he did not like the smile his father gave to the woman in return. He didn’t like the way she ducked her head again, like a child expecting a pat.
Maybe she was already one of his creatures.
He breathed in deeply, rage pouring through him. He couldn’t handle this. It was too much on a night like tonight. At the party where Sarah had died.
Why had he left his drink back at the counter? He needed more alcohol.
The woman turned away from his father and he saw something pass across her face. Anger. Sadness. Grief. He recognized the emotions because they echoed inside of him. Because they were with him, always. Amplified now as the truth about Jason’s treachery became clearer.
Files and files of women who were being paid for vague “services.” Interior design. Catering. Event planning.
Austin was still turning over the implications.
None of the possibilities made him happy. Except for the possibility that his father had used the design services of a couple of young women more than six times in a fiscal year. But he highly doubted that was the case.
Highly.
It was taken care of. They were compensated.
That last conversation played again in his mind.
He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to get his head together. He was drowning in air. His tie strangling him. Icy fingers wrapping around his neck.
Sarah’s, maybe. He deserved it. God knew he did.
He pictured the dark-haired beauty again, scanned the crowd for her and couldn’t see her. Where was she now? Was she waiting to meet his father? Would she end up as a name on one of Jason Treffen’s invoices? Payment for services rendered.
No. Not if he could do anything to stop it.
He’d let it happen once. He’d be damned if he ever let it happen again.
He started back across the room and swung by the bar, grabbing his scotch and knocking it back.
Hell, he was damned either way. But she didn’t have to be.
* * *
Katy Michaels sent up a silent prayer and hoped that, for once, someone was listening. She didn’t want to get caught, not now. All she wanted to do was verify that the invoices existed. She was armed with a tip and a key from Jason Treffen’s front desk attendant, Stephanie, a bright young girl with brown eyes that had permanent shadows beneath them.
Just looking at her made Katy’s skin crawl.
Her eyes reminded her of Sarah’s eyes. Haunted. Tired. Hollow, as if the hope had been carved out of her and an endless black hole was left behind instead.
She went into the office and stared down at the dark wood file cabinets. What an asshole. With his defunct filing system, all old and stately. It was like a big middle finger to everyone, to her, to the women he hurt, that he didn’t even bother to keep this information in cryptic folders. That he kept records at all.
Had to get his damned tax write-off. Even when he was paying for sex.
He was lucky she was pursuing legal action rather than going Batman on his ass and seeking a little vigilante justice.
“I am the night,” she muttered, going toward the third cabinet to the left, as instructed, and putting the key in the lock. She turned it and it gave, a small click in the silence of the room.
She pulled the drawer open and went for the folder marked “special services,” then she opened it and rifled through. It was one year. Just one year and it was filled with names.
Sarah’s name would have been in it ten years ago. So many women.
“Binders full of them,” she said, trying to smile at her own frail joke as she snapped a shot of the first invoice with her phone’s scanner. Humor was all she had left to get her through this crap. She’d taken her other crutches away from herself.
Her parents’ drug use. Her sister’s death. Raising a younger brother—Trey—who was angry at the world. And it was much better to laugh when she was beating back her own demons with a stick.
And she definitely had her own.
Scanning invoice after invoice that represented a woman who had been abused by Jason Treffen.
She had to laugh or curl into a ball and give up on humanity. Or go back down the deep dark rabbit holes she used to hide in. Soothe her pain in the other ways she knew how to soothe it.
No. She wasn’t going back there. Not again.
She scanned every doc, then put them back in the folder, and back in the drawer, which she locked. Then she stuck her phone back in her handbag and made her way out of Jason’s office, dropping the key beneath a little potted flower on Stephanie’s desk, as she’d requested.
Katy let out a long breath and started walking back down the empty corridor, back to the party.
Back toward Jason Treffen.
Talking to that scumbag had just about made her lose her mind. It had taken everything in her not to grab his glass from his hand and pour it over his head. Then break the glass on his face.
She considered the man as good as her sister’s murderer, so she was short on charitable feelings where he was concerned.
The door to the ballroom opened and she froze, trying to affect an “I’m just coming back from the bathroom” demeanor. Whatever the hell that was.
Oh. Her breath left her in a rush, a current of electricity washing over her skin.
It was him.
The man who’d been drinking scotch. The man whose eyes were like an endless black hole, drawing her in, a force she couldn’t deny or control.
The man who had looked at her for a moment.
Someone looking at her wasn’t really that significant. It happened every day. Except when this man had looked at her, she’d felt as if she were grounded to the spot. She’d felt like he had looked and seen her.
Seen everything. More than that, she’d looked back and she’d seen him.
Had seen a grief in him. An anger.
It had been, in some ways, like looking into a mirror.
And in just a second, it had been over. She’d gone to find Jason, to put herself in his vicinity. Just because she’d promised herself she would. Because she’d promised herself she would look him dead in the eye one day, knowing she was going to destroy him, while he didn’t have a clue.
And so she had.
But it had been a sacrifice, because she’d had to look away from the man. It was a moment that summed up her entire life, really. Deny, deny, repress. Push on through. Don’t let the pain touch you. Don’t let the pleasure touch you, either.
“It’s you,” he said, his voice deep, smooth. Like really good chocolate.
“Yes, it’s me. I was...in the bathroom.” Oh, nice, Katy. That was very good.
He arched a brow. “Fascinating.”
“Not so much, I know.”
“I’ll let it slide because I was hoping to run into you.”
“Were you?”
“Yes,” he said, walking closer to her, his eyes burning into hers.
She’d never seen anything like his eyes. They were so intense she couldn’t look away.
And his body...perfectly showcased by his custom-made suit. Broad shoulders, trim waist and slim hips. Very expensive shoes.
Then there was his face. He was arresting. Dark brows, chiseled jaw, Roman nose. His lips were perfection.