Dirty Ties (6 page)

Red and blue lights reflected off the glass building a block away, the piercing sirens rising above the rumble of scattering motorcycles. Out of time.

I revved the throttle and spun out the rear wheel with the front brake locked, a fast way to scatter the masses. Then I bolted through an opening and gagged it the hell out of there.

The thermal sensor flashed red as I rounded a blind corner. I shifted left to avoid the oncoming bike and blinked. The silver Ducati.

My heart thumped, and my muscles twitched to flip a U-turn and pursue her.

Her bike wobbled, and her helmet jerked in my direction, whipping her blonde braid across her slender back. I slowed but didn’t turn my head. I didn’t have to. The rear camera showed her decelerating, her head rotating to watch my retreating backside.

I didn’t know what was more enthralling, knowing she was here for me or
not
knowing the reason why. She rolled in on too much money to be a reporter or undercover cop. The aftermarket upgrades on her bike alone cost fifty times more than the average bike here. She didn’t engage in the rowdy shit talking, wasn’t scantily dressed, and never flashed her tits like the women who frequented the races. Hell, in the nine months since I first noticed her, I’d never seen her remove her helmet.

She stood out like a sparkling jewel amidst the cesspool of thugs, gangsters, and bikers who arrived in groups. She came alone, watching the finish line from the seat of her flashy pasta rocket. No license plate. No apparent weapon. She might as well have waved a sign that said
Rob me, rape me.
She was either stupid or I was missing something crucial. Both notions fucked with my head.

A squad car swerved in behind me, blocking my view of her, and a man’s voice bellowed over the loudspeaker. “Pull over and step away from the bike.”

One of these nights, when I wasn’t bleeding all over the fucking place or hightailing it from the boys in blue, I’d follow her, corner her, then…what? My cock jerked in answer.

Caning it down State Street, I carved the next corner with a horizontal lean. Six blocks later, the flashing lights dimmed to tiny blurs in the backdrop. I veered onto the entrance ramp, merged onto 290, and opened the throttle.

Last thing I needed was a fling with some well-to-do, danger-seeking fangirl. She was probably just a bored housewife, looking for the kind of hard fuck she wasn’t getting from her uptight husband. And there I was, lollygagging after every goddamned race, flirting with the five-O on my ass in hopes of seeing her. A dangerous distraction.

My mother’s death had instilled a sense of purpose in my life. As much as racing channeled my anger and breathed life into my memories of her, the money I won funded her purpose.
My purpose.

When my mother died, she had no money, no family, and no gurgled final words to offer her only child. What she left me with was knowledge. Dangerous knowledge of buried scandals, corrupt corporations and politicians, and their hushed victims. Victims like her.

I weaved through interstate traffic, the anguish in my leg clawing through my body as the engine exerted max power. But I was free
and alive
to see another sunrise. To finish what my mother had started.

Kathleen Baskel glowered at me from across the boardroom table. Ugh, that look. It twisted with the same disgust she used to give my scuffed sneakers after I’d spent an afternoon chasing Collin along the banks of the Outer Drive Bridge.

I straightened my back in the stiff leather chair and offered my sweetest smile. She didn’t always look at me like she wanted to ship me back to boarding school. Sometimes, her dark blue gaze touched my face with warmth and approval. Didn’t it?

Who was I kidding? My mother was a cold-hearted bitch.

She smoothed a hand over her dyed auburn hair and gave the bob an extra pat at her jawline. Her fingers lowered to tap the armrest of her chair, and she blew out an irritated huff. Then she huffed again as if annoyed by the fact that
I
had caused her to expel a noisy breath. “Stop being so difficult, Kaci.”

A flush crept up my neck, brought on from her nasty tone and intensified by the unwavering scowl of the man in my periphery. The man I had yet to make eye contact with.

I folded my hands on the table. “I’m not being difficult,
Mother
. I’m merely stating facts you refuse to hear.”

Her lips formed a stern white line. “Collin—”

“Is not trying to vilify the Chicago PD.”

She flared her nostrils, the only bits on her Botoxed face that moved. “Interviewing Officer Dipshit on
our
television broadcast is—”

“Daniel Wyatt has twenty years on the force.”

“—a childish way to raise ratings.” She sat back and set her jaw. “Not to mention the upheaval it will cause among our supporters.”

There it was, the driving force behind this meeting. Whatever alliances our parents had built over the years controlled every goddamned thing at Trenchant.

I stared at the woman across the table, her slender frame showcased in a black pantsuit from the latest Chanel collection. The ostentatious diamond on her ring finger cost more than the average annual income in Illinois. She had more money than she could spend in a lifetime. What the hell did she gain from her
supporters
? Special favors? Popularity in her haughty clubs? Influence and attention?

She stunk of greed and decay. Problem was, I couldn’t prove if bribery, subterfuge, or anything unlawful occurred within these alliances. When they ordered me to shred documents beneath their watchful eyes, they had reasonable justification. Their subtle manipulations, like slanting Collin’s show and erasing numbers on financial statements, seemed to be within the realm of the law.

Legal, yet erratic and ambiguous, like pieces of a big, ugly secret I wasn’t privy to. It didn’t feel right, and I sure as fuck didn’t trust them.

Exhaustion pulled on my shoulders. God, I didn’t want to deal with her at eight o’clock in the morning. My morning dose of vitamins and caffeine hadn’t kicked in, given the constant urge to yawn and the overwhelming need to face-plant right on this table and steal a nap. Wouldn’t my mother love that?

When I’d crawled back in bed last night after the race, sleep had never come. My brain was in a permanent state of unrest, my body quivering on a tight-wire, longing for things so far out of my reach I was turning myself into a miserable tragedy. And I had five more meetings and a budget summary to evaluate before I could attempt another night’s sleep.

I rested my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Collin hosts personalities on all sides of the debates. It’s what keeps the show
honest
.”

Another huff. She stood and gathered her tablet and phone. “I don’t have time for this.”

Of course, she didn’t. Mrs. I’ve-got-asses-to-kiss-and-lives-to-ruin didn’t have time for anyone with a net worth below nine digits. She glanced at the silent presence at the head of the table. “Trent.”

Collin’s father lifted his chin but didn’t move his eyes from me, his gaze a phantom stroke over my face. “I’ll take it from here, Kathleen.”

My insides filled with ice. Fuck that. I jumped to my feet to follow my mother’s escape.

“Sit. Down.” His command thundered through the boardroom and wobbled my knees. The same tone he’d used when he caught his son in bed with me and another man.

I dropped in the chair and looked to my mother, hoping for the miracle of all miracles that some kind of maternal instinct would spark inside her frozen heart.

She paused in the doorway, her sapphire eyes a colder reflection of mine. They lowered to my featherweight wool dress, and her over-plumped lips tipped down at the corners. “If you want to succeed, start with the way you dress.”

The fuck? I fingered the square neckline at my collarbone, brushed a hand down the unwrinkled indigo fabric, and tugged at the knee-length hem. I was wearing a modest Armani classic for Christ’s sake.

The door clicked behind her, and the automatic lock engaged, shutting me in with the last man I wanted to share air with…alone.

He stood, one hand in the pocket of his designer gray slacks, and approached with a nonchalance that ratcheted my shoulders to my ears. He trailed his fingers over each chair back he passed, his sharp hazel eyes laser-locked on mine.

My nerves caught fire, and my fingernails dug into my palms. It was shameful how easily he reduced me to the little girl who’d always fumbled in his presence, like when I’d spilled punch on his white carpet and chipped Collin’s tooth with a badly-aimed tennis racket. Like when I walked in on Trent banging the nanny.

When he reached my side, my ribs compressed as panic expanded my lungs, but I kept my breaths quiet and steady.

He lowered in a crouch and swiveled my chair to face him. “How are things with my son?” His knuckle grazed my knee. I jerked away, but he caught my thigh beneath the hem of the skirt, his fingers clenching in a bruising grip. “Is he…satisfying you?”

My stomach roiled at his taunting tone. I grabbed his wrist and shoved, but my strength was no match for his. He was a physically fit, youthful-looking sixty-five-year-old, with thick blond hair, polished skin, and barely a crinkle fanning from the corners of his yellow eyes. He must’ve spent a fortune on cosmetic surgery, hair plugs, and personal trainers.

I wanted to look away from him because his proximity made me sick. But he did this thing with his eyes, flickering them in a stare down meant to intimidate, to make me vulnerable. He thought he’d shackled me in a sexless marriage and assumed, in my desperation, I could be seduced by his vile attractiveness.

Acid simmered in the back of my throat. I’d been deflecting his inappropriate touches since the first buds of breasts swelled on my chest, and I liked to think I could continue to stave him off.

But his advances were growing bolder, becoming more frequent and making me hyper-vigilant, jittery, and fucking terrified to come to work.

I shoved harder against his hand, but the more I resisted, the higher his fingers climbed. He wanted a struggle—I could see it glimmering in his eyes—and I refused to play his sick games.

Funny that, seeing how the contract forbid me to cheat on Collin, the initiator of the whole damned arrangement encouraged me to break it.

I released my grip on his wrist. I’d avoided him as much as I could over the years, but he was part of my family, my employer, and he was malicious enough to hurt me, or kill me, if I refused a direct order.

Still, I had my limits. I would never willingly spread my legs for this man. It was the unwilling part, however, that corkscrewed my stomach every time he cornered me. I had threatened on multiple occasions that I would file charges if he assaulted me.

How long would that threat ward him off? Would anything stop him? Certainly not my parents. Their allegiance was, and always would be, with Trent Anderson and Trenchant Media. As if they were part of a feudalist system, where lords and ladies offered their daughter in marriage in return for the king’s protection and power.

As his thumb stroked the crease between my clenched knees, graphic thoughts of castration strengthened my backbone and raised my chin. “If you want Collin to make changes to tonight’s segment, tell him yourself.”

“That’s what I have you for, darling.” His other hand joined the first, his palms inching up my thighs and taking the skirt with it. “He listens to you, and you listen to me.”

I pressed against the seat back and squeezed my legs even tighter as sweat gathered between my breasts. “If you don’t remove your hands, you’ll regret it.” It was a hollow threat, but I would
not
give him the sobbing kind of fight he wanted.

His quiet chuckle prickled goosebumps across my arms. “Naïve girl. You forget who I am. Who my friends are.”

He was wrong about that. His powerful friends were the reason I hadn’t followed through on my murderous imaginings. And to call them powerful was an understatement. Often, I eavesdropped on snippets of conversations between Trent and my father in the den after dinner. Supposedly, he and my father met up with their secret fraternity of prominent CEOs, former U.S. presidents, oil barons, and royal families. They gathered in an undisclosed location to partake in heavy drinking, collared sex slaves, and bizarre rituals while hashing out their plans for the future of the world.

Rumors. Fucking hearsay without evidence or verification. I knew better than to entertain that shit.

With a deep breath, I clenched and relaxed my fingers. Me against whatever egos stood behind Trent would not keep Collin out of prison. Nor would it stop our parents from manipulating his show.

I closed my eyes and bit out the words he was waiting for. “I’ll speak to Collin about tonight’s segment.”

His hands retreated, straightening my skirt. “I know you will.” He rose and towered over me, an embodiment of antediluvian cloaks and secret guilds, dressed to deceive in modern Gucci threads. “There’s another matter I need you to handle.”

I met his cold gaze, holding my face as passive as possible, while my insides trembled with dread. These behind-closed-door requests prodded me to resist, flee, do something that didn’t make me feel like his accomplice. But the consequences chained me to the chair.