The Black Iris Club 4
Nicollette’s Defense
Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney, Nicollette Sommers, negotiated a plea bargain for Antoinette Marie Beaudreau. After being sent upstate to serve her twenty-five-year sentence, an attraction springs up between Nikki and attorney Daniel McGrath, Antoinette Marie’s ex-husband. Dan had divorced Anne Marie, but after the papers are signed and filed, she has a change of heart. Despite her incarceration, she wants Dan back.
Nikki is a switch and a member of Jack Dalton Brown’s exclusive and secret BDSM Black Iris Club. Dan takes a BDSM ethics class at the club, and Nikki and Dan decide to explore the possibilities. The relationship starts off smoothly but soon hits rough waters. Dan is having a problem separating his hate for Antoinette Marie and all she had done from his love for his wife of twenty years, Anne Marie. Will Antoinette Marie’s machinations from her prison cell and Dan’s ambivalence make a happy ending impossible?
Note: This book contains a heroine who is a switch.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary
Length: 39,070 words
NICOLLETTE’S DEFENSE
The Black Iris Club 4
Skye Michaels
SIREN LOVEEDGE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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NICOLLETTE’S DEFENSE
Copyright © 2014 by Skye Michaels
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-016-0
First E-book Publication: July 2014
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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DEDICATION
For all of my family, friends, and readers.
I hope you enjoy this new series set in my own backyard, beautiful South Florida. Sometimes we who live here take it for granted.
Life happens. Enjoy the journey.
With many thanks to my beta readers, Patricia Walker, Jennifer Torlone, Donnette Hawley, and Eileen Dix for all their help.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
About the Author
NICOLLETTE’S DEFENSE
The Black Iris Club 4
SKYE MICHAELS
Copyright © 2014
Prologue
The Lowell Correctional Institution Annex in Ocala, Florida, Monday morning, December 15, 2014
Dan McGrath held it together as he was processed out of the Lowell Correctional Institution, the prison facility where his wife of twenty years, Antoinette Marie Beaudreau McGrath, also known as Anne Marie Harrison-McGrath, was currently serving her plea-bargained sentence of twenty-five years for manslaughter, transportation of minors across state lines for purposes of prostitution, and human trafficking amidst a slew of other related charges. This had to be one of the worst days of his life, but it was done—the divorce papers were signed.
He walked out of the gates to his car. He put his briefcase in the trunk. When he was sitting in the driver’s seat, he finally broke down. He tipped his head back against the headrest and sobbed for the life he had lost. He had to tip forward again because he was beginning to choke on the tears running down his throat. He had seen the cold bitch lurking under the surface she had tried to present to him. How stupid had he been not to see that before?
He had adored his wife, Anne Marie, and spoiled her and the kids to the best of his ability. They’d had one of those fairy-tale marriages that just seemed to get better with time—until his whole world crumbled around him, and he realized that it was all built on a foundation of quicksand. They had married when he was twenty-five, just out of law school, and she was twenty. She had not been who he thought she was. The Anne Marie he had married was dead, and that vile creature, Antoinette Marie, was in her place.
He’d been lucky not to be charged as an accessory to her crimes, but thankfully, the detectives and prosecutors had been able to see the truth with J.J.’s help—that he’d had no idea what she had done. Unfortunately one young girl had lost her life, and he would have to live with that for the rest of his. What could he have done differently? He didn’t know, but he didn’t think he would ever be the same. He just wanted to forget this day and the woman who sat in a cell behind the high, razor-wire fence and tall watchtowers manned by armed guards.
* * * *
Antoinette Marie had appeared to wait stoically in the visiting room of the prison, but in reality her mind had been turning a mile a minute. It was almost three months since she had been captured on the Bayou Teche in St. Martinsville, Louisiana, and returned the next day to Fort Lauderdale by the three detectives, Chloe Carlton, Kaylin Gallagher, and Delaney Lord. During that time she had only seen her husband, Daniel McGrath, Esq. that one time at the jail right after her capture, and it hadn’t been
a pleasant visit.
The defense attorney hired by Dan, that snotty Nicollette Sommers, had negotiated a plea bargain. It had seemed to be the best course of action at the time. Antoinette Marie had been transferred to the Central Florida prison within a week to begin serving her sentence of twenty-five years. She had been given the reduced sentence in exchange for revealing the location of the other girls she had kidnapped and put to work on the streets in Louisiana. Now she was beginning to wonder if she should have gone to trial, if Ms. Fancy Defense Attorney had sold her down the river—or up the river so to speak since she was now locked behind bars in the boondocks of North Central Florida, away from everything and everyone she knew.
Her manacled hands had been attached to the wide table that separated her from her husband. She clenched and unclenched them. She looked down. Her nails were ragged, and her hands were now rough. God, she missed her beautiful home in the prestigious Idlewyld section of Fort Lauderdale on the Intracoastal Waterway. She didn’t think she would see a wide-open expanse of water like that for another twenty-five years. Well, maybe she would get time off for good behavior. Nonetheless her immediate future was not looking too bright, although it beat the alternative of years on death row ended by a lethal injection for first-degree murder. Of course she missed Dan and the kids as well—in her own way. They had been the perfect accessories for her life as the Southern Belle socialite wife of a very successful attorney. She had clawed her way out of the swamps of Louisiana, and she’d had no intention of ever going back.
Antoinette Marie knew she did not look her best. The loose orange jumpsuit and handcuffs were not the garb she was accustomed to wearing. As a mover and shaker on the social scene in the trendy South Florida city of Fort Lauderdale, she had been used to the best—the best home on the waterway, the best car, the best yacht, the best country club and yacht club memberships. Now, her hair had not been styled in over four months, and she hadn’t had a manicure or a pedicure in as long. Her access to beauty supplies was also severely limited, and she certainly did not feel her alluring best. Even at forty, she had been beautiful, but now she looked tired and worn down. How would she look after twenty-five fucking years? The other inmates had not been a problem so far. They were good at spotting a dangerous woman and just naturally left her alone.
When the economic downturn had severely impacted her husband’s law firm and they had suddenly found themselves in financial difficulties, she had decided to supplement their income without his knowledge. He had not been aware of her roots in the Louisiana swamps as a member of the infamous Beaudreau clan. She had remade herself upon coming to Fort Lauderdale after her cousins had been sent to jail in Louisiana. She had done what she had to do to lose the Louisiana Cajun accent, learn to be a lady, learn to walk and talk and act like an educated woman. She had spent hours at a time in front of the television imitating the cultured women she saw on the screen. When she met and married Dan, she had been determined never to go back to that old life on the bayou. She would never again live in a shack in the swamp wearing hand-me-down clothes. She would have done anything—absolutely anything—to protect her new life. Her plan had been to tell Dan that a dead relative in Alabama had left her money. Then she could use the money from the prostitution ring to pay their mortgage and bills and fund the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.
Her crazy cousins, Jean Louis and Phillip Beaudreau, had been in charge of the underaged street girls she had coaxed into her black Mercedes with the promise of lunch and a new outfit. She and her Louisiana cousins had started a prostitution ring to service the casinos in New Orleans and Shreveport. Unfortunately one of the girls, a fifteen-year-old runaway named Mitzi Jones, had tried to escape. She had died in the scuffle when she had hit her head on the steel floor of the shipping container in which the girls were being held. That had not been her plan, of course. Dead girls did not make her money turning tricks. She needed live ones for that. The cousins had moved the other girls to an abandoned warehouse owned by her husband.
When the body was found in the shipping container, the detectives put it together and started an investigation of human trafficking in downtown Fort Lauderdale and around the Port Everglades area. Although Antoinette Marie had not directed the boys to put the runaways in a shipping container and wasn’t present when the accident happened, legally she was still guilty of murder occurring during the commission of a felony. She knew her cousins had also accepted plea bargained sentences of twenty-five years and were presently incarcerated at the State Prison in Raiford, Florida.
She had been momentarily excited when the guard on her cell block had informed her that she had a visitor, her husband Dan McGrath. But given that she looked far from her best, she was nervous. She knew this visit did not bode well. Dan had not called or written since she had started her sentence, and she had not heard from either of the kids. She’d had one more meeting with that bitch attorney where she told her that the missing girls had been recovered alive and that the plea deal had been accepted, and then she was on her way upstate.
When Dan was admitted to the visitors’ room, her heart did a little jump step. She had always loved Dan in her own way. He was still as handsome and dignified-looking as ever. He was forty-five, tall and broad shouldered with a distinguished touch of gray in his dark, wavy hair. He was wearing one of his usual custom-made, three-piece suits with a Turnbull & Asser shirt and tie. He could have stepped off the pages of Gentleman’s Quarterly. Yes, he was definitely very GQ.
“Hello, Anne Marie, or should I say Antoinette Marie? I’m afraid I can’t say you are looking well.”
“Hello, Dan. I’ve missed you and the kids.”
“I’m not here for a fond reunion, Antoinette Marie. I thought it only fair to tell you face-to-face and then serve the papers myself. I am suing for divorce and for full custody of the kids. Obviously, you are in no position to have any custodial rights, and I have absolutely no intention of allowing Michelle Marie and Daniel, Jr. to come up here for visits.” He passed a sheaf of formal legal documents across the table. “This is the divorce summons, complaint, settlement agreement, and quit claim deeds for all of our jointly held properties. I could have done this by mail or publication, but I didn’t think that was right after twenty years of marriage—even after what you did.”
She was shocked, and a spear of regret and then hot anger pierced her heart. But in reality, what had she expected? That Dan would wait patiently for her to get out of prison? Not very damn likely. If she served her entire sentence, she would be sixty-five when she got out. She knew Dan had been horrified by what she had done and humiliated by all of the publicity that had accompanied her arrest and extradition back to Florida. It had been daily fodder for the television stations and newspapers. He had sent the children to his parents in California to avoid some of the notoriety. “Please, Dan. I did what I did for us, for our family. I thought we were about to lose everything. I didn’t want the kids to have to grow up with nothing the way I did.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t have a little faith in me, Antoinette Marie. I would have never allowed that to happen.” He looked sad and unhappy but determined. “I brought the settlement agreement for you to sign. Nicollette Sommers looked it over, and you can call her if you like. I think it’s fair under the circumstances. I’ve sold Anne Marie’s Folly, and I will put the proceeds of sale into an investment account in trust for your needs while you are here and for when you get out. I’ve paid your legal fees, and I have also put the house on the market. The kids and I can’t possibly live there now.” So that dream was gone as well. The hot flash of anger was quickly being overcome by a wash of ice-cold fury. Dan continued. “With the proceeds from the sale of the house I will set up a trust for the education of the surviving girls you abducted, and I will put a substantial sum in the trust for our children. And, then I am going to use the balance to fund my new life. John Temple and I are going to form a new law firm since the one we had on Las Olas Boule
vard has been severely compromised by this scandal.”
“Dan, can we please talk about this?”
“No. There is nothing to talk about, and I have no further feelings for you. You can accept this settlement or not. I would advise you to accept. It is more generous than you deserve and far more generous than any court would order under the circumstances.” He opened two copies of the settlement agreement to the signature pages and handed her his gold Cross fountain pen. He waited expectantly. She looked into his eyes and saw only cold resolve there. Finally, she took the pen and signed all of the documents.
“That concludes our business then, Antoinette Marie. I do not intend to come here again or have any further contact with you. I will monitor your investment account and have copies of the quarterly statements sent to you here. Please do not attempt to call me or the kids. We want nothing more than to get on with our lives and try to forget you and everything that you have done.” He packed the papers into his briefcase and stood. “Good-bye and good luck.” He walked to the door and signaled the deputy to let him out.
Antoinette Marie’s eyes narrowed as she watched him leave. If he thought this was over, he was mistaken. No one tossed her aside. Well, there was still her stash of jewelry in the safe deposit box in St. Martinville. Now she would have the resources to pay the box fees. When she was on her cot at night she could visualize the pile of jewels lying in the cold, dark safe deposit box like she would by lying in her cold, dark cell. Diamonds and pearls were a girl’s best friend after all.
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