will remain in your position and report directly to Logan.”
I sucked in a breath. So basically, I had to swallow my pride to keep Collin out of jail. “Are you serious? Jesus, Trent. I fucking hate you. Why in the fuck would you want me to work here?”
Maybe it was one of Logan’s de
mands? Though knowing Trent, he was dangling the threat just to torment me.
Trent rose from the chair, his expression morphing into something I’d never seen on him before. Hard as stone, flushed with anger, and seconds from detonation. “You naïve little bitch.”
Logan’s entire body flinched, but Trent kept talking. “There is shit going—” He rolled back his shoulders and inhaled slowly. “There is more to running a Fortune 500 company than budget meetings and marketing proposals. Do not question me.”
Everything about that diatribe made me question him. And he knew damned well my job was more than budget meetings and marketing proposals.
Logan stepped back and leaned against the wall, arms crossed at his chest. Why would Trent hand off the leadership to him?
I backed up, my mind swimming. But as I took in Logan’s confident coolness and Trent’s unraveling composure, the answer was glaring. “Logan blackmailed you.”
Trent returned to his chair, his vacant expression the only answer I needed.
Blackmail meant they shared a secret. But Trent didn’t trust Logan enough to discuss his threat against Collin, the only reason I was still standing here.
Well, I was done with secrets. I met Trent’s eyes. “If you go through with your plan to frame Collin for murder, I will fight with everything I’ve got.”
Logan didn’t flinch, but the pensive shadow over his face deepened. “What is she talking about?”
Trent ignored him. “You’ll lose. I have powerful connections, Kaci.”
He sprawled in his chair, lazily stroking the armrest as if it were a throne in an invulnerable fortress. Maybe his claim to power held some legitimacy, but it was also arrogant and overreaching. Everyone had a weak spot. I didn’t know what Trent’s was, but it seemed Logan had found it.
“If you fight me,” he said and nodded at the blank screen on the wall, “I’ll leave you with nothing but a ruined reputation.”
The sex tape. Yet one more thing to use against me. The impact of that slammed into my gut. Logan seemed to be surprised by this, his eyes widening as he pressed a fist against his side.
So he hadn’t recorded us with the intention to share it with the world? Why did he care? It was my face on the video. The wife of a right-winged celebrity. It would destroy any chance I might’ve had at starting a new career.
Though none of that mattered if Collin went to prison.
I was trapped, thrashing against an immovable web of ties, and the deeper I got, the tighter they cinched around my throat.
My knees buckled, and my lungs heaved. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. All the hurt and shock and helplessness that had manifested in my stomach rose up. As it boiled through my chest, I darted across the office, lurched into the private bathroom, and emptied my stomach into the toilet.
The misery rushed out so violently and for so long my eyes watered and my fingers locked painfully around the bowl.
The bathroom door clicked shut behind me, and approaching footsteps raised the hairs on my nape. I spit, dragged the back of my hand over my mouth, and climbed to my feet.
Trent held out a towel and leaned a hip against the counter. “One month.”
I stared at the towel, waiting, for what I didn’t know.
He stood between me and the door and tossed the towel on the floor at my feet. “You will work here, and you will not tell Logan Flynt my son is gay. In one month, you and Collin are free to do what you want, to divorce, I don’t give a shit.”
I met his eyes, my pulse pounding in my head. “October twenty-seventh is in one month. What’s happening on that day? Who sent the watch?”
“That’s not your concern. Just do your job and tell Logan nothing.”
Was he positioning Trenchant Media for a merger? Keeping secrets to avoid a scandal? What kind of corporate negotiations were communicated via cryptic watches? I sidled around him, inching my way toward the door. “If I refuse?”
“Then Collin will be taking it up the ass in an orange jumpsuit.”
My cheeks burned with disgust. When it came to degenerate dads, as in I-fucked-my-kid’s-life, big-time degeneracy, I couldn’t help but stand in awe of the all-time prizewinner.
One month. Just a flicker of time. Hell, I’d give Collin a lifetime if it kept him out of prison. “The only reason I’m standing here is because I care about what happens to your son.”
“You’re here because you’re a whore.” The coldness in his voice penetrated my bones. “This”—he cupped me between the legs—“was supposed to be mine.”
My stomach heaved with a long-buried memory as someone opened the door behind me. I shoved Trent in the chest, stumbling backward into Logan’s brick chest of heat and rigid tension. His hands gripped my arms, and I jerked away.
Fuck him. Fuck both of them. I shouldered past Logan and his narrowed eyes and the anger radiating from his tie to his Converse sneakers.
In the office, I slowed my strides and rounded the desk. Strands of hair had tumbled from my bun and hung in my face. I swiped them away as I found what I was looking for.
Wrenching the flash drive from the computer, I shoved it in my bra and straightened my dress. Of course, there were copies of the video, but Trent wouldn’t be jerking off to this one.
Logan’s vibrating presence heated my back, the intensity of his gaze dripping down my spine. I shivered, hating him, hating how much I was attracted to him. Which was salt in the deepest wound. The pain rose to the surface, pressing beneath my skin, trying to escape.
“We need to talk.” His voice pushed me into a quiet place, the eye of the storm.
I turned slowly to face him and gave him the eye contact we’d shared last night. I put all my backbone in it, let him see that I was hurting but not ruined. “I don’t want to talk…or do anything with you. Can you handle that?”
His eyes closed. When they opened, I pulled back my arm and swung with every ounce of my strength. My fist landed across his cheek, and his face flew to the side.
He could’ve dodged it. I realized that as he looked back at me, his jaw loose and posture stooped, as if waiting for another punch.
So I hit him again. Same spot on his cheek. My fist throbbed, and not surprising, that second punch didn’t make me feel any better than the first.
Resignation dulled his eyes, and his arms hung at his sides. Arms that had braced me against a wall and pinned me to a bed. Arms I had wanted so desperately to hold me to sleep last night.
My throat ached, my composure wavering, made worse by the threat standing in the bathroom doorway, watching us.
I brushed my sweaty hands over my dress and pivoted toward the exit. Fixing my hair as I walked, I was confident in my outward appearance by the time I stepped into the corridor.
Strong, even strides carried me to the elevator. I held my chin up and my face relaxed when I reached the ground floor lobby. But when my heels hit the sidewalk and the cool wind brushed my face, the trembling started, in my legs, my hands, my lips.
Stepping into the heavy flow of foot traffic, I removed the phone from my bra and dialed Collin. Voice-mail answered. I hung up and dialed again. Voice-mail. Goddammit!
I let the pedestrians lead me away from Trenchant as I dialed and texted Collin over and over, watching the sidewalk blur beneath my feet. I really didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.
Hindsight was a brutal bitch, and I wasn’t just thinking about last night. If only I’d had the foresight to tell our parents to go fuck themselves the day I completed grad school, before I’d signed a marriage contract, before I’d been sucked into their dirty affairs.
What would it be like to have a mom to talk to, who would listen with understanding and love? Who wouldn’t judge me for the mistakes I’d made or the hurt I felt? Who would never have forced me into a hopeless situation?
But I had Collin.
If he would answer his damned phone. I dialed again. Voice-mail.
I trudged on for blocks, aimlessly
walking. Surrounded by people. Alone in my head.
And my head was stuck on Logan. I ran over all of his expressions and reactions from last night to now. I knew I was seeing things that weren’t there, and I tried to parse the facts from the bias, but I kept coming back to the look on his face when I hit him.
It was possible that he regretted betraying me.
Not that it changed anything.
I stopped at a crosswalk and dialed again.
Finally, Collin picked up, his voice rushed. “Where are you?”
I glanced up at the street sign. “Corner of Michigan and Ontario. Where are you? Why weren’t you answering?”
“Okay, I see you. Turn around.”
I did, just as the limo pulled up beside me. The door swung open, and Collin jumped out, his arms open and his eyes wide with worry. He knew.
“Your dad called you.”
He caught me in a hug and lifted me on my toes, cracking my tightly restrained emotions. “Yeah. He told me everything.”
Probably not everything, but I’d rehash it when I was ready. Right now I just needed… I looped my arms around his slender shoulders and held tight. God, this was what I needed. The power of a hug. It invited me to let go.
My spine buckled, my breath slipped from my lungs, and my eyes closed, trapping the rising moisture. “Is Seth in the car?”
He shook his head. “Just us.”
And the tears escaped, hot and silent, down my cheeks. His hand on the back of my head, his arm supporting my back, Collin’s embrace bore my pain.
What was the price of revenge? What would I pay to exact atonement for all the wrongs done to me and others like me? When my hands were stained with blood and I dumped my first kill into the incinerator, I thought I knew what it cost me.
Standing beneath the cover of an awning eight blocks from Trenchant Tower, I watched Collin Anderson hold his wife across the street. That was when I felt the real price constricting my chest and siphoning my air. It was too much.
The trembling in her shoulders as she clung to him was too much. Her arms wrapped so tightly around his neck as if afraid he’d let go was too much.