Rocking With The Bratva Brat

Busted by Mom

Hadlee entered the house, her fingers crossed her mother was too busy with one of the four boys to notice the time.

“Hadlee Marie.”

She punched the air frustratedly as the disembodied voice floated from the kitchen.

“Hey Mom.”

“You do know the minute you ditch security detail I get notified right?” her mother came out of the kitchen wearing an apron and her hair in a high ponytail. Her mother never seemed to age. Briar Rose Orlov still looked twenty in Hadlee’s opinion. “Where did you go?”

“Tried to sneak in to see Eric’s intimate and interactive concert.” She decided the truth, or a version of it, was far easier to go with at this point. “Neville busted us and sent us packing.” She considered Gabby’s ass was going to take huge p*****t based on the way her friend packed his swim trunks but was quite confident her friend was up for the challenge.

“Who is us?”

“Me, Shamia and Gabby.”

“You know the rules. You’re not twenty-one. You have no right to be in a club.”

“Yet, you were stripping in a club younger than I am now,” she met her mother’s gaze directly. “I wasn’t going to drink. I simply wanted to see Eric perform. I’ve seen him in concert but not one of these intimate sessions and I really wanted to see it.”

“Your father is not in agreement with you setting foot in any of his clubs, not since the night you convinced the bar staff to give you liquor.”

She knew it was because he also did business in those clubs, and she was old enough to notice what was going down. Rolling her eyes she snorted, “he’ll take the boys to shoot people, but I can’t go watch a concert.”

“Hadlee,” her mother protested her words.

“Save it, Mom. Different rules for boys and girls in this house. If you think I don’t know Dad will have them in clubs long before they’re twenty-one, then you’re as deluded as he thinks I am.”

“Hadlee, your father is trying to keep you safe.”

“Sure,” she waved at her, “are we done, or can I go to bed now?”

“Hadlee, I don’t like this.”

“What do you want from me Mom?” she looked at her mother’s shocked expression. “Dad has made it clear I’m good to debate with but I’m not brilliant like Dragan. He’s nine and Dad respects him more than me. He works so hard to give all your students these great opportunities but all I get is lectures about appreciating my education more. I swear if I was some ruffian off the street Dad would pay more attention to me.”

“That’s not fair, Hadlee,” Briar whispered.

“The truth doesn’t need to be fair, Mom.”

“Your father loves and adores you.”

“Except, I don’t kill or maim people, and I don’t need saving like your students so I’m of no value to him other than as a princess. All he wants is for me is to attend college and get my fine arts degree and then what? I asked him if I could release a single from his studio when I graduated high school as a graduation present and he said no. I asked if I could try out for the off-Broadway show, and he refused.” She mocked his voice, “docha, study and get your degree and we will talk next steps when I know you are serious about your career goals.” She curled her lips up in disdain, “dickhead.”

“Hadlee!” Briar’s eyes widened at the insult. “What has gotten into you?”

“Other than being a freaking Disney Princess stuck in a gilded tower with stricter than hell parents? Nothing. What the heck is the good of being richer than ninety-eight percent of the world if I’m not allowed to live? I’m the only virgin in my college, Mom. I’m not allowed to date. I’m not allowed to leave the house unaccompanied. I’m not allowed to live.”

“You’re only nineteen.”

“I’ll be twenty in eight weeks. In my college class there are two women my age who have kids.”

“I want more for you than what I went through.”

“Me too!” she snapped at her mother’s argument. “I’m not going to replicate your mistakes, Mom. I simply want to live my life, and I’m not allowed because I’m treated worse than the Italian mafia princesses in Jersey. At least they have arranged marriages to look forward to. Though with my luck Dad would arrange my marriage to some old impotent man named Boris who he knows will never touch me intimately and I’ll trade this luxurious prison for one in Russia with some dude who grunts instead of speaks all in the name of a family treaty.”

“That’s enough,” Briar snapped. “I don’t know what got into you tonight, but I’m done listening to this. Go to your room.”

“You do know I voted last election, right? The country considers me an adult and you just sent me to my room like I’m five.”

“Then stop acting like you’re five.”

“Hard to do when you treat me like a child.”

“Hadlee, go! It’s eleven and an hour past the time you’re supposed to be home. You were already grounded for sneaking in at two by climbing up the drainpipe.”

Hadlee flipped her hair off her shoulder and stomped up the stairs, “as if you didn’t know exactly where I was because Dad has me wearing a microchipped necklace like a f*****g dog collar.”

“Did you just curse at me?”

She ignored the question and slammed into her bedroom, the windows rattling with the force of her rage. She locked the door and kicked her heel against the wood and then kicked off her boots and stormed into her bathroom. Her chest was heaving as she stared in the mirror and looked at her reflection.

She was the spitting image of her father and her grandmother. Nearly five foot ten, lean with long limbs she knew she drew attention wherever she went. Platinum blonde hair which didn’t need to be dyed at all to maintain the color with bright blue eyes often drew gazes, much to her father’s irritation.

Her complexion was flawless and if she wanted, she could go without make-up and not worry about needing a filter for a selfie. If she made one complaint it was her lips being a bit too thin, but she knew she was a beautiful woman. She heard it all the time. The problem was her family, including the extended family, felt she was a beautiful child and more importantly, as if she didn’t have two brain cells to rub together.

She wasn’t brilliant like Shamia or as studious as Gabby. Gabby didn’t have the same brilliant mind as Shamia who could multiply large numbers in her head like Matilda from the musical, but Gabby was very studious with great ability to focus. Since Hadlee’s grades in maths and sciences weren’t the same as her friends, her parents tended to think she was dumb. Her mother was always encouraging her to remember she wasn’t less than someone because she didn’t have the same learning abilities as other people, but her mother also argued with her all the time she didn’t think she tried hard enough.

She was tired of them all thinking she didn’t know what she wanted, or she was some flighty blonde airhead without a plan. She didn’t want to be a pop star or even a movie star. She wanted to work in theatre. She wanted to be on Broadway in New York or to work in London in the West End. She didn’t mind starting at the bottom and doing auditions and finding the roles. She didn’t need Daddy’s money to get her foot in the door. She would rather do it on her own merit.

Instead, they pushed her to get her education first. She wasn’t of the opinion the education was useless. It was, in fact, incredible to be attending the performing arts college she’d been accepted into. With only a year left of her program soon she’d be graduated with a degree in fine arts. However, all of her classmates gained real world experience, taking auditions, busking and performing outside of school. She wasn’t allowed.

It wasn’t fair because she’d been told more than once, she was incredibly talented. In middle school, a producer watched her in the school’s production of Annie, where she’d played Ms. Hannigan, and wanted to sign her to a contract for a tv show. They’d begged her parents to let her audition for the role saying they knew she’d be perfect, but her parents refused.

School first. Fame second.

She admitted, being on television wasn’t her end goal. She wanted the thrill of the live performances and to hear the audience clap for her and the theatre troupe. She wanted the comradery which came with working on a long-standing play and reading reviews, even if they were shitty ones, about her performances.

Yet, she was still being driven to and from school every day by security enforcers. She’d been so protected, so helicopter-parented since her father came into their lives when she was nine, there wasn’t a day which went by where she didn’t resent her stifling lack of freedom. It wasn’t only her parents either. Her father was the self-proclaimed king of the bratva. Pakhan was a word she’d heard some of his extended family call him and they followed his every command to the letter. She knew which neighborhoods to avoid because they were filled with his followers who would report back everything she did, all out of a duty to her father.

What her family didn’t know was she went to private school with some of the Italian princesses and from middle school until she graduated high school, she and those princesses took turns covering for one another.

It was how they survived. For example, right now, one of the daughters of a Don in Jersey, whose father meticulously counted every penny she spent, was using cash Hadlee paid her for managing to secure her a gorgeous set of lingerie she’d picked up visiting family in Rome. Hadlee’s father preferred dealing in cash instead of credit cards and while she was given a credit card of her own, he often pushed money into her hands. The cash usually ended up in one of the other princesses’ pockets in exchange for goods from their neck of the woods.

One of her favorite things she’d ever bartered was a box of dildos. Her mother was furious to find out Hadlee charged three thousand dollars on a s*x toy site, mostly because her Dad questioned Briar on what the hell their daughter was doing. She told her mother she’d purchased a high end set of personal devices because she was a woman and her inability to date was unfair. Her mother backed off mumbling something about not wanting to explain it to her dad.

She’d taken those toys and bartered them for things like wigs to sneak out in, a high-end pair of sunglasses which covered half her face and most importantly, the trap phone she kept hidden in her walk-in closet.

The thought of the phone caused her to push away from the counter. It was almost time for Eric’s break in his concert.

She walked to the closet and dug out her phone and as if the man himself knew she’d turned the phone on, ellipsis appeared on the screen and then the message appeared.

“Naughty, naughty.”