Betraying The Bratva King

Talk to the Lawyer

“I need you to do this.”

“I can’t,” Briar shrugged at her close friend and principal of the school she taught at. “When the kids were registered for this competition, you agreed. I would train them up until the date they took off, but I wasn’t going with them. Dante was to be their chaperone, along with two parents, and I didn’t have to go.”

“Well, the parents are asking for both choir directors to be there. Dante is not going to be able to keep the kids under control the way you do.” Marie sighed dramatically, “in fact, the complaint is, they are worried he will get them into trouble. You are level-headed and blunt. You won’t let them get away with s**t and the parents know it. One parent actually said, and I quote, ‘he will be dragging them into dance clubs for inspiration.’ They love him as much as they love you but you two are yin and yang and it’s why our choir program flourishes like it does.”

“Marie, I can’t accompany the kids to Paris.”

“You have to.”

“Marie,” she pushed out of the chair and moved to the window overlooking the city of Baltimore. “You don’t seem to get it. The minute my passport gets flagged in Paris I’ll be locked up.”

“Which is why I want you to talk to Peyton’s dad.”

She grimaced, “Mr. Westbrook?”

“Look, his kid got sent to this school because nobody else would take her. This is where the hellions come to be tamed and Peyton likes you and has done a one-eighty under yours and Dante’s direction. He is a lawyer and he’s smart with connections all over the world. He can find out things and I think we need to ask him.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I do.”

“Fine,” she threw her hands up. Curiosity getting the better of her. “I’m not saying I’ll go because I’m bloody terrified, but I will talk to him.”

“Great, he’s here.”

“Now?” she flung back into the chair in disbelief. “You are going to fling this onto me now?”

“I am.” Marie pursed her lips. “We have a chance to get incredible amounts of funding from this Briar. We were invited to an international singing competition because you took these kids from city to regionals to state and won every division and then took second in Nationals. They deserve to go. Their parents aren’t happy you aren’t going too. The kids aren’t happy. If none of them are happy then it means they don’t let their kids go. If we go and compete and come in within the top five, which I know you and Dante are expecting, then the funding we can secure for our school will be immense. It’s important. We aren’t the private schools the rich and wealthy kids attend where money rains from the sky. We have to fight for every cent, and I need this. Please. If Evander Westbrook comes in here and tells us you could wind up in jail returning to Europe, then I will go with the kids.” She smirked, “but it means you need to stay at my house with my five kids. Now, my husband will not allow me to leave the country without him, so you’ll be there on your own with my five kids and my dog for two weeks. It means you’ll have to take our girls to dance and cheer on your own and the boys still are doing the martial arts thing. The preschooler is almost fully potty trained. Though, I could invite his mother to come stay to help you out.”

“Oh my god!” she shrieked and cut off Marie’s rambling. “Ugh, bring him in and let’s figure this out. I do not want to stay at your house with your mother-in-law and your demon spawn. The last time I watched them all, they painted my face with oil-based paints while I was sleeping, and it took two weeks for the blue to disappear.”

“They put a laxative in Joe’s oat milk last week. He ate a bowl of cereal, went to work for an important meeting and s**t his pants.”

“Oh god,” she groaned and stared at the ceiling as the school admin opened the office door and escorted Evander into the room. She flicked him a sideways glance before hunching over and burying her face in her palms.

“Ms. Brown, when you said you wanted to discuss a legal matter, I was thinking it might have to do with a student and you wanted guidance. I wasn’t expecting to see Ms. Rose here and especially not looking so harrowed.”

“Harrowed?” Briar looked up at the gorgeous man in his custom fitted suit and saw his gentle smile. She pursed her lips. She’d had more than one fantasy about the father of her current prized pupil as of late, but she’d never been one to flirt with the parents of her kids and she had definitely kept her tone and relationship professional. But it never hurt to look.

“It means stressed,” Marie commented smirking at her.

“I know what it means, Marie,” Briar glowered back. “I’m not stressed or harrowed. I’m pissed off. I don’t want to do this.”

“What is it you don’t want to do?” he didn’t wait for an invitation and sat in the chair next to her.

“I paid you a retaining fee,” Marie said, “so I need to confirm what is revealed in this room, remains in this room.”

“Did she sleep with a student?”

“f**k no!” Briar’s hand went over her mouth as she cursed. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to swear. No. I didn’t sleep with a student. Yuck.”

“Then there isn’t really anything else which would make me want to risk my oath so yes, what is spoken will remain in this room.” Evander gave a chuckle at her as she pulled her feet up onto the chair and tucked her chin atop her knees. “You are very tiny. How does a voice as big as yours come out of a woman so small?”

She frowned at him, “practice. Look, here’s the thing. Marie is insisting I go to Paris.”

“As do I and every other parent on the choir committee. Your co-teacher is brilliant as an instructor, but his supervisory skills are shit.” The man was brutally blunt.

“I can’t go to Paris.”

“Why not?”

“There is very likely an arrest warrant waiting for me the minute I step onto French soil.”

His smile fell away as he regarded her seriously, “I will need you to explain.”

She looked to Marie. “How much do I have to tell?”

“All of it.”

“Fine.” She threw her hands up and stared at the silver balls of the Newton’s cradle toy on Marie’s desk. She felt like the metal ball in the middle. “It’s no secret I am not the epitome of wealth and culture. I was dragged up not brought up and it’s why I know these kids and what they are up to.” This was embarrassing to reveal to a man she’d been ogling for months now. “My parents were con artists. Great at their craft and ingenious in their plotting. My sister, her name is Sully was as crafty as my parents, if not more. When she was eighteen, she sold her virginity to a very wealthy man for a hundred thousand dollars. My mother had set it up and Sully was completely on board. It was expected I would do the same when I turned eighteen. They were killed in an accident driving a car they had stolen when it hydroplaned. It left me and my sister unsupervised. When they died, she was twenty and I was ten.”

“I see.”

“It’s relevant to the story, I promise.” She sighed hating the way she felt inside. “Sully’s plans after my parents died became more elaborate. She felt the pressure of raising me. I didn’t attend school, but she made sure I always had the curriculum. I’m smart but my skills were more in music and dance. I challenged my GED at sixteen and got it. We couldn’t afford things like dance or singing lessons so she would take me to clubs and expose me to music and dancing so I could absorb as much as I could. I danced with the kids on the street, hip hop was a huge influence for me. She would sleep with club owners, especially the more affluent ones, because they bought her pretty things she would pawn for cash, and they would let me dance. By the time I was sixteen I was working many of the strip bars in New York and I always knew I’d be expected to give up the ghost by the time I was eighteen, but she made sure I didn’t date, and nobody touched me. I was her investment and she guarded me well. In the meantime, she was always scoping out her next big mark. I was rarely involved in any of her schemes because I’m really bad at lying. Usually, if anything, she used me as the bait. She would encourage people to feel sorry for her having to raise her sister because we were orphans.”

“This is no way for a kid to live, Ms. Rose.”

“Call me Briar,” she shrugged not even looking in his direction. “I feel like you’re about to know my deepest darkest secrets so first names are fine.” She was mortified.

“Okay Briar,” he reached out his hand and put it on her forearm, “you’re safe here. You can tell me anything.”

She nodded unable to look up. “When I turned eighteen, Sully was in a good place. She was dating a rich man from New York. Things were going well for her so auctioning off my virginity didn’t even get mentioned and I was grateful for it. Then the guy she was dating caught her having s*x with one of his security guards. He dumped her and we were back to square one. Sully blows through money like it’s nobody’s business. Every score we did together, I got half which I would deposit to an account she didn’t know I had. She assumed I blew through it like she did, but I was a hoarder of cash if you will.”

“Smart.”

“Yes. It’s what helped in the end. Anyway, one thing my parents had done before they died was to give us fake identities. I had two birth certificates. One with my real name, Briar Rose and another with my alias, Briar Patch.” She finally met his gaze. “I also had various other identities, but those two names were on legal documentation. At the time of this situation, I was going by Patch.”

“Briar Patch?” he quirked a dark eyebrow over his bright blue eyes.

“They thought it hilarious,” she shrugged. “Anyway, my sister started flirting with a guy at a club she was working at. He was filthy rich. More money than God rich and all she saw was dollar signs. He was smart though, but Sully was a con artist twenty-eight years in the making. She played the long game over a month, but her plan was ingenious or nefarious depending on your outlook.”

She took a breath, “she had a friend who worked in a fertility clinic. She convinced her to steal a concoction which she had to inject herself with the goal to increase her chances of getting pregnant. She managed to slip him some kind of drug concoction s***h aphrodisiac, get into his hotel room, tamper with his condoms, have one night with him and got knocked up. The day she missed her period she told him. By the time she was only weeks along, he had paternity proving the kid was his.”

“Jesus Christ.” Evander leaned backwards in horror. “She would bring a child into this?”

“It was never her intention to have the child. As I said he was super wealthy, and she wanted a payday. He married her in New York, flew us to France and we were living in the lap of luxury. She did everything under her fake name. When we got there, Sully realized one of the documents she’d signed was a prenup and it was iron clad. Without a baby or without staying in the marriage for three years, she got nothing. She came up with a new plan.”

“Go on, Briar.” Marie urged her as she paused, once again riveted by the story of her friend. It was straight out of a telenovela.

“The plan was for me to flirt and seduce her now-husband.”

“Seduce her husband?”

“Yeah. She was confident because he appeared to be protective of me, I could do it.”

“She wanted you to have s*x with her husband. You were eighteen?”

“He wasn’t having s*x with her and in her mind, he was bound to be frustrated making him an easy mark.”

“They weren’t having s*x?”

“No. He had said from the start their one time together was a mistake. It was clear to anyone observing he loathed her. They were married in name only. She told me she didn’t care because she was screwing one of his gardeners, but I also knew she had been with his driver too. At the end of the day, if a man bought her a bauble, she was game.”

“Your sister was something else.” He commented as if disgusted.

“I loved her and would have done anything for her. She was all I had in the world but the more we were in France, the more time I was stuck spending with her. In the past, she was always in and out and around, but never did we spend as much time together as we did then. I realized during the time we were there she was never going to let me go. Every conversation we had started with ‘you know what we should do next?’ I knew though if I did the job, then maybe with my half, I might be able to get away from her or at least lay low for a bit.”

“And the job was?” He wanted her to make it clear and it was obvious.

“Seduction. He would take my virginity and we would blackmail him for doing it.”

The silence from the attractive man in the next chair as she revealed how wicked and horrible a human being she really was. She waited for him to collect his coat and walk out the door.