Chapter 9
9
T he address my blackmailer gave me turned out to be some kind of private helipad with a swanky lounge to wait in, but there was no one else there except a pilot who escorted me silently out to the helicopter.
When we landed, he pointed me from the helipad to an enormous estate house. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting for this guy’s “office”—it irked me that I still had no idea what his name was—but a palatial estate an hour from the city wasn’t it. I’d tried searching the address online, but it was the strangest internet black hole I’d ever encountered. I couldn’t track down any records, anything associated with it, even a satellite image. I hated being this unprepared.
I followed the obvious path to the front door, feeling nervous and overwhelmed. But neither of those words was entirely accurate…I was scared shitless, scared in a way I’d never been scared before.
I was terrified of what he might do to me but even more afraid that I might not hate every moment of it.
He had enough evidence to send me to prison, so he basically owned me…and there was no escape from it because I’d never be sure he’d destroyed the footage even if he said he had. I’d made a serious, unforgivable mistake.
You’re a Bryson. Get it together.
If he was going to play dirty, I could do the same. An enemy was letting me into what appeared to be his home, and I had every intention of exploiting every last weakness to get information that I could use later. Mutually assured destruction was the only way to free myself from the power he had over me with that footage.
I had to find a way to ruin him.
The area around the entrance to the house featured enormous wooden double doors with marble sculptures tastefully placed around the space. I rescinded the word tasteful once I got a closer look. Every sex act I could conceive of was being performed by said sculptures in far more graphic detail than the Italian masters would’ve gotten away with. It was just subtle enough to be spectacular and must’ve cost an absolute fortune.
I guess being a manipulative bastard pays well…
I’d gotten myself to the front door by not thinking about what would happen on the other side of it too much. I’d had smaller problems to focus on, like what to wear and how to get here. A demure black wool coat had covered a dress that might’ve raised some questions, since it was sexier than my usual style. Now that I was standing on the precipice, my heart was pounding.
I blew out a shaky breath and knocked on the door, fully expecting a staff member to answer, and was stunned when the bastard himself opened it wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung sweatpants, looking like he’d just gotten out of bed.
“Your three hours started when I got on the helicopter,” I said, glancing at my watch.
He ushered me inside and held out a hand for my coat. “If that’s how you want to play it…”
I shrugged off my coat and placed it into his waiting palm, managing not to actually touch him. He took in the teal dress I’d chosen after much debate about what one should wear to face their blackmailer. Being a femme fatale best suited my mood, so it was a tastefully curve-hugging, fifties-style dress, but it didn’t show an inch of skin between my throat and my knees.
“You dressed up for me, darling. I like that.”
His praise shouldn’t have made me want to preen. It was too easy to relax around him, too comfortable to let my guard down, but I could see through his manipulation now. This was the same man who’d set me up last night and wouldn’t hesitate to use the evidence against me.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have a date later.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “With Kevin King?”
“You have to ask? Don’t you supposedly know everything?”
His eyes flashed. “Everything I care to know.”
Ouch .
“Oh yeah?” I challenged. “Do you know what Kevin King is into? That would be extremely useful information to have…”
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll find out for you, princess…”
“Wait, don’t actually go snooping?—”
He turned and headed straight for a magnificent staircase in the center of the foyer and started to climb. I followed him without question, in awe of the flashes of marble and dark wood I saw as we walked. It was an interesting cross between Versailles-level finery with Ancient Greek extravagance and maybe a dash of High Renaissance charm thrown in. The man had expensive taste.
“I think I was expecting a dungeon or something,” I said begrudgingly as he pulled open a heavy door.
“Maybe you just need to expand your understanding of what a dungeon looks like,” he said with a wink. He gestured for me to follow him into the room.
It was…an office. Again, a lavish, enormous, richly appointed office…but an office just the same. No implements of torture on the walls, no sex swing, nothing at all like I’d lain awake imagining the night before. Just a huge desk in the center, a few smaller workspaces around the edges of the room, and a seating area close to the far wall.
“What is it you do for work?”
He perched on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “You don’t know?”
“Unless you bought all this with blackmail and hush money, I have no idea what you do professionally.”
He grinned. “Let me know when you figure it out.”
Cryptic, manipulative bastard.
His titles just kept growing, and still I didn’t have a name for him. But I wasn’t about to ask, not after that bullshit answer.
“Can I get you anything? Water, booze, fresh cherries from my orchard? They’re perfectly sweet and ready to be picked.”
I rolled my eyes. “You think I haven’t heard every variation of a cherry joke there is to hear as a twenty-eight-year-old virgin?”
He frowned. “Not a joke, Juliet. Actual cherries. One of these days, you should examine why you interpret everything as innuendo… Some repressed feelings perhaps?”
Infuriating, cryptic, manipulative bastard!
“Everything is innuendo with you, even if, in that one instance, you were being literal.”
“If you say so…” He circled the desk to stand behind a massive leather desk chair and placed his hands on the back of it. “Please, have a seat.”
Everything in the room felt suspiciously straightforward compared to the wicked things I’d lain awake imagining the night before. “Why?” I asked, eyeing the chair like it might have secret restraints that would pop out and trap me the second I sat down.
He sighed and circled back around the desk to flip a laptop open. “There’s a discrepancy in my books. I want you to find it.”
He wanted me to do accounting ? I was so stunned, you could’ve blown me over with a feather. Of all the depraved things I’d imagined him forcing me to do…
“You expect me to do it here? This kind of review could take weeks.”
“You have…” He grabbed my wrist and gently turned it over to look at my watch. “Two hours and fifteen minutes.”
I think you’ll find you want more time.
He’d played me once again.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“You’re the one who cut the time in half. Do it or?—”
“Or you’ll release the tape?” I snapped, unable to keep the frustration from my tone.
His dark eyes flared with mockery. “So dramatic … Do it, or you’ll have to come back another day to finish.”
I huffed out an angry sigh and flopped down on the chair. Bickering was only going to waste time, and I didn’t want to be here a minute longer than we’d agreed.
Besides…he was giving me access to his books!
I pushed closer to the computer and started to click through the documents. As soon as he left the room, I’d take pictures of as much of it as I could to review later.
Like he was reading my mind, he held out a hand. “Phone.”
I rolled my eyes and gave it to him. It had given me the illusion of safety, but I’d have to be in mortal peril before I called someone for help and was forced to explain what I’d been doing there. My blackmailer was dangerous, but I was useless to him dead.
It took me a little while to get my bearings with all the documents since much of the information was hidden. It was a giant mess of a data dump and included a vast number of transactions.
Was he an art dealer? An arms dealer? Some kind of fixer?
Everything was labeled with a numeric code, so there were no personal names or business names, nothing I could use against him. Of course, he’d be too clever for that. I’d have to be smarter.
He’d moved to the seating area, but I could feel him watching me from across the room. I looked up to find him sprawled almost exactly like he’d been in the boathouse, assessing me with those predatory eyes.
“Are you planning to watch me the whole time?”
He stretched, drawing my eyes to the wiry definition of his abs. “Of course not. I’m far too busy and important for that.”
“Then why are you still watching me?”
“Because I can. Is it distracting?”
Fuck yes, it’s distracting! He had all the power in this situation, and I hated it.
I kept scrolling through records, exporting things to a clean spreadsheet for comparison, until he stood up abruptly.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed before my meetings start.” He said it with a teasing, superior air that made me wonder just what kind of meetings he’d be taking.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from him as he strode across the room, parading his physique in those stupid sweatpants: His lean waist that dipped into a V of muscle at his hips. The outline of his package. The rounded shape of his ass. It was obscene how revealing a simple pair of sweatpants could be. Just as he was about to leave, he looked up and gave me a tiny wink that told me he knew I’d been watching…and that I appreciated the view.
Damn him.
When he shut the door, I sat there being eaten alive by the temptation to snoop. There was no way he didn’t have cameras in here. He’d probably left on purpose just so he could humiliate me by showing me the snooping footage later.
Fuck that. Not this time, asshole. I’m going to beat you at your own game.