Betraying The Bratva King

The Plot Thickened

“I’m going to need the entire plan, Briar.” Evander’s voice had turned professional. She knew as a lawyer for the rich and fabulous and local politicians, he had probably seen many things, but his tone told her he was startled by her revelations.

“She wanted me to flirt with him every time she was away from us, which after the first week was a lot. He had said more than once, in front of her, it was a shame I had been stuck with her as a parental figure. He frequently reassured me he’d take care of me. He even said I would be allowed to attend college. In fact, he set me up within a week of being there to do an online course. He told me he liked me because, unlike my sister, I was kind.”

“He cared for you.”

She downplayed the affection, “Like a big brother, I imagine, though I never had brothers. Sully, being Sully, wanted me to use his kindness and affection as a means to get money from him.”

“You were supposed to flirt with him, have s*x with him and then use it to blackmail him?”

It was bad enough she knew the plan, but hearing another person verbalize it made her sick to her stomach. She gave an uncomfortable nod. “Sully said we would video it and use it to blackmail him for ten million dollars.”

He hissed in disbelief. “Ten million?”

“She joked it was the most expensive cherry on the planet, but it was ripe for picking. She also said it was chump change to him.” She shuddered with revulsion at the memory of her sister’s words.

“Chump change?”

“Like I said. He had a lot of money. He was by far the biggest mark she could have found.”

“She believed you could do this. Seduce him? He was obviously older than you?”

“He was thirty-one. She was twenty-eight. I was eighteen.”

“Your sister encouraged you to flirt and try to sleep with a man who was thirteen years older than you?”

“Yes.”

“You agreed?”

“The thing is, it was easy for me because I genuinely liked him. I could flirt with him with ease. I enjoyed being around him. I had a crush which developed into something more. It was taboo and exciting and,” she was ashamed, “I felt powerful having such a man so attentive to me. She was planning all of this while pregnant from about two days after we arrived in the country.”

“Right. I forgot about this part. She was pregnant.”

“She was and she played her cards well. She would leave the house at dawn, go shopping for things for the baby, which really meant she was buying things she could return for the cash later or sleeping with other men for cash.”

“Wow. He let her spend his money?”

“She was carrying his heir. It was all he cared about.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, Sully miscarried at the eleven-week mark,” she air-quoted the words, leaving no doubt to anyone in the room it wasn’t accidental. “He was devastated. As much as he didn’t like Sully, he wanted his child.”

“What did you do, Briar?” While there was no accusation to his tone, she felt it was there.

“Three weeks after she aborted the baby, he got drunk. I kissed him in his office, and he kissed me back. I knew it took him by surprise and I panicked and went to my bedroom. I knew in my gut he wanted me. Conditioned by Sully, I prepped my camera, in case I was correct. Then he knocked on my door and stood there in the entrance and apologized. He said he was the adult, and it shouldn’t have happened because he was sad. I hugged him and told him I understood. I then, offered him comfort as my sister instructed me to do and I kissed him again,” she exhaled shakily, “while the camera was on, I let him into my bedroom, and we had s*x. He’d had a lot to drink. He was sad and despondent, and I took advantage, partly because my sister told me to but mostly because I really just wanted him.” The last part was a hush.

“You wanted him?” The man didn’t miss her words.

“I was in love with him,” she whispered the words. “He was supposed to be a mark, but he was kind to me. I fell for him hard and when he kissed me, I pulled him into my bed because I wanted it. He didn’t stop me.”

The silence was stifling so she continued. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I loved him, and I wanted him. He was my sister’s husband. He was her mark, our mark. He was grieving and drunk. I turned the camera on. I knew what I was doing when I did what I did.”

“Then you blackmailed him with the video?”

She felt guilt chewing her insides but lifted her chin, “My sister walked into my bedroom in the morning and put on a hell of a performance. Where I am gifted at singing and dancing, she was born for the stage, and she played her role beautifully. She had his family there for breakfast and she made a huge scene. She played off he seduced me, a young girl with no experience in the real world, and they took the fight out of the room. I was freaking out until she gave me a wink and a thumbs’ up as she was leaving.” She held her thumb up and clicked her tongue in the way Sully had.

“Jesus Christ,” Evander rubbed his hand over his mouth in horror. “Briar, I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither did I. Her obvious delight at the situation reinforced how f****d up my life had been. It wasn’t right and I couldn’t go through with it. I felt cheap and guilty.” She wiped tears off her cheeks, “I deleted the video and made sure there was nothing else set up in the room. I didn’t trust my sister to not have a camera of her own and I made sure there wasn’t after tearing it apart. I sent him all the information which would, at worst, would put my sister in jail and, at best, leave her penniless from a divorce thanks to the prenup. I made my escape while they were still fighting. I left the letter where only he could find it. I didn’t want to go to jail with her, so I ran. I abandoned my sister to the wolves and set her up to take the fall for my actions. I was so angry with her for putting me in the situation she had, especially after the thumb’s up, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Worse, I manipulated a man and his emotions to make a dollar. I flew back to the USA, avoiding New York, using my true passport. I burned the false passports and identification when I arrived in Chicago. I turned legit. I was working and going to school and met Marie and her kids in a diner where they would come for breakfast, and I was their server. I would sing to the twins to make them laugh and behave. Marie suggested I get a teaching diploma and she promised she would find a way to hire me and so it’s what I did. I did a concurrent program which allows me to teach the arts. I’ve been teaching here now for seven years. I haven’t done a single con, scam or even jaywalked in ten years.”

He gave a long, drawn-out sigh and furrowed his brows and then, as if a thought occurred to him, wrinkles marred his forehead. She knew what was coming next.

“Peyton told me you have a daughter. I need to know, Briar. Is she his?”

“Yes.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. The only thing which had come from the hell of that period in her life was the sunshine of her daughter, Hadlee. Bold, brash, beautiful Hadlee, with the personality of a tornado in an oasis, was the greatest gift she’d ever been granted.

“You never told him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m selfish.”

“You could have notified him.”

“And risk having her taken away from me? I also really don’t want her to know she was born of a scam.” She blinked the tears. “She is the best thing to ever happen to me and I would die for her.”

“If he cried over a baby he lost, what do you think he would do now if he knew?”

“Take her.” She knew it without a doubt as her voice cracked with emotion. “He would throw me in prison, and he would take her.”

“I see. You believe he filed charges in Paris?”

“Lyon, France. We were staying at his estate in Lyon, France. He had homes in St. Petersburg, Moscow, London, Brussels, and Rome with penthouses in Paris, New York and LA as well.”

“When you said he was wealthy, you meant really wealthy.”

“Sully went big.” She nodded quietly, her heart racing as she considered the wealth of the man she had once tried to entrap.

“Where is she now? You said you left her there, but you don’t think she knows about your daughter?”

“I tried to search her names once, birth and all her aliases, but I never found anything. Although I was using the school’s library internet and it’s restricted. I don’t know if she got away or if she is in jail or if he simply had her killed.” At his choked gasp she shrugged. “As I said, he was rich and powerful. She never came looking for me, though I had never been anywhere but New York before then, so she likely never thought I’d go anywhere else. I tended to stick close to her and what we knew.”

“You think she would have been looking in New York?”

“I think he would have too.”

“You think he looked for you?”

“He wasn’t a very forgiving man. I once overheard a conversation he had with a business associate his father’s family had worked with for years and they had made one mistake in a shipment, and he cut all ties and bankrupted them. He’s ruthless. He’s also very connected because he even had the president in his house at one point. What I did would have hit him hard in the pride and ego. He would have wanted blood. I might have only known him less than eight weeks, but in this time, I learned he was not a man I should have f****d with. He would have looked. I’m certain of it.”

“It’s been ten years. Do you think he is still looking?”

“I don’t know. I do know, with his connections, if there is a warrant out for me, then the minute I step foot onto French soil, I will be arrested. I don’t want to go to Paris.”

He looked to Marie, “given all of this, you still want her to go?”

“Many of the parents have said outright, they won’t let the kids go without her. As she said, she’s now so straight and narrow the parents trust her and only her with their kids. Because of her life, she knows what these kids are plotting before they do it and she knows how to reach them. They love and trust her. But because this part of Briar’s past is hidden and nobody else can ever know this, I have no valid reason to offer them for her refusal to attend. She trained them to this point. They want her to see it through. Multiple parents have said, if she doesn’t go, the kids don’t go. The prize money is a million dollars. Do you know what kind of work we could do for the school with this?” She shifted uncomfortably, “it’s been ten years, and nobody can guess if he ever found out her true name versus the alias she had traveled with in the past. Besides, there has to be a statute of limitations on this.”

He nodded, “let me see what I can find out, but technically, all you did was have s*x with a man, Briar. There is no video?”

“No, but there is my full, typed out confession which went directly to his personal printer in his office.”

“Which only says I intended to blackmail you but decided against it, here is all the s**t my sister did though.” Evander was blunt.

“Yes.”

“You did nothing wrong in terms of the law. You had consensual s*x. Was he so drunk he could have refused or can suggest it was rape?”

“No. He knew what he was doing. Said my name multiple times.” She shivered involuntarily with the memory.

“Did you get any payment of any kind?”

“Never saw him again.”

“I’ll run a check to make sure, but really his own legal team would have told him he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Your sister did. She married him with the intent of aborting the baby and if he had evidence she did, rules might be different there than here, but she could definitely be held for fraud. What did she stand to gain in her prenup if she carried to term?”

“Five million.” She shifted, “she told me she would ask him for ten after he slept with me because it was double her prenup.”

“Briar, leave it with me and I’ll find things out, but I think, if anything, it would do you good to go to Paris. It would allow you to let go of the ghosts haunting you from your past. I do believe people can change and you’re living proof. You’re a good person who dedicates her life now to helping kids find their paths in life. The way you’ve helped my daughter turn her life around in two years has been something the most expensive shrinks in the world haven’t been able to help us do. I commend you and Dante for being what these kids need. You tell them all the time their pasts are their pasts, and they can only control the moments they are in. It’s time you heeded your own advice.”

“Thank you, Mr. Westbrook.”

“It’s my pleasure and call me Evander,” he winked at her. “We’ll be spending two weeks together in Paris. We should definitely be on a first name basis.”

She felt a glimmer of hope in his words and then it faded as she considered what he’d said. “You’re one of the parent chaperones?”

“Yeah, my daughter is not going to Paris with Dante as her only supervisor. I like the man and his creative intuition, but he has the parenting abilities of a lizard.” She giggled at his words, and he smiled, “you have a lovely laugh and smile, Briar. Keep your chin up. You’ll see soon enough you’ve made this far worse in your head than it is.”

She only prayed he was right.