Control Freak

by Brianna Hale

  In the frozen video footage Miss Alders’ eyes are sparkling with fear as she looks up at Damir.

  “Misha, I told you to go to bed. It’s all right, your father and I were just talking.”

  I point at the screen. “If it wasn’t for me Miss Alders’ parents would both be alive, and Damir wouldn’t be out for her blood.”

  Bethany puts a hand over her heart and stares wide-eyed at my chest. “Oh, sir, is that—what’s that on you?”

  I glance down at my suit, wondering if I spilled salad dressing on myself at lunch.

  She peers closer, frowning intently. “Is that—a conscience?”

  I level a dry look at her. If it wasn’t near-impossible to find a PA who can put up with my brother and his dangerous associates, who knows how to keep her mouth shut about the things she overhears, and can keep a meeting diary in order I’d fire Bethany.

  “Thank you, you can go now.”

  She ignores me. “I don’t know why her dead parents should matter to you. You didn’t make Ciara’s dumbass father double-cross Mr. Ravnikar.”

  True. But for some reason that doesn’t make me feel any better.

  I recall the last line of Damir’s email. I’ll get my half a mill from her if I have to wring it out of her fucking corpse.

  I know my brother better than anyone else in the world. He means everything he says. Miss Alders will have to find some way to raise half a million pounds, money that won’t make any difference to our business, but will probably break her. I suspect that’s the point: it’s not the money Damir wants. It’s revenge on the last living member of the Alders family.

  Our servers are secure. There’s no way to trace that this video was sent to me. I can delete it now and I’ll never be held accountable for what happens to Miss Alders, even if her body turns up face-down in the Thames.

  But the gods must be pissing on my grave today because I point at the screen and say to Bethany, “Miss Alders’ debt. I can cover it easily but getting the money from my accounts into hers so she can give it to Damir is a problem. How do I do it?”

  Bethany shrugs. “How should I know? I’m not one of your dodgy accountants. Go ask them.”

  “The accountants who all report to my brother? What an enlightened idea. I need to give her half a million pounds, but she can’t know who I am or where the money has come from. I don’t trust her to not tell Damir who helped her.”

  Or break under his questioning.

  My PA gives me a baffled look. “Why do you want to give her money?”

  “That’s none of your business,” I say coldly. If I do nothing and something happens to Miss Alders it will be one stone too many laying heavy on my conscience. I just want to get on with my work but instead I’m suddenly burdened with integrity I didn’t fucking ask for.

  She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. “If you’ve gone soft on her why don’t you just tell Damir you’ll cover her debt?”

  “Do you really think my brother will allow me to use my money, that he likes to tell me is his money because I work for him, to pay a revenge debt?”

  Bethany wrinkles her nose. “Oh yeah. Your brother is an asshole. I forgot.”

  An asshole. Assholes glass you in the pub. Key your car. Cut you off on the motorway. My brother is enriched uranium-level psychopath. “There aren’t many ways that a student stumbles over half a million pounds.”

  “Let her work it off on the pole, then.”

  In one of Damir’s own strip clubs, she means. I believe that’s his plan for her, watching her slave away in one of his seedy strip joints for a decade until he’s ruined her life. They’re popular clubs and strippers who work there of their own free will probably clean up. But a stripper forced into it and wearing her vulnerability night after night for all to see? She’d be bullied by the girls and patrons alike and taken advantage of night after night until she’s a hollow shell of self-disgust.

  “Look on the bright side, sir. Once she’s a stripper you can go and get as many lap dances from her as you like.”

  I flick my gaze up at her. “I wish I could replace you.”

  “But you can’t, because no one but me can put up with your surly ass. Can I have an advance? One that doesn’t actually come out of my next pay check?”

  Bethany can have anything she wants if she can make Miss Alders go away. And she needs to go away, fast. I’ve wasted enough time thinking about her. “Come up with a way to solve this problem and you can have this month’s pay check twice over.”

  She considers this for a moment, and then perches on the edge of my desk and says in a breathy voice, “Why don’t you be her daddy?”

  “Her what?” I deadpan.

  “Her daddy. You know, her sugar daddy. You give her a fat allowance in exchange for a couple of dates a week and a blow job when you’re feeling lonely. I don’t imagine anyone’s sucking your dick by choice. Ciara gives the money to your brother and your newfound conscience lets you sleep at night. Problem solved.”

  My expression is still baleful, but my mind is ticking over. It’s a ridiculous idea, though on the upside Damir would never suspect it and drip-feeding Miss Alders the funds rather than trying to give her a lump sum would seem less suspicious to him, as she’d pay him off bit by bit.

  But I don’t know Miss Alders, I don’t want to know her, and I have no idea how I would go about getting her to agree to such a distasteful arrangement.

  “One of my friends was in the sugar bowl for a while,” Bethany says, and I stare at her blankly. “That’s what sugaring is called, being in the sugar bowl. The girls are the sugar babies and the guys are the sugar daddies. It’s super popular among students, actually. Why slave for hours in a coffee shop if you can make thousands holding some flabby old guy’s hand while he pays for your expensive dinner?”

  “It’s a legitimate arrangement? Young women will take money just for going out on dates?”

  Bethany gives me an incredulous look. “Well, you’d get to sleep with her, too. That’s what it’s about. You do have sex don’t you, you big weirdo? Or do you, like, pay people wearing stiletto heels to step on your balls?”

  “I don’t know why I’m asking you questions when I could just Google all this.”

  “Because I’m better than Google.” She puts her hands together in a prayer position and wags them at me. “You tell her that you’ll give her so many thousands of pounds a month in exchange for dates, say two a week, some of which end in sex. You buy her handbags, some Italian shoes, maybe take her away for a dirty weekend or two and give her extra cash when you’ve had a particularly satisfying time. She sees you as a rich dude who wants a pretty young girl on his arm, and you get to pay off her debt.”

  Bethany beams at me, proud of herself, but it seems like an awful lot of hassle just to give my brother half a million pounds that he doesn’t need. I have much, much more than that sitting in offshore accounts and despite what Damir thinks it’s my fucking money. I just want to give it to him so I can get on with my life and forget about Miss Alders. He was like this when we were children. Vindictive. Cruel. When he was six and we were still living in Slovenia, one of our nannies scolded him for stealing chocolates from her handbag and he got her fired. But it wasn’t just fired. He wasn’t satisfied until our father screamed at the poor woman in front of all the staff and then kicked her out onto the street, still weeping. Damir smiled ear to ear, watching the nanny sob as she walked away from the house. I’d never seen him so happy. That was when I realized that there was something wrong with my little brother. I didn’t do anything to stop him. That’s how I knew there was something wrong with me, too.

  “Well, sir?” Bethany prompts.

  Being Miss Alders’ sugar daddy is a terrible idea and I don’t like it but it’s the only one I’ve got right now. “How many thousand can I give her each month? Fifty?”

  Bethany gapes at me. “Do you want her to think you’re a cannibal or you’re grooming her for some weird kink? She
’ll run a mile. Ten thousand. You give her ten thousand a month, max, and slip her a few extra thousand in an envelope at the end of each date if you want to bump it up a bit.”

  I groan inwardly. Ten thousand. At that rate it will take nearly four years for her to pay off the debt in full. Four years of tedious dates and pretending to be her sugar daddy. I don’t have the time.

  But maybe it wouldn’t take quite so long if I came up with something better in the meantime. For now, ten thousand pounds a month would appease my brother and keep Miss Alders out of his strip club while I work on a plan to get her a bigger lump sum sooner.

  “It’s a good idea, isn’t it, sir? Go on. Admit it.”

  “It’s…got potential,” I concede. “But how do I enter into this sort of arrangement with Miss Alders? I don’t know her.”

  Bethany flips her long hair over her shoulder and gives me a dazzling smile. “But I know her. I’ll put the idea in her head for you. Classes start tomorrow and Ciara hangs out at a café on campus before every lecture. We weren’t friends but she’s too nice not to talk to me if I sit down at her table. Let me go look up the schedule.”

  She turns to leave but I catch Bethany’s wrist, pulling her back. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone you and she are both dead. You know that’s not me threatening you. That’s what Damir will do. He doesn’t want money, he wants to cause her pain, and he’ll hurt anyone who gets in the way of what he wants.”

  Bethany shrugs out of my grip, and I see a flicker of fear in her eyes before she masks it with nonchalance. “Please. You think I’d go blabbing about anything I do here? I like my blood inside my veins.” Her eyes run over me. “What about you?”

  I sit back in the leather chair. “What about me?”

  “What will Mr. Ravnikar do to you if he finds out about this?”

  Me? I’m too useful to Damir for him to hurt me. I bring in too much money. I like bringing in all that money. I like the power and influence we have in this city, however we go about getting it. “I can look after myself. Now go.”

  But Bethany hesitates in the doorway, an unfamiliar expression in her eyes. “Be nice to her, okay? This is going to be weird for her, taking money from a bad-tempered old dude.”

  My ego prickles at that. I’m not old, I’m forty-two. I’m fit, I don’t smoke, barely drink and I work out five times a week. I could sit in the bar of an upscale hotel and have women flock to me, and not only because they can smell money on me. Maybe I am bad-tempered, but while my brother makes an art out of being cruel and manipulative, I just simply don’t care about making people like me. I don’t need people to like me. Being liked is for thirteen-year-old girls and talk-show hosts. I make money. I am very bloody good at making money. That’s what people need from me and that’s what I provide. Money.

  The more money I give Miss Alders and the less I want to see her, the happier she’ll be. “Nice to her? This isn’t a relationship, this is a financial transaction entirely for her benefit.”

  Bethany snorts. “How would you know what a relationship is?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing, sir,” she calls in a sing-song voice as she saunters out. “Sounds like you’ve got everything covered. I’ll go plant the idea in your sweet little baby’s head and everything else will just take care of itself.”

  THE PROTÉGÉ

  He’s always protected me since I was eight years old, the neglected girl he took off the street and raised as his own. Laszlo can feel what music needs instinctively. He can tell what I need.

  My world shattered the night of my eighteenth birthday and he still hasn’t forgiven me for what I did. I’m not asking him to love me, touch me, take me to bed. What I want goes deeper than that and I have to say this out loud because it’s one thing that music won’t be able to tell him.

  I want what only Laszlo can give me. I want to be his protégé again. And this time, I’m going to be so good for him.

  Yes, maestro.

  Yes, sir.

  Yes, daddy.

  Brianna Hale has yet again surpassed my expectation with THE PROTÉGÉ. Laszlo and Isabeau's story stole my heart. This book has everything. Steam. Romance. Emotions. Sex. All kinds of feels. One of my top reads of 2018! – Lylah James, author of THE MAFIA AND HIS OBSESSION

  I love THE PROTÉGÉ beyond words can describe...It isn't all about steamy scenes, it's about real life doubts and lessons. Laszlo will have your heart racing and will leave you panting for more. – White Rose Stories

  My heart is still wrapped in these two...perfection is hard to come to in a book, but this one succeeded. – Anne Reads and Reviews

  Isabeau

  I came to say sorry, but it didn’t work out that way.

  “A cellist?” says the woman with the clipboard, looking between me and my instrument case as if we’ve ruined her day. “I’ve only got one cellist on my list and his name is Roger Somers. Who are you? Is Mr. Valmary expecting you?”

  My heart bangs like a timpani drum against my ribs hearing his name. Laszlo Valmary, conductor and musical director of the Royal London Symphony Orchestra and my former guardian and mentor. I’ve come straight from the train, luggage and all, to face the man I haven’t spoken to in three years. Now that I’m in London again I feel him on every street I walk down, in every strain of music I hear, in the very air I breathe. But he’s not expecting me and I wasn’t expecting this, whatever this is that’s happening today.

  The woman cuts across what I was going to say. “Never mind. The flautist hasn’t turned up so the schedule’s a mess anyway. Go through and wait.” She gives her clipboard a pained look and marches away, and I’m left in the alcove by the stalls as musicians file past me. I draw back into the shadows letting my thick red hair fall forward, not wanting to be recognized.

  The Mayhew Concert Hall in the West End is a huge, stately venue of plush velvet and gold scrollwork. An enormous crystal chandelier hangs overhead and the auditorium is lit by dozens of sconces lining the balconies. The seating goes up and up to the dizzying nosebleed sections where people crowd together for five pounds a head for a glimpse of the orchestra on stage. For those paying upwards of three hundred pounds a ticket for a stalls seat every string of the violins is visible, the notes on the sheet music, the precise movements of Laszlo’s large, skilled hands as he conducts. It’s a more intimate experience down in the stalls but up in the gods the music is just the same. The music soars.

  I breathe in the memory of remembered notes. I’ve missed this place.

  At this time of day on a Thursday I expected to find Laszlo in his office but rehearsals seem to have gone on longer than usual. No, not rehearsals. Auditions by the looks of things. If Laszlo’s lost orchestra members then he’ll be impatient, distracted. This isn’t the time for me to untangle my feelings for him or ask for his help. I should go, but curiosity holds me in place. What has happened? Has a swathe of the ensemble walked out again? He’s not the “callow youth” that he was accused of being thirteen years ago when he took over the orchestra. He’s a man of thirty-eight and the darling of the British classical music scene. The best musicians in the country clamor to be part of his ensemble.

  I listen to threads of conversations going on around me and try to discover what has happened to the orchestra. Then I tell myself to focus and plan what I’m going to say to Laszlo; how I’m going to have to tell him that after all his training and effort I’ve ruined my musical career before it’s even begun.

  “Isabeau.”

  My hand convulsively grips my cello case. I turn and see him standing by the rows of red velvet seats, the man who took me from my home when I was eight years old. Who taught me almost everything I know about music. About life. The man I’ve spent the last three years in turmoil over. Missing him like crazy. Being angry with him. Wanting him.

  I don’t need to get close to know that he’ll smell like sweet peppercorns and smoky Arabian nights. He looks good, but then he always looks good
, tall and lean and smartly dressed in a dark shirt and suit. A sultry mouth and hawkish nose, and not quite enough facial hair to call it a beard but just enough to scratch your nails through and feel the lovely rasping of the bristles. Hazel eyes that always seem to be moments away from warm pleasure or flashing emotion, and fine, sandy brown hair that’s too long as usual, growing down to his collar. I used to tease him about that, telling him that he has conductor’s hair, the careless mane that maestros grow so they can toss it about in passion to the music and look romantic in journalists’ black and white photographs. I was the only one who could tease him. One of the few who could make him smile.

  Laszlo steps forward, and my heart leaps because I think he’s going to fold me in his arms and hold me close like he used to do. But when he reaches for me his hand closes around my upper arm, cold and hard, and he leads me out of the auditorium and along a corridor without a word. Hopeless tears prickle in my eyes. He’s still ashamed of me. I look up at the ceiling and breathe in sharply, a trick that a makeup artist once taught me before a solo student performance, the first one of my career that Laszlo wouldn’t be watching. Suck those tears right back in, pet. Don’t go ruining your face.

  He takes us into to his office, closes the door behind us and then just stands there with his back to me, one hand braced against the door. A clock ticks on the wall and I count the seconds in three-four time, a minuet clashing with the pounding of my heart.

  I should speak first but I don’t know how to unravel the apology that’s become snarled on my tongue. The last three years without him have been hell and losing him was like cutting off a limb. No, worse, like taking a sledgehammer to my cello. My world shattered the night of my eighteenth birthday and I can see that he still hasn’t forgiven me for what I did. I hid the broken pieces of my heart deep down where no one would ever find them and I don’t know what he’ll do with them if I show them to him now.