Avenge Me

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Which had been the situation Sarah had found herself bound up in, and he hadn’t even realized it.

She’d been sending money to her younger sister. To her younger brother.

Katy had been in school; he knew that much.

He was a dick. There was no way this could be worse. None at all. He’d used her to feel in control of his own miserable life, a life that he was in the process of exploding so that he could make right what had been done to her sister.

He’d chosen to, for the first time ever, unleash his domination fantasies on a woman and it turned out to be Sarah’s younger sister. The sister Sarah had protected with everything in her.

Sarah had died, in all likelihood, under a stress she never would have endured if she hadn’t had Katy and their brother to take care of.

And he had debauched her. Holy hell, it was like he was destined to screw up everything. Like he was destined to be the villain no matter how hard he tried to avoid it.

One slipup with regards to his self-control and he’d done the worst thing imaginable.

“Stephanie,” he said, approaching the reception desk in the front of his father’s office, “is my father in?”

“Yes, he is, Mr. Treffen, but he’s in a meeting.” The woman looked down and Austin noticed that she seemed dull. Tired. It made his chest ache. “I can let him know you’re here and see if he wants to interrupt?”

She lifted her hand to brush her hair behind her ear and he noticed finger-shaped bruises curving around her wrist.

And he saw a flash of his hands on Katy’s hips. He wondered if he’d left bruises behind, too. If he were any different from his father, a man who used others to his own ends. For his own pleasure.

Even if it left them damaged beyond repair.

Then he saw red.

“I’ll be interrupting the meeting, thank you, Stephanie. I find I’m not in the mood to wait.” He strode past reception. If Stephanie were arguing, he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the blood in his head.

He kept seeing flashes of his night with Katy.

And he wondered now if Sarah had gone through something similar. But he wondered if she’d ever been told she could say stop. Or if his father had unleashed all of that on her without ever giving her a choice.

It made him sick to think about it.

He walked down the long, bland corridor, the walls closing in on him as he went. Then he heard a familiar voice and stopped cold outside his father’s door.

It was cracked slightly, and he couldn’t see the speaker, but he could hear her.

My name is Katy Michaels....

What was she doing here?

“Thank you, Mr. Treffen, that will be all. I’ll be handing over my case to another events coordinator. I’m sorry that the party of the other night wasn’t to your specifications.” Her tone was tight, stiff.

“Not at all, Ms. Michaels. I apologize that the complaint found you in trouble with your firm.”

A sliver of ice wound down Austin’s spine.

Jason wasn’t sorry at all. He had that tone in his voice, when he spoke to a victim. A woman he intended to draw in. Austin recognized it now, and he had no idea how he hadn’t seen it before.

“It’s nothing, Mr. Treffen. I’ll do other accounts.”

“Of course it’s not nothing,” his father responded, his tone cajoling. “I know that Treffen, Smith and Howell is a big account. Losing it would be difficult for anyone. I imagine you receive a commission per event?”

“In addition to my regular salary, yes.”

“So you’ll be suffering financially.”

“A bit,” she said, her voice clipped. “But I’ll soldier on.”

“If there’s anything I can do, let me know. I have other work.”

Austin tightened his hand into a fist. What the hell was this? What was her game? What was his father’s? Did he know who she was? It wouldn’t be hard to place her. Michaels was a common enough last name, but Austin had figured out the connection easily.

And as for Katy...had she been using him to get to his father? Was that why she’d given him her virginity? So that she could maneuver her way into a better position?

Of course, their night together had gone to hell, so it hadn’t worked that way, but he could see the logic in it.

“Thank you,” she said. His father was seemingly unaware of the edge in her voice. Sharp and cutting, and, Austin had the feeling, prepared to verbally castrate him at a moment’s notice. “Mr. Treffen, perhaps we’ll see each other again soon?”

“I hope so, my dear.”

Austin curled his hands into fists. To keep himself from pushing the door open. To keep himself from storming into his father’s office and committing acts of violence he would regret later.

He moved back in the corridor before she opened the door and closed it tightly behind her.

Then she froze, her eyes round as she looked up at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I might ask you the same thing. But I realize that both of us never asked why exactly we were attending the Treffen, Smith and Howell Christmas party the other night. We forgot, I think, that we have someone in common between us.”

He watched as her face changed. Horror lighting her eyes, her top lip curving upward into something like a snarl. “We do, don’t we?” she said. Her voice was monotone, not reflecting any of the war of emotion raging behind those blue eyes.

But she couldn’t hide it from him.

“I suggest we take this elsewhere.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I have to go back to work,” she said.

“And do what? You’ve lost a major account.” Which he suspected was by design. One of his father’s sick, sadistic designs. “And we need to talk.”

“I don’t think we do.”

He reached out and took her arm, held her there, and hated himself for doing it. But he had to hold on to her. She was Sarah’s sister and she’d walked right into the lion’s den. And he didn’t even know if she knew it.

She was stupid enough to come back to his hotel room, either by design or by accident. She was stupid enough to come into his father’s office today. Alone.

Or maybe naive was the better word.

He thought about how tight she’d been when they’d been together. The fact that she’d never been with another man...

Yes, perhaps naive was the word.

“You will speak to me now, or I will march you in there and we can have this conversation in front of Treffen. Which do you prefer?”

“What’s your connection with him?” she asked, her voice breathless.

“It’s genetic, I’m afraid. Now, let’s go outside.”

She didn’t argue this time. She let him lead her. Past reception—and a wide-eyed Stephanie—and into the elevator.

The doors slid shut behind them and she rounded on him. “We seem to spend a lot of time in elevators,” she said crisply.

“We’ve spent a vast amount more time in bed, but yes, some time in elevators. But what we haven’t done is talk.”

“We talked. About shrimp, and you told me to get on my knees.”

“So we did,” he said, his tone clipped. “But I think we skimmed over something very important. Katy Michaels.”

“You remembered. I would have thought it would have sunk down into the annals of your memory by now. Just one of the many women you’ve deflowered in that ridiculous hotel room. It looked like a vampire brothel, by the way.”

“One, I have never used that particular connection before. But a man would have to be an idiot not to keep said offer in his back pocket. Because he never knows when he might need a vampire brothel, as you called it. Two, I’ve never been with a virgin before, and I never do one-night stands.”

“I have one nightstand but that’s completely different.”

“Entirely.”

The doors opened to the lobby and he waited for her to go first. Like he had that night. Except he didn’t own the right to do that now. He never had. To give her orders. To make her his.

He shook his head and continued behind her, out the front door and to where his driver was waiting. “Get in.”

“This is like bad déjà vu.”

“Would it be so bad?” he asked, and then he closed the door and took a deep breath of the cold air before rounding to the other side of the car and getting in.

When he closed the door and settled in, she looked at him. “I think, after the way things ended between us, yes, it would be so bad now that you mention it.”

“You like bad, though,” he said, his eyes fixed firmly ahead, on the divider that kept his driver out of the conversation. “I remember.” And so did he. A slug of desire hit him in the gut. Wrong time. Wrong place.