The Debt 3 by Kelly Favor Page B

that Scott would just as soon snap her neck if she annoyed him enough.
    “The thing is,” Raven began, wanting to
tell Scott about Skylar and why she couldn’t afford to burn bridges with Jake.
    “I don’t really care what the thing is,”
Scott interrupted.   He smiled again,
but it wasn’t real.   “You see, I run
a multi-billion dollar business, Miss Hartley.   Club Alpha is bigger than you can
imagine, and we have clients wealthier and far more powerful than Jake
Novak.   We have people we answer to,
and they don’t ever want to hear our company mentioned in the national
media.   Not ever.”
    “I’ve never spoken about you to anyone,”
she said.
    “But they’ll find out if you keep giving
them reasons,” Scott told her, sitting down and daintily sipping his water
again.   “The media is stupid, but
they have this amazing ability to sniff out the truth.   They’ll eventually realize how you met
Jake, no matter how hard you try and cover it up.   Already they know your name, and they’re
digging and digging.   Soon they’ll
find out all about your little mess you got into back in high school.”
    Raven’s blood ran cold.   Her entire body went numb.   “Little mess?”
    “Yeah, the one that led you to that nasty
hospital stay for six months.   The
little mess that made you run away from home, never to
turn back.   You think you can spin what
happened to you into some fairytale that makes Jake look like a hero?”   He barked a scoffing laugh at her.   “The reporters and bloggers and
bloodhounds will see it for exactly what it was.   They’ll tar and feather you and Jake
Novak will get hit right along with you.   It will end his career.”
    She couldn’t believe that Club Alpha knew
about her past.   It had been buried, all of it, scrubbed from the internet, and her
hospital records were confidential.   But then again, none of that would stop a powerful company like Club
Alpha.   They could buy and sell her
and she knew it.
    “I was a victim,” Raven said, finally,
trying to gather her composure.   “Everything
they said about me was lies .   I was bullied.   That’s the point.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong,” Scott replied.  
    “How am I wrong?   I lived it.”
    “What you lived doesn’t matter,” he
said.   “You must be a bigger fool
than I took you for.”
    “I’m not a fool,” she said, standing
up.   “And I’m leaving.”
    “Sit down before I put your head through
that window behind you.”   His voice
was like ice, and she knew he meant it.   She sat down immediately.
    “So you’re going to beat up a woman?” she
asked him, meeting his gaze.   “How courageous
of you.”
    He stood up and peered down at her,
unbutton his vest.   “My job isn’t to
be courageous.   My job is to keep my
clients and investors happy and make us all a lot of money.   And I’m not going to let one naïve,
silly little girl ruin an empire.   Just so we understand each other,” he said.
    “Understood,” she replied, her breath
whistling in her chest.
    “You’re to leave this office and outside
a car will be waiting to take you back to Boston,” he told her.   “Everything’s been arranged.   All you have to do is get inside and
leave.”
    “What about the fact that I have nowhere
to live, no money, no job?” she said.   “That’s because of you.   I
have nothing to go home to.”
    “Don’t you worry,” he said.   “We’ll get you your little job back,
find you an apartment, give you a couple dollars to
tide you over.   We’ll make sure you
don’t starve.   And all you have to do
is stop speaking to Jake Novak, forget you ever heard his name.   No interviews, no telling anyone—I
mean anyone—about what happened between you and him.   Forget you ever heard of Club Alpha and
we’ll try our best to undo the damage you’ve done to us.”
    “The damage I’ve done to you?   You’ve threatened me, had me
fired—“
    “Shut