Fifth Avenue Box Set: Take MeAvenge MeScandalize MeExpose Me Read online

  “You weren’t keeping pictures in it?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I didn’t know about the bottom, either.”

  She leaned forward and touched the picture that was facedown on the floor, then picked it up slowly. She turned it over. “Oh.” She put a hand up over her mouth.

  “What?”

  She just shook her head and handed him the picture. He looked at it and dropped it like he’d been burned.

  He closed his eyes and tried to wash the image away. But he couldn’t.

  It was a woman. Blond hair spilling over pale shoulders, her head down, a man’s hand braced on the back of her neck.

  “It’s Sarah.”

  “I know,” he said.

  He picked it up again and studied it more closely. Then he picked up the photos that were still in the false bottom. Some were more graphic. And there was no doubt as to the activity happening in them.

  But it wasn’t the blatant depiction of sex that shocked. It was the pain in Sarah’s eyes. Not physical pain. This wasn’t a game with whips and chains. It was the emotional pain. He could see how dead to it all she was. Resignation tore at his heart.

  It was sex. Simple, vanilla sex. Especially in comparison to his encounter with Katy. She wasn’t bound. She wasn’t being dominated in any obvious sense, and yet, she was a woman owned.

  With a man who took delight in exploiting his power over her.

  His stomach pitched. It was all too familiar. A hideous, twisted rendition of his encounter with Katy. His stomach turned, his throat tight, sweat breaking out over his skin.

  Something compelled him to turn it over and look at the back.

  Jason 9/04

  Three months before Sarah’s death.

  And with his father. Jason wasn’t stupid enough to be in a picture, of course. All that could be seen was a man’s hands. There was the label on the back, but that meant nothing in any real sense.

  But he knew it was true.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t even suspect.”

  “I want to see,” she said.

  He pulled them back. “You don’t.”

  “I need to see, Austin.”

  “Why, Katy?”

  “Because I’m going to ruin this man. I’m going to destroy him and mount him on my wall, and I want to know exactly what manner of monster he was when I’m staring at the carcass.”

  “Incentive, then.” He handed her the photos and watched her work her way through them, her complexion pale.

  She curled her hands into fists, her teeth burrowed so far into her bottom lip he was afraid she would draw blood. “I hate this.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I hate that ten years after her death...this is the extra thing I get to find. That one last piece of her. Do you know how much you wish for one more picture? One more letter?”

  His stomach churned.

  One more voice mail. “No,” he said, his voice rough.

  “So much, Austin. And I have these. Pictures of this...affair, whatever the hell it was. I have photographic evidence of the thing that drove her to her suicide.”

  Katy swallowed back the bile that was rising in her throat and tried to stop the shaking. Dammit, she was shaking everywhere. Inside, out.

  It was horrible to see just what had driven her sister over the edge. To see what she’d been subjected to. And for how long? Had she wanted some of it, only to find it went too far?

  What did it say about her that she wanted that man’s son? That he was the one she’d picked out of a crowded room when she could have had any guy there? That he was the one she’d trusted to live out her most secret fantasies with?

  Clearly she was sick.

  She handed the pictures back to Austin and their fingers touched. The hot surge of electricity that shot through her only served to make her feel even more shame.

  How could she feel something for him? Even now. During this moment. Her head was so screwed up. Something was broken inside of her and she had no idea how to fix it, or how to deal with it.

  Just slap some duct tape on it and keep going. Because you have to. It’s for her. You don’t have time for you and your issues right now. Just shut it off.

  She didn’t have time to break apart now. And she didn’t have time to deal with her attraction to Austin. An attraction that crossed the border into so freaking wrong territory.

  “I guess I put this with the invoices,” she said.

  “I guess so,” he said, standing up. She couldn’t stand yet.

  “Why did she keep them, do you think? Why did he take them?”

  “Do you want my guess? Because a guess is all I have. I didn’t know just how deep this went. How far things had gone. So all I’m going off of is the man I grew up with, the man I thought he was for the first twenty-three years of my life. Combined with ten years of suspecting he’d driven a friend to suicide by harassing her, mixed with what you told me today.”

  “Give me your theories.”

  “He gets off on power. On owning people. He likes that he can be so purely civil, I think, while hiding all of this. That he can advocate for women in the courtroom while manipulating them into sexual slavery in private. I’m sure having the pictures, and even putting them in Sarah’s possession, was him taunting her. With the fact that evidence of what they’d done existed. And with the fact that her having that evidence would never mean anything. That she wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.”

  “He was making her feel powerless.”

  “Yes. And I’m sure that was fuel for every disgusting fantasy he has.”

  “Who does things like this? I don’t understand it. I...I grew up surrounded by addiction. By all the terrible things it can make you do, or not do. Our parents were so checked out. It was all about their next high. They used to leave us, lock us in a bedroom with food. It was their version of taking care of us. It was what they could do. What they understood. I hated it. And I’m not overly fond of them, but I get that there was an intention to care. But that the addiction was bigger than the love. This kind of stuff? This intention to hurt? I didn’t know it existed like this. He killed everything inside of her. Until all that was left was for her to go ahead and kill her body, too. He left her to bleed out emotionally then...then she finished the job.”

  Austin’s expression was blank, his eyes unfocused. “Well, I think for today you should just settle into your room. Do you want me to keep these?”

  She shook her head. “I think I should. I’ll put it with everything else.”

  “I understand.”

  She picked up the pieces of the box and held it together, the pictures on the top. “But I think I will go to the room.”

  “I’ll get your things situated tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  She was too numb to be angry at him now. Not when she just felt sick and defeated. Why was everything so messed up? She couldn’t even begin to figure out how her life, how Sarah’s life, had ended up this way.

  The thing was, not a lot of people would be too shocked that a woman with their background had gone to New York, gotten caught up in the excess and hadn’t been able to handle it all. Officially, that was the story.

  Sarah Michaels was just a girl from nowhere who’d transcended the boundaries she was born into. She’d taken a leap, and discovered she had no wings.

  Another sob story in millions of sob stories, only notable because it was Jason Treffen’s building she’d jumped off of.

  It was her name that was mud. Not his.

  And if she could do anything to change that, she would.

  Assuming she could survive living with Austin. Not that the living situation itself was a hardship.

  The penthouse really was beautiful. Open and new. And it seemed to have working amenities. Heat that didn’t sound like a dying animal when it kicked on. Totally different from what she was used to.

  The wall of windows in the living room offered up choice views
of the city. Only the beautiful places. So that Austin Treffen never had to look at any of life’s ugly things. Too bad there were a lot of ugly things on the inside of his world. They were just better hidden than the ugly things that were in the world she’d grown up in.

  Though, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d hidden her own ugly things admirably for a long time.

  She walked out of the kitchen area and up the sleek, curved staircase to the mezzanine floor. “Which bedroom is mine?” she called down to him. And she knew she sounded whiny and she didn’t care.

  She was so tired she thought she was going to fall over. Every last ounce of energy drained from her like blood running from an artery.

  Today was horrible. She was spent. She was done. She’d lost her job, lost her home, seen pictures that she needed to view, but hated the existence of. And being near Austin was just a drain all on its own.

  From the moment she’d first seen him, he’d captured a piece of her and he hadn’t given it back yet.

  Asshole.

  “End of the hall.”

  She nodded and walked down that way, pushing the door open, then closing it firmly behind her. She locked it for good measure. Because she didn’t trust any of the people in this house. It was only Austin and her, but that was sort of the point.

  The room was huge. Clean and spacious with cream-colored walls, a sleek, black four-poster bed and furniture in purple velvet. That part of it reminded her of the vampire brothel. The rest of it was extremely respectable. And the velvet probably wouldn’t make her think of anything untoward if she couldn’t remember, vividly, what it had been like to feel that textured wallpaper beneath her bare skin while Austin was on his knees in front of her....

  She closed her eyes. No. No, no.

  She walked across the room and threw the covers back, climbing beneath the sheets and pulling her knees up to her chest.

  From this position, on her side, she could see out the windows and down into Central Park, to the naked trees and the blanket of snow over the green grass. The windows themselves had pristinely clean windowsills around sparkling glass. It was notable to her. And for some reason, it made her think of the view from her bed, not in her most recent apartment, but in her childhood home.

  On her side, from her mattress on the floor, she’d had a view of an old carpet. Frayed in spots, the rotting wood splintered beneath it. There was dirt on it. Pieces of cat food, kid food and other crap all over. Fake wood paneling on the walls.

  If she’d turned over onto her back she could see an edge of light coming through the window, where the old ratty baby blanket that was tacked over it had come loose.

  There was mold where the floor met the wall. She’d made a game of keeping an eye on it. Watching it climb the wall and spread farther. Little black spores that she knew, now, she should have been kind of worried about.

  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.