Dirty Ties

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 demands? 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.”