AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No,” she said. She glanced at him, taking solace in that gleam of pure blue the way she always did. “But I will be.”
She was so close now. So close. Her revenge was within her grasp—and for the first time in all these years, it occurred to her to wonder what was waiting on the other side. What came after revenge?
But she heard the conference door open behind her, and she shoved the odd thought aside. She’d deal with it later.
“Isn’t this a surprise?”
It was the same voice it had always been. Kind and fatherly, with all that malevolence beneath. The sound of it swept over Zoe like nausea the way it usually did, but she’d expected that. She waited for her knees to feel firm again, for her stomach to stop its pitch and roll, for the automatic wave of clamminess to subside.
Only then did she turn to face him.
Jason Treffen stood inside the glass doors of the conference room, smiling at her the exact same way he always had. That same trim, athletic figure in the same Italian sort of suit. The same hint of citrus-scented cologne around him that made her feel as if she was choking. Those same pale eyes of his, flat and cold. Reptilian.
Then he dismissed her with a single glance, looking at Hunter instead, as if Zoe was worthless. Invisible. Dirt unworthy of further notice.
But she’d expected that, too. She couldn’t prevent the wave of familiar, sickening self-loathing that dismissal triggered, as he’d meant it to do, the bastard. But she’d known it was coming, so it helped her keep her sharp smile in place while it crashed over her.
“Hunter,” Jason said warmly. “I’m so happy you dropped by. It’s been too long. I only have a few minutes tonight, but if you come by the house—”
“Like old times?” Hunter asked softly. Too softly. “Will we play some pool, drink some whiskey and laugh uproariously as you tell me how my life could be if I follow your shining example?”
Zoe watched Jason absorb that. The dark irony and leashed ferocity in Hunter’s voice, at complete odds with the way he stood there next to her, one shoulder propped up against the wall as if he was wholly at his ease.
“Barring that, you’re welcome to make an actual appointment to see me here.” Jason’s voice was soft, polite. “I always have time for you, Hunter.”
That faint emphasis on the word you. As if it was embarrassing that Hunter had brought a filthy creature like Zoe here, but Jason was too well-mannered to mention it directly.
He was a master at these games. He always had been. On some level, she knew she’d learned more from him than she wanted to admit. But the benefit of that was he’d inadvertently taught her everything she needed to know to beat him.
As he was about to discover.
“Should he make that appointment with Iris?” Zoe asked, cool and unbothered, as if she was unaware of all the tensions and undercurrents that seethed in the room between them. “Wasn’t that the name of the girl who brought us in here? I’m sure I saw you with her at a party not long ago, Jason. You remember.”
There was a flicker in Jason’s lizard eyes, then a different edge to that smile, and she knew she’d surprised him. Because she’d called him Mr. Treffen when he’d owned her and because this was the first time she’d initiated a conversation with him in a very long while.
But he looked at Hunter when he replied, “Iris is a legal assistant, not a secretary. She doesn’t book my appointments.”
Legal Assistant, Zoe thought then. Such a fussy title for such a deep, dark, damaging hole.
“Who does?” Hunter asked, in that deceptively light tone. He looked very large and very dangerous looming there, even in one of his absurdly expensive suits that had been tailored to make him look debonair instead of deadly. Like an uncaged animal pretending to be tame, New York spread out behind him like a great and glorious cape, and Zoe knew none of that was lost on Jason. “Book your appointments, I mean.”
Jason’s head tilted slightly to one side, as if he was seeing Hunter for the first time. “Did you really come to see me after all these years to discuss my support staff?”
“That depends on what kind of ‘support’ you think we’re talking about. I’ll give you a hint. It’s not clerical.”
Jason regarded him for a long, tense moment, then turned that slithery, horrible look on Zoe. And she forced herself to breathe, to really look back at this man, this vicious little man, and see him.
Not the savior she’d thought he was when she’d met him. Not the terrible monster he’d become. Not the tormentor he’d been all these years since, showing up when she least expected it, hurting her and threatening her and terrorizing her at his whim, for his own sick amusement.
