Dirty Ties (30 page)

A chill tiptoed up my spine. “What are you saying?”

“Trent deals with some vile people. Assassins. Men who rape and torture and murder.”

“You killed them.” My shoulders tightened, self-preservation screaming at me to run, but my gut told me he’d never hurt me. Not like that. He was telling me his secrets. Very damning secrets. That was a hell of lot of trust to put in me.

“I killed rapists and murderers, Kaci. Including the man who killed my mother.” His chin lifted, and the unapologetic strength of his gaze wasn’t one of a crazed man. More like a battle-ready vigilante who’d lived a hard life. “I stopped them from taking more lives.”

He believed he was doing the right thing, but there was a darkness in him. In the shadow of his surly glare, the turbulence of his temper, and the fierceness of his fucking.

It reminded me of the man I’d fantasied about for so long. The criminal who wore his darkness in a cloak of black leathers. Evader maimed and killed during races, a fact that hadn’t deterred me during our moment in an unlit elevator.

I didn’t know Logan Flynt or Evader enough to determine if they were the same man. But my mind had latched onto the idea and went searching for clues. Like the header on the news article he’d shown me. “Your mom was in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame?”

He gave a short nod, his eyes studying me from a few feet away.

I cocked my head. “You ride?”

“No.”

No hesitation. No emotion. Direct eye contact. Which told me absolutely nothing.

The phone on my desk beeped. I sighed. Probably Jenna calling about the morning’s schedule.

As I moved to answer it, I could feel him following. I pressed the speaker button. “Jenna?”

“Your eight-thirty meeting is waiting.”

“On my way.” I ended the call and turned.

Just feet apart, we stared at each other, the energy between us still there but different. The silent communication felt restricted as if waiting on certain conditions. But also hopeful and seeking.

He felt it, too. I saw it in the softening of his eyes and the slight tilt of his head as he regarded me. Then he stepped forward, erasing the gap in three slow strides. His hand went to the back of my head. His lips touched my brow and held there, coating my skin with warm breaths.

“Don’t kill my family,” I whispered, gripping his tie. “They’re awful, but I…” I inhaled deeply. “I need some time to think.”

After everything they’d done to me, I couldn’t justify their deaths. Not without confirming the evidence and considering the ramifications that murder would have on Collin, myself, and especially Logan. He’d killed but hadn’t murdered his own blood.
His father.
How could a person come back from that?

He cupped my face, angling it upward, his gaze searching. “While you’re thinking, don’t call in the cops.”

If I reported what I knew, Logan would disappear. Or worse, he’d get caught. There was also Trent’s threat against Collin. If I sent him to prison, he’d take Collin with him.

I nodded.

Trent had given me a month. I could wait it out to ensure Collin’s protection. Then fuck this place. I’d start a new life.

But what about Collin’s career? And what was happening on October twenty-seventh? Who sent Trent the watch?

God, I wanted to talk to Collin. I was keeping too many secrets from him, which meant he could be doing the same.

Logan brushed his lips across my forehead and stepped back. “Go to your meeting. I’ll wait while you think. Just don’t take too long.”

How would I stop him from murdering my family? He could do it right now and vanish. On the flip side, he couldn’t stop me from turning him in. Unless he killed me.

My nerves went rampant as I watched him leave. Our parting agreement balanced on some pretty delicate trust.

On his way out, he grabbed the trash bin that held the snake and tucked it under his arm. The muscles in his back and arms flexed as he moved through the room, stretching the wool jacket.

His hard body wasn’t built for a suit. All those strong, rugged edges belonged in black leather, straddling a bike. Was I imagining this? My belly fluttered at the notion.

At the door, he glanced at me over his shoulder and pointed at the snake inside the trash bin. “You do this yourself?”

Collin had helped me find the breeder and haul the snakes in, but the rest was all me. I smiled. “I know how to handle a snake.”

He returned my smile with a sad one and vanished around the corner.

As the next two weeks passed by, a miserable knot took root in my stomach. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and the day-to-day demands of my job took their toll on my concentration. My jaw locked in a permanent clench, nausea greeted me with each new hour, and the shriveling feeling in my chest made every breath a goddamn challenge.

Sitting in the suffocation of the boardroom, I leaned into my elbows on the table and swallowed the rush of saliva filling my mouth. It was all I could do to not heave the anxiety writhing in my stomach.

The source of my torment filled four high-backed chairs along one side of the table. My parents and my in-laws sat in their usual them-against-me positioning with the wood surface between us. Even with my eyes averted, I could feel them. Their filth in the air, the prick of their passing glances, the blather of their voices, all of it strumming my nerves into unbearable anger.

They droned on like they hadn’t committed ungodly crimes. Collin’s parents bickered about the profitability of launching a new cable network. My father piped in with his technical solutions. And my mother sat silently, casting her judgment with an over-plumped sneer.

Logan and I sat on the opposite side of the table with a chair between us. A chair full of contention and looming decisions. We hadn’t spoken about our secrets since the morning I delivered the snakes, yet we interacted daily as CEO and VP. He learned the ropes while I dealt with the politics surrounding his employment. Together we managed the operations as if it were our only preoccupation.

He hadn’t made any moves against Trenchant and instead seemed to be settling into his new role. But his patience was a ruse. The ticking tension between us hummed over my skin during staff meetings. When we crossed paths in the halls, his cursory glances pierced me with silent questions.

We restrained from lingering looks in the presence of others. To the unknowing eye, our interactions were professional. From my family’s perspective, we were enduring a forced partnership.

No one knew what I knew. Beneath Logan’s suave smile and crisp suit was a murderer with a premeditated intent to finish what he’d started. No doubt he spent his free time mining the company ranks for rats while I tortured myself in deliberation, taking too long to decide, delaying the inevitable.

The inevitable was why I couldn’t warm my icy fingers, why I’d lost five pounds, and why my body felt like it was shutting down. The inevitable put my family in prison or in the ground. But the part I struggled with the most was knowing once everything was brought to fruition, Logan would be gone. As a fugitive or behind bars, he wouldn’t be here with me.

What the hell was I going to do about it? My severe mistrust of every damned person in my life had built a barrier between me and Collin. I couldn’t come up with a convincing reason to tell him about the vile things our parents had done. What would stop him from turning them in? He didn’t give a shit about the impact that would have on Logan. Or worse, what if he defended them? What if he already knew?

So I kept my mouth shut while I fact-checked everything Logan had shown me. I wasn’t a journalist by any stretch, but I led an entire division of them. I verified sources, followed leads, assigned reporters to do the same, trickling out the requests and using the cautious ambiguity Trent had always used with me.

The embezzling, accounting fraud, missing employees, all of it added up, albeit hidden beneath the kind of well-placed and thorough explanations an unsuspecting person wouldn’t question. The Trenchant name was stained with crime. Everything I’d unearthed soured my aspirations to lead this miserable corporation. It wasn’t just the board members. The corrupted partners inside and outside of these walls were many, the layers of deceit running deep in every department.

The one thing I hadn’t connected was Trent’s interest in the underground racing network. According to Logan, Trent was pulling my files of the racing schematics. If that was true, why had he asked me a month ago to obtain everything I could about it? Then never asked again? He knew I was keeping that secret, and I hoped to God it was the only one he knew about.

I also investigated Logan, digging for information online, following him, and snapping photos like an obsessed stalker. He drove a Jeep Wrangler. He stopped at the Starbucks next door to the office every morning. He worked out in a gym two blocks away every night. He had no friends or family, and his address on file was a studio apartment in south Chicago. But his jeep was never in that parking lot.

Every time he slid behind the wheel of that damned jeep at Trenchant, I lost him. I used a cab to be inconspicuous, but Logan seemed to know the streets of Chicago better than anyone, knew how to whip a turn at the last second. He drove the way Evader rode his bike.

I compared the photos of Logan and Evader, studied their physiques, analyzed their heights and weights. An absurd exercise considering I’d had both of their cocks in my mouth. But my brief moment with Evader had been in the dark and the measurements of his anatomy wasn’t what I took away with me that night.

Even if they were the same man, it didn’t change the outcome. With each day, time wrapped tighter and tighter around my ribs. Maybe I was waiting out the month, expecting Logan to wait it out with me. Maybe I was waiting for him to fight. Not for his revenge but for me.

Sitting one chair away, he wore a black suit that sharpened the physique I knew so well and desperately missed. Always the same style with a black tie and white shirt. He must’ve had a closet filled with this uniform, and if I looked beneath the table, I’d find black Converse sneakers. Rebellious and sexy as sin.

His strong jaw was bare of whiskers, the cut of his dark blonde hair combed back, every strand gelled to perfection. While he rocked the clean-cut look with the smoothness of a rich businessman, I preferred him tousled and tangled and covered with scruff.

I wanted to shove my hands in his hair and muss that shit up. I wanted to kiss him until his mouth gaped for air and his eyes hooded with desire. I longed for the ruthless, sexual man who starred in my fantasies every night. Logan on a sportbike. His body gloved in black leather. His synthesized voice whispering filthy things.

This crazy need to meld two men into one made me uncomfortable. I didn’t need any more complications in my life, but my body was desperate to merge them. My thighs flexed together, and the warmth between them swelled into a needy clench.

“What impact would it have on digital media, Kaci?” My father stared at me over his silver-rimmed spectacles.

I slid my hands to my lap and slowed my breathing. My open disgust with them was nothing new. I abandoned pleasantries seven years ago when they forced me into a contract. But there was no more contract, and they didn’t know I knew their secrets. Didn’t know I was a phone call away from turning them in. Didn’t know I was considering other angles of retribution. “I don’t care. Just fire me and leave Collin alone.”

My mother pushed back from the table and stood to bend over it, her blue eyes sparking with outrage. “Grow up, Kaci. Get over your petty disappointment and do your damned job.”

My insides winced at the viciousness in her tone. No matter how heartless she was, part of me would always crave her love.

God, I resented that. Add in my revulsion at their crimes, and I couldn’t keep my mouth from curling in a hateful sneer.

They would assume my indignation had everything to do with Logan’s betrayal. So I played the part. “My
job
was stolen from me by a man who blackmailed everyone in this room. Let’s talk about that.”

Trent lowered the phone he was constantly consumed by and leveled me with hard eyes. “Putting your nose in our affairs won’t turn out well for you.”

I didn’t even bother looking to my parents for support. They knew the threats Trent held over me. Their greedy agendas took priority.

White noise buzzed in my ears, and my head pounded. As much as I tried to tune out my mother, her voice penetrated.

“…your thrift-store leggings, and what are you wearing on your feet? Are those biker boots? We have an image to uphold, and your disrespect will not—

“Kathleen.” Logan’s voice was syrupy soft, but everyone in the room stilled, my mother included. “Sit down and shut up.”

A vein bulged in her forehead, and I suppressed a smile. It was impossible to dismiss the lethal edge beneath his sharp black suit, but the people in this room would respect that. They’d want that kind of danger on their side.

“
I
am Kaci’s boss.” Logan relaxed against the chair back. “If she’s violating the dress code, or if her attitude is affecting her performance,
I
will deal with it.” He gave me a dispassionate glance and returned to her. When my mother sat, he continued, “As for the cable network’s impact on digital media, I believe it will gain an even greater competitive advantage in the marketplace if you used Dalton’s ideas.”