She sat back the picture of innocence, at she admired her manicure like fucking up Ami’s dead egg donor would’ve been light work. “I would’ve called every powerful man I knew and cried like a white girl getting caught being racist until they let me go.”
Parker burst out laughing, and even Stew was shaking his head. They both knew her well enough to know they were two of the men she would’ve been calling.
The whole table cracked up and I had to shake my head, feeling good as fuck not to be stressed for a second. “You not supposed to be making me laugh like this, bruh.”
“I've gotta do something. You’re not supposed to be going through this. But I have to ask how will you handle it if the news gets out?”
I glanced at Sterling and even she looked momentarily lost at what to do. She’d had to work through the emotions I never wanted Ami to feel because of me: being unwanted and virtuallyabandoned. The difference is, Ami would have a lifetime of our love and support to fall back on, whereas Ling didn’t.
“I haven’t even thought about it yet.”
“Think about it. This world is full of people who don’t see us as real people just because of the money we’ve earned. Folks will take this and latch onto it like it’s no big deal. I need you to have stronger skin than you’ve ever had before because people will be ruthless.” Stew was dropping knowledge and I remembered folks trying to name him as a drug addict over an issue he’d had years before.
“You’re right. I don’t want them trying to get at me by attacking the people I love.”
“They’ll try anyway. And if they don’t have fact they’ll make stuff up. We’ve been through it. Hell, Parker ain’t immune, cause they love trying Tiana because of him. Even Coby had his head messed up because of stress and the public way he mismanaged it. He got his mind right though.”
“Those four kids prove it.” Bryan muttered that shit under his breath with every intention of Billy hearing him.
“B, you’re lucky you’re Destiny’s godfather so I need you alive.”
“What’s our solution? They’re outside waiting.” Marcus looked at everyone in the room and I had to take the risk because I wasn’t about to pay them shit.
“Call them back in. If I pay them now, they’ll keep coming back. Keep wanting something and the second they don’t get what they want, they’ll just release it anyway.”
They knew I was right so Parker buzzed the three outsiders back into the conference room. The view from our side of the table was of theDesperadospractice field below. It was too early in the day for anyone to be out there, but practice would start soon.
Mr. Zahran sat down looking smug and his wife still held a look of disdain when her eyes landed on my girl. Sterling just shot her a look of being completely unbothered by how this woman felt because it wouldn’t change anything.
With an eager look on his face, their lawyer glanced around to everyone on our side as though he were waiting to hear what we’d been discussing.
“So, what have we decided?”
“You can do whatever you want with the tape.”
I knew that was the last thing they expected me to say because all of their jaws dropped.
“Excuse me?” The lawyer was pale again, probably because he saw whatever money he thought he was going to get from brokering this arrangement going down the drain.
“Release it. There’s nothing you can do that will change our minds about your having access to Ami. So if you want to further embarrass your family and prove how little you care about the child that you feel entitled to, go ahead.”
I wasn’t bluffing about their doing what they felt was right. No matter what Ami discovered, she would’ve had years to be covered with our love and her self-worth would be so locked in, no random gossip about a woman she never met would shake that. And if she ever felt anything less than in love with herself, we as her parents would be a blessing to get her the help she needed to work through her emotions. What we wouldn’t do was allow her life to be used as a pawn for someone to extort money from us that could go to her.
“You cannot be serious about this!” Mr. Zahran looked as though he was about to slam his hand again, which made me laugh.
“He’s more than serious. And so am I. You decided to manipulate this man without realizing who you were trying to come up against. My name is Sterling Sanders Williamson. I’m apart of the Sanders multi-media conglomerate so many of those places that you would want to sell your tape to, I own. And I would buy it from you at whatever price you named. And then I would hand it over to the authorities so that they could have it as evidence of extortion.”
“You all keep throwing this word around—”
“You’re a lawyer and you should know better. But you’re not a criminal attorney so maybe you don’t. That’s fine, you’ll be a codefendant soon enough.” Bryan grinned as he spoke. Letting these people know they’d ruined their lives made his day. Hell, it probably did.
“Excuse me?”
“Right now there are warrants that are being executed for your homes, storage units, and any other property that you’re connected to. See you walked in here far too bold for my liking and these three brilliant attorneys had already assumed that you were going to hold this situation with your daughter over his head. Sick pieces of shit like the one you raised like to have trophies. They had no doubt that your daughter would’ve taken similar measures had she lived to extort money from him. Especially since she was willing to kill her own child just to be spiteful.” Parker was speaking methodically but my mind was racing, thinking about what he was saying. It was enough that Sterling had bossed up, but the smug look on Marcus, Billy and Bryan’s faces was enough for me to know they’d had a bunch of contingency plans based on what I was going to say.
“How could you have a judge to sign off on that so quickly?” Their lawyer looked as though he didn’t truly believe this had gotten done so fast, but I knew better than to doubt anything that Parker said.
“You really didn’t do your research on anyone in this room, did you?” Stew looked mildly insulted, but their lack of due diligence benefited us.
