Rocking With The Bratva Brat

Almost Busted

Hadlee quickly made her way Eric’s dressing table and emptied her handbag setting the items down and stopped to look at the photograph on his table. She wanted to rip it down and tear it into a million pieces. Peyton Westbrook. She wished with all her heart he could forget the b***h, but she’d heard him say more than once you don’t forget the people who made you remember who you are. Peyton Westbrook, according to Eric, made him focus on what was important to him, more than a pretty face, fame or fortune. Family. He insisted he hated the woman, and the photo was always around to remind him to put his family ahead of drama queens and groupies.

More than once she’d overheard her father and Eric talking about yet another stunt the other woman had pulled to try to gain Eric’s attention. She knew everything Peyton did now infuriated Eric to the nth degree but short of killing the woman, there wasn’t much he could do. She wished she was tough like Gabby instead of squeamish like her mother. She would love to do for Eric what she knew her father would do for her mother in the same situation.

She gave a shudder though at the notion of killing anyone and then picked up a pile of headshots Eric must have been signing earlier. He was gorgeous. Since she was seven years old, he had been part of her life.

Initially, it was as a student attending the choir program her mother once directed for at risk youth, she’d watched the teenage boy with the leather coat who rode a motorcycle everywhere lose himself every time he sang in her mom’s program.

Then when they moved to New York, Eric also moved in order to go to school. He started working for her father in a nightclub, this one actually, she considered as she looked around the room, singing two nights a week to build up experience while going to college.

Hadlee once overheard her mother commenting to Shamia’s mom Marie she often felt Eric was exactly what she imagined her Aunt Sully’s baby could have grown up to be.

Her mother insisted he and his roommate Shane joined them for dinner at least once a week. Eventually the boys were around multiple nights a week. Hadlee would sit at the dining room table while they would all laugh, and the two teenage boys soaked up the affection and attention of an adult male for the first time in their lives.

Then one day when she was thirteen, she’d noticed Eric’s Adam’s apple while he was singing a song in her mother’s music room. Working on a melody with Dante, her mother’s other best friend, Eric singing and holding a long note with his head tilted backwards, lost in the feeling of the emotion, she felt her knees shake. Her crush started to escalate in the most wicked of ways.

It wasn’t long after, she was imagining kissing his full lips or touching his thick dark hair. When he won his first Grammy, she’d watched from home on the television, her eyes glued to the rocker who thanked her Mom and Dad for believing in him when the rest of the world was ready to give up. Emotional, despite his supposed rock star persona, he’d let tears fill his eyes as he dedicated his win to them.

Not long after he’d done a cover of Rolling Stone and he’d been bare chested wearing only leather pants and holding a guitar and a caption quoting him to be the newest bad boy of the rock world. By the time she was fifteen she was doing things to herself to his music videos that her girlfriends from school did to porn.

He’d been part of her family for ten years. When he wasn’t on tour, he still came for dinner at their house multiple times a week. He was even given his own room in the house. He was the godfather to one of her younger brothers. He’d been in the audience for every play and performance he could attend of hers when he was in town.

Her foray into taking what she wanted, specifically him, started when he’d stayed in “his” room at their home in Manhattan and she’d stolen one of his t-shirts to sleep in. Six or seven months later, he complained he’d misplaced his favorite hoodie and asked whether he might have left it at the house. He hadn’t. She’d stolen it from the back of the SUV where he’d forgotten it after ripping it off to be with one groupie or another she supposed. One time she’d gotten really bold and noted that Clarette, their housekeeper, was folding laundry and asked her to take up the few things Eric left behind to his room and she’d stolen his clean boxers. Those boxers and the t-shirt even now were her favorite things to wear to bed.

But if he noticed she was anything other than a child, then she was a scholastic genius and anyone who knew her knew it was not the truth. Eric’s reaction to her was always a hair tug, a sideways hug or to tell introduce her to someone as his “adoptive sister” which always grated on her nerves. She would always smile politely but inside she would be boiling.

She loved him. She loved him so much she ached with it and by the time she was seventeen, she decided it was time to really take things into her own hands. She started out slow by leaving him poems and love notes. Eventually they grew erotic. Now two months shy of her twentieth birthday, the things she’d been doing would make most people cringe, but now her.

Hadlee had even grown as bold as to text him and they chatted all the time about everything from his new music to the stresses which came with performing and being on tour all the time to very naughty and wicked sexting.

If Eric Byrd knew he was texting dirty messages about his thick c**k to the girl he told everyone was his adopted kid sister, he would likely suffer a stroke. Her plan though was to gradually drop him hints so that after her twenty-first birthday, fourteen months away, when she finally revealed herself, he was well-prepared and ready to accept her as a woman and the person he’d fallen in love with, albeit virtually.

Her friends thought she was crazy but what did they know. Her parents were always in her business. She wasn’t allowed to date like her friends. She wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unaccompanied like her friends were. Her best times in life were when her parents were away on business or on vacation somewhere exotic when her father felt her mother needed to recharge. Then she could go and do the things she wanted with the girls while her guards thought she was in her room moping.

The sound of Eric’s laugh coming down the hall made her connect eyes with her reflection in the mirror. “Holy s**t, he’s early.” She gave a yelp, looking around frantically for a hiding place. She raced to the sofa and jumped behind it, curling into a ball, praying he was not coming in with his full entourage.

She closed her eyes as the man of her fantasies entered his dressing room and made his way to the sofa where she was hiding and flopped down on it, causing it to slide backwards an inch and crushing her between the furniture and the wall. She bit her lip to keep from making a noise. She was screwed. Her father was going to skin her alive and worse, Eric was going to prematurely find out who she was and be revolted. He wasn’t ready for her to be a woman yet, especially his woman.

“I’m so f*****g tired,” Eric complained in a loud moan. “It’s going to be fantastic to take the break after this set of shows. At first, I thought Liev was a d**k for insisting I take some time off but he’s right. The more I think of it, the more a six-month sabbatical sounds like heaven.”

“He’s like a father to you, huh.”

She heard Neville’s voice approaching behind the couch and she closed her eyes. She felt him nudge her with his big toe. She opened one eye to peer up at him. He didn’t look down on her, but she knew from his stance she was busted. His kick wasn’t an accident. She had a feeling Gabby might have tipped him off to stop Eric from catching her or better, he was the reason they got into the club so easily. He might work for her Dad, but Neville had been her friend, like Shamia since they were babies.

“You should close your eyes man. Put your headphones on and zone out for ten. Do the centering thing Briar always talks about.”

“Good idea. Can you give me kick in ten?”

“Yup, I’ll watch your door to make sure you’re not disturbed.”

Neville waved her to run to the door once he made sure Eric’s eyes were closed.

She tore through the back corridors of the club in search of the girls and found them waiting outside by the back door, with Neville’s partner standing there with his arms crossed.

“Busted?” Gabby asked wide eyed. “Tell me Neville headed him off in time. We’re not all going to Orlov prison, are we?”

“Nah. But I think you’re going to need to take one for the team.” She swallowed the vast quantity of saliva accumulating in her throat.

Shamia groaned as Neville came out and pointed at them furiously, his eyes glinting with rage.

“Neville, don’t tell Dad. Please.” Shamia folded her hands in front of her pleadingly.

“I won’t but I want something in return.” He cast a wicked glance in Gabby’s direction. “Someone has to pay the piper and I’m an Orlov soldier, sweetheart. I’m not above taking p*****t in flesh.”

Gabby held his gaze and then sighed, “fine. I know what you want but for the love of God, you have to use more lube this time. Last time I couldn’t sit for a week.”

As Shamia squealed and Gabby laughed and got dragged into Neville’s arms to be kissed soundly, Hadlee considered she had the best friends in the world. Now all she needed to do was get her man to round out her circle. All in due time.