Bratva Boss’ Baby by Winter Sloane

Chapter One

“Ava, sorry to disturb you, but Charles Green and Amanda Hill want to see you in the conference room,” Gina said.

Ava Madison looked up from her computer screen. She had to get this particular report done by noon. Oh, she knew the deadline was still in three days, but she liked being ahead of the game. She studied Gina for a few seconds.

Gina could barely contain the excitement on her face. Her eyes shone, and she wore a big smile. Both Gina and she had been hired by Green and Hill Accounting at the same time. The brunette had soon moved from co-worker to best friend.

“What do the senior partners want with me?” Ava asked.

“They didn’t say, but don’t you think it’s obvious, Ava? Today’s the day they finally promote you to Senior Accountant!” Gina beamed at her.

Ava grinned. She couldn’t help but share Gina’s enthusiasm. Ava had been working her ass off for nearly five years. Gina had been content to do the bare minimum, but Ava had always been a perfectionist. She constantly strove to push herself. All those late nights spent at the office when she could have a social life weren’t for naught.

Ava straightened the creases over her sky-blue dress. She knew she wore her lucky dress for a reason today. It was her favorite because this particular shade of blue was the same color as her eyes. It didn’t hurt the fabric hugged her curves perfectly. She slowly rose to her feet, heart thumping.

“How do I look?” Ava asked her best friend.

Gina looked at her critically, then reached out to smooth the blonde hairs sticking out of her head.

“Perfect,” Gina said. “You’ve earned this, Ava.”

Ava noticed her other work colleagues giving them curious glances. It was hard to keep a secret in the office. The cubicles in the office were small and the dividers were thin.

A senior accountant, however, had his or her own office, one surrounded by glass walls. They had their own assistants, too. The day Ava had been dreaming of had finally arrived.

“Tell me everything after,” Gina said. “We can go to Rum and Monkey tonight to celebrate.”

“Sure. My treat,” Ava said. She’d be getting a bigger salary soon after all.

Head held high and shoulders straight, she marched toward the conference room. Before entering, she looked at her feet. Ava wished she wore heels instead of the black flats she usually wore.

Then again, she never got the hang of heels. She’d probably topple over while walking. Plus, they hurt. Gina never had a problem with them. Whatever. Her physical appearance didn’t matter. Her efforts were finally being recognized. She knocked on the door.

“Come in,” came Charles’s voice.

She opened the door.

“Ava, please have a seat,” Amanda said, nodding to the empty chairs around the long conference table.

Amanda sat at the end of the table. Charles took the seat to her right. Ava pulled out a chair and sat left of Amanda. Both senior partners were in their early fifties but kept in shape. To Ava, the ex-husband and wife team always looked so put-together, so polished. The smile Amanda flashed her looked a little strained, fake almost. Charles kept looking at the opened file in front of him. Should that be a cause for alarm?

“Before the two of you say anything,” she began. She took a deep breath. “I accept.”

The firm always valued employees who took initiative. Ava prided herself on being a strong and confident woman. She came from nowhere, a dirt-poor mountain town, with no penny to her name. Ava was the first member of her family to go to college and get a degree. She’d gotten a practical one, because, hey. The world always needed accountants.

“Excuse me?” Charles asked. The two partners looked at each other, puzzled.

“This is a promotion, yes?” Ava’s confidence took a deep dive as the two partners offered her looks of sympathy.

Oh, no. Had Ava misread the situation? Maybe the position wasn’t hers yet. Perhaps Charles and Amanda had a few candidates in mind and were about to tell Ava she had to compete for the job.

Well, she was ready to tackle any challenge they threw at her.

“At the Christmas party, we announced the firm had to cut costs this year,” Charles said, clearing his voice.

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

“Ava, there’s no easy way to say this,” Amanda said. The older woman put her hand on hers. She tentatively withdrew from her touch, not liking this at all. The office called Amanda a shark behind her back. She didn’t offer anyone sympathy unless it was false. “We have to let you go.”

Those six words felt like lethal blows to her gut. Ava could hardly believe her ears.

“W-why? I don’t understand. I work harder than anyone else. My performance—”

“Is exceptional,” Charles finished. “However, when we looked at your file again, we discovered you received your accounting degree from a community college.”

Ava balled her hands into fists and set them on her lap. He opened his mouth and kept talking, but she couldn’t hear him. Gina, like everyone else at the firm, had graduated from a fancy Ivy League school. They came from good, solid families. None of them grew up in a trailer park, like Ava did.

“Mrs. Chambers didn’t think it seemed to matter,” Ava finally spoke up, referring to the HR manager. “Why isn’t she here, anyway? Isn’t firing staff supposed to be her job?”

Amanda pursed her lips and looked annoyed Ava had interrupted Charles’s monologue.

Finally, Amanda spoke. “At Green and Hill Accounting, we’re a family. Charles and I see it as our duty to personally inform our staff that—”

“I don’t need to hear this bullshit anymore. I get it. You guys want me gone. It doesn’t matter if I slaved at this job for five years. Hell, if I only knew all that wasted time would lead me to this moment, I would’ve put myself out there. I’d be married and have kids by now.”

Oh, my God. Ava had broken down. She was babbling nonsense and couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Ava, please sit back down,” Charles said. “We’d like to make this transition as fluid as possible.”

When had she stood up? She shook with silent anger. Never had she felt so humiliated.

“Fluid for you?” She shook her head. Fuck you both, were the three parting words she wanted to leave them, but she culled her temper. Despite her origins, Ava had class. “Thank you for having me for the last five years. I’ve learned a lot, but I’ve also realized it’s time for me to move on.”

With that, she strode out of that conference room, her head still held high. On the outside, she might appear strong, but deep down? Ava wanted to hide somewhere where no one would find her.

Then she’d curl into a ball and cry her heart out. Ava knew the place where she could do that. She pushed past Gina on her way to her secret location. Gina gave her a concerned look.

“What’s wrong?” Gina silently mouthed at her.

“Bathroom,” Ava lied. “Need to fix my makeup.”

Gina knew her better than that. Her best friend probably knew she was lying, but Ava needed to get away. She felt many stares on her fleeing figure, but that was probably just a figment of her imagination.

Amanda thought the firm was a family? Yeah, right. Ava worked in a cut-throat environment. Every junior accountant fought for a project like sharks who scented blood in the water.

She reached the door at the end of the corridor. One that read office supplies. She yanked it open and slid inside then turned the light on. Reams of paper and stationery stared back at her from the shelves.

Whenever the pressures of her job got her down, Ava always came here to think. To clear her head. She had always loved stationery, and the smell of her paper calmed her.

Growing up in a small and often empty trailer, she’d head to the stationery store in town to pass the time. Reminiscing about her childhood made her think of her mom.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

She slid to the floor, not caring if her dress got dirty. Tears streamed down her cheek. Ava wasn’t a crier. She couldn’t remember the last time she shed tears. When her dad left Ava and her mother, perhaps? Her mom was a saint.

Joanna Addison had worked two jobs to pay the bills and to keep Ava in school. She owed her mom everything. Half her paychecks went to her mom.

Unfortunately, after five years of being chained to her desk, Ava had become a stranger to her own mother. She hadn’t even been home since she’d started working here. Failure tasted like bitter ashes in her mouth. A tentative knock on the door made her jump.

“Ava? It’s Gina. Can I come in?”

“Go away. Please.”

Ava probably looked awful. All that stupid crying messed up her mascara and eyeliner. She probably looked like a clown. Gina, of course, didn’t listen. She opened the door, took one look at Ava, then closed the door behind her. Gina took a seat next to her. There wasn’t much room in the tiny space, and neither Gina and her were exactly small.

“Hey, you know you can talk to me.” Gina took her hands in hers. “What happened?”

“They didn’t call me in to tell me I’m promoted. They’re letting me go.”

Gina widened her eyes. “You’re joking. There must be some kind of mistake. Ava, you work harder than everyone else here. If you hadn’t helped Anton with his client, the firm would probably be in trouble.”

“Don’t remind me about Anton,” she said with a scoff.

Anton was a senior accountant Ava worked with on a project. She had wondered how he got the position because Anton never seemed to be interested in doing any work. Anton had attended no meetings with their client either.

Ava did everything. What was worse? She agreed to date that loser. She didn’t know what had come over her. Maybe it had been the loneliness and late nights talking. Either way, that relationship didn’t last long.

“Let me talk to Charles and Amanda. My parents are good friends with them. I’m sure I can get them to reconsider,” Gina said.

She shook her head firmly. “Gina, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to continue working for a firm that treats their employees like shit. Besides, it might only get you in trouble.”

“Did they say why they’re letting you go?” Gina asked.

Ava scoffed. “They found out I graduated from a community college.”

Gina frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? You’re more than qualified.”

“I guess I don’t fit the image of the firm.”

Some of Charles’s words came back to her. The firm had certain standards to maintain, he had said. Charles promised to write her a good recommendation, but would he still do that after she walked out of that meeting in a huff?

“Okay,” Gina said. “Today’s almost over. We can think about the future later. We’ll both get hammered at the Rum and Monkey. What do you say?”

Ava had planned to head back to her lonely apartment. To order in massive amounts of Chinese takeout and to binge-watch some romance movies with Fatty, her tabby cat. Drinking her sorrows away seemed like a much better idea. Alcohol might be a momentary cure, but she didn’t care.

“I’m in,” Ava said.

She smiled as Gina pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away her smudged makeup.

“There’s my awesome girl,” Gina said.

Ava gave the other woman’s hand a squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re here. I wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t.”

“You can always count on me, babe.”