Her Real Alpha

by Sherie Keys

  Veronica would not hear it. "I don't care what you tell me about not screwing him anymore. I know you're lying! I know you want to keep seeing him so you can have an affair behind my back and try to steal him away from me! You're a rotten little whore, and I told you what I was going to do if you didn't let him go.

  “I warned you. I told you that it would cost you your career. Well honey, since that's what you've chosen, that's exactly what's going to happen. In the meantime, you stay the hell away from my husband. He is mine! You can't have him!"

  Brandy grew angry and decided to fight back. "I'm not going to sleep with him! That's pretty ironic coming from you anyway; demanding that I don't sleep with him, because you sure as hell don't sleep with him, and that's how he wound up in my bed in the first place. He was tired of being lonely and used. He wanted to be loved and be with someone who cared about him!" she raised her voice back at Veronica.

  The other woman laughed at her. "Don't you dare try to tell me about my marriage, little whore. He loved me enough to marry me. The only thing he wanted from you was a romp in the hay. That's all you're worth to him; just some cheap sex from a tramp, and he got it and that is all you're ever going to get. Don’t think you can come after him and try to steal him away, because it won't happen. He is mine and he is always going to be mine and there's nothing you can do about that!"

  "I'm done with this conversation." Brandy told her. "You can keep your deal." She hung up the phone and when it rang again a moment later and she saw that it was Veronica, she didn't answer it. She had another thing to consider, she realized then; if Kyle did want to spend time with his child, she was going to have to work out some sort of system where Veronica wouldn't be left alone with the baby. There was no way that Brandy was going to put up with that. She took a warm shower and then went to bed, hoping that the next day would be better for her.

  The next day started out with a bump as the landlord let her know that her rent was going to be increased and it wasn't a small amount. She would have to start looking for a new place to live; something cheaper and more affordable, but in the meantime, she was going to have to go ask Hannah for more hours. Even at the amount of rent that she was already paying, she'd have to be making quite a bit more money if she expected to be able to make it with a baby.

  She called the doctor's office as she promised Alice that she would, and when they found out that she hadn't been in at all, the nurse told her to come in that day and they would take her blood and at least get her set up and going on vitamins and do a fast check on the baby.

  She agreed and a short time later, she was sitting in the doctor's office filling out enough forms to fill a short novel. After a lengthy wait, she was taken back into the office and weighed, measured and seated in her own room. The nurse came in and took several vials of blood from her, as well as her pulse and vitals.

  She had told her on the phone that the doctor would not have time to see her, but she poked her head into Brandy's room anyway, and when she talked with Brandy for a few minutes, Brandy was able to have some questions answered and get a better idea of what was to come.

  "You're going to have a December baby,” the doctor told her. "So far everything looks and sounds good. Come in next month and we will do your next appointment."

  She gave her a prescription for prenatal vitamins and some advice for morning sickness, and Brandy went away glad that she had taken the time to see the doctor, and relieved that she had gotten at least that done.

  After that, she went in to work and when she saw Hannah, she went to her and asked her if they could talk.

  Hannah frowned deeply at her and told her that they needed to go into her office.

  Brandy's brow furrowed a little and she followed Hannah into her office.

  The moment that Hannah sat down, Brandy began speaking.

  "I wanted to talk to you to about some changes that have been going on in my life. I need you to put me on full time so that I can make more money. I dropped out of school this morning, so there won't be anything to keep me away from working for you as much as you can have me here,” she said with a half-smile on her face and hope in her voice.

  "Well," Hannah said to her with a serious tone and a deep frown, "there is something else that we have to talk about. Please sit down."

  Brandy sat and folded her hands in her lap, and for the first time, noticed the deep lines of strain and stress creased in Hannah's face.

  Hannah looked at her and lowered her eyebrows. The thin hard line of her mouth opened and she spoke in a tone that narrowly withheld her anger and disappointment with Brandy.

  "We've received a phone call from one of our most affluent customers, and she has filed a complaint against you. She tells me that she is taking her complaint all the way to the state level. Whether or not she does remains to be seen, but the most significant aspect of her complaint against you is the association of you with this facility.

  “I run a reputable business. I can't have someone with the status she has and frankly, the social pull, spreading rumors and telling other people things about my business that put this spa in a bad light. I refuse to let your unthinkable indiscretions cost me my reputation or my business, and the livelihoods of the other employees here!"

  Brandy stared at her in disbelief. Veronica had done it. She had called the spa just like she said she would, and now Brandy was facing the repercussion of that. She felt her chest tighten and her stomach clench as she began to panic over what was happening. It couldn't be happening.

  Brandy blinked back tears and told herself to just listen and try to focus on not showing any emotion while she was sitting there listening to her boss. She couldn't break down there.

  Hannah's face grew harder and her voice deeper. "You have behaved in a completely unprofessional manner. Having sex with clients in your massage room? What in the world were you thinking? You certainly weren't thinking of anyone else who works here, or of me, or of the profession you entered into.

  “You were only thinking of yourself, and now your immoral acts and unprofessional behavior are coming back to hit all of us very hard. I absolutely will not stand for what you have done! Your job here has been terminated, and you will not get a reference out of me for a position at any other company.

  “As a matter of fact, you have acted with such reprehensible immorality that I have already warned every other spa I know of in this town about what you have done so they won't hire you, realizing what someone like you might do to their business or their reputation, or even, God forbid, their clients.

  “You are through in this city, young woman. There is nothing else I can do but end your job this minute, but if there was anything else that I could do to stop you from working in this industry, believe me, I would do it. I have not worked this hard, for all of these years, just to have a little tramp like you come along and pull it all out from underneath me so you can work as a prostitute behind closed doors in my own business! How dare you!"

  Brandy's throat was tight and her palms felt warm. Her heart was thudding wildly against her chest as she listened and sat there in utter shock. Veronica had driven the blade in deeply, and had twisted it hard. Brandy should never have done what she did with Kyle, but now his wife was getting her own retribution, and Brandy felt like she was on a train going down the side of a mountain, off the rails and out of control.

  There was nothing she could do, and it took everything in her to hold her emotions in and try her best to keep herself calm. She could not stop the tears from coming, but she managed to cry silently, and that at least was some show of her strength, she felt.

  Hannah stopped herself short, as her voice was growing louder and louder, and Brandy's eyes were shedding tears in rivulets down her cheeks. She knew that everything Hannah had told her was right. She knew that she never should have acted the way she had right there at her job, right there in a place of business. The spa had a fantastic reputation and she had been lucky to be hired on there, but now he
r choices had taken her down yet again.

  "Your final check will be prepared for you within five days. Let me know where you want it sent, because I do not wish for you to ever darken my doorstep again, so I don't want you coming back here to claim it. I would be ashamed for your face ever to appear here again. Let me know an address, and I will mail it to you as soon as it is ready,” she said with finality.

  Brandy's mind was a tangled mess of thoughts, but she tried to think as quickly as she could about what was going on. She had no job. She had no likely prospects of getting a job at any point in the near future, and she was certain that she wouldn't be able to keep her apartment without a job. She had a lot of scrambling to do and she would have to figure something out quickly. She looked at Hannah through her tears and wiped her cheeks as dry as she could.

  "Send it to my parents. Here's their address." She wrote it down on a piece of paper and slid it across Hannah's desk toward the woman.

  "Do you have anything to say for yourself? Anything at all?" Hannah asked, and Brandy felt quite sure that Hannah did not really want to hear anything that Brandy had to say, but she couldn't leave without a word.

  "I'm sorry that I let you down, and that I let this business down. You've been good to me and I should have treated you and this place better than this." She meant it. She knew better. Acting with morality was an enormous aspect of being a professional masseuse, and she had taken that far beyond the measure of acceptability in her actions with Kyle.

  Brandy had no problem owning up to her mistakes. She should not have agreed to anything with him at all, but especially there in the spa. She didn't know how Veronica knew they had been intimate at her job, but she wasn't wrong about it, and now Hannah and every other reputable spa in New York knew about it. Brandy was horrified with herself.

  She stood up and sighed. "I'll go pack my things."

  "That's already been taken care of for you. There is a box at the front desk waiting for you. You may pick it up on your way out and do not come back here again. There's nothing for you here,” Hannah said, leaning back in her chair and looking coldly at Brandy.

  Brandy nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. She didn't want to stay in the spa a moment longer than necessary, so she went up to the desk and the girl there saw her and her eyes grew wide. It was obvious that she knew what had happened. She reached down and lifted a box containing all of the things that Brandy had kept at work.

  Brandy leaned over and took it, and then walked out of the door, and that was the end of her employment at the spa. She took the train home and walked into her apartment. The moment the door closed, she let the huge well of emotions she had barely kept in check wash out from her in a river of tears and heart breaking sobs.

  Her time with Kyle had cost her everything. She had was no longer in school, she was no longer employed and her professional reputation had been shot. She had a broken heart and a baby on the way. She had never been in such a dark place in all of her life, and it felt as if everything in her had been ripped apart.

  She looked around her apartment and she knew that there was no way she could stay there longer than a month. The savings she had managed to gather and keep tucked away from her time with Kyle would need to be used for the baby who would be in her life in no time.

  If she stuck it out, stayed at the apartment, and tried to get a job at another salon, she would spend a good portion of her savings just getting by for the month. Then she would have to leave, because her savings would be so far gone, and if she wasn't able to find a decent job, she would have wasted the month and the savings, and she would have nothing to show for it, other than being worse off than she was just then.

  There was only one other option for her and it made her sick to even think it, but she had no choice. She knew she was going to have to call her mother and father and go home to them in Boston. Defeated and broken, used, and now she would have to be a burden to them. It was a horrible situation for her. She wept all of her sorrows out and fell asleep.

  She slept soundly for a long while, and when she woke up it was very early the next morning. She felt subdued and rested, and she got up to make herself some tea. She was going to have to make a couple of phone calls. The first one was to her parents in Boston.

  Her mother answered the phone. She was one of those early morning people who were up and running before the sun came over the horizon.

  "Hi, baby!" her mother answered her call.

  "Hi, Mom,” Brandy said sadly. She felt a flood of security and relief when she heard her mother's voice. It was so profound that she realized that she had needed it without knowing it, and even the sound of her mother's voice was an enormous comfort to her. It gave her a peace that she hadn't really noticed was missing from her life, or that she needed as much as she did.

  Her mother made a worried noise. "Uh, oh. Something is wrong. What's got you down, baby?" she asked with concern.

  Brandy sighed. "Well Mom, I’ll be honest. This isn't going to be the proudest moment of either of our lives. I've kind of gotten myself into a mess and I need to ask for some help."

  "What happened? What's wrong?" her mother asked worriedly.

  She didn't know how to say it to make it sound any less bad than it already was.

  "I had to leave school. My grades weren't good enough to keep my scholarships and grant money." She began with the easiest thing.

  Her mother sighed sadly. "Oh no, honey, I'm so sorry. Maybe you can go back next semester. At least now you'll have time to work more, so that's good, right?" she asked hopefully.

  Brandy sighed and covered her face with her hand. "Well, that's what I thought I would do, but I lost my job yesterday."

  Her mother gasped. "Honey! That's horrible! I am so sorry. So do you need some money? Are you going to find another job there?"

  Brandy wiped some tears from her eyes and cheeks. "No, Mom, what I really need is to come home. I need a place to go."

  She began to cry, feeling safe in the company of her mother on the phone, like she could open up everything in her and let all of it out without any fear or worry about what might come of it.

  Brandy's mother was silent for a moment and then spoke in a soft and kind voice. "Of course honey, you can always come here. You know that. Anytime. We love having you around."

  "Mom," Brandy continued. "There's something else."

  Her mom moaned. "Oh no... How could there be anything else? You've got so much going on right now."

  "Mom, I'm pregnant."

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Brandy felt like every single second that ticked by was going to last an eternity.

  "You are? Well that's... that's a surprise. Are you alright? Are you doing alright?" she asked. Brandy knew that she meant was she physically okay.

  "I'm doing okay, except I'm sick all the time. This morning sickness is the worst,” she confided.

  Her mother agreed. "That it is. I can't believe this. You're going to be a mom and I'm going to be a grandma." She could hear the little smile in her mother's voice. "What about the father of the baby? What does he say about it?"

  Brandy sighed. "He doesn't know. I haven't told him. I don't really think he's going to be in the picture much, Mom. I wish he was, but I just don't think he will be."

  "Well, that's no matter. That may or may not change in time. What we need to focus on right now is taking care of you and making sure that you are alright. So you have left school, you lost your job and you're pregnant. Is there anything else going on that you want to tell me about?" She sounded like she was dreading that there might be something else.

  Brandy almost laughed a little. "Gosh, it sounds horrible when you say it like that. No, there's nothing else going on. That's all there is for now," she said with a sigh.

  "Well, that's enough for anybody. More than enough. So you pack your things and you come on home. Don't worry about your father, I'll tell him everything and then you won't have to. Just
let me know when you'll be here. You have a key, come anytime."

  Her mother spoke gently to her. "We're glad to help you, baby. We're glad to do anything we can for you, always. That's what family does."

  Brandy smiled for the first time in a long time. "Thank you, Mom. I love you," she said gratefully.

  "Of course, honey. I love you, too,” her mother replied.

  They made their goodbyes and hung up and Brandy felt a little better and somewhat relieved. There was at least one stronghold in her life that she could count on and rely upon when storms tossed her lifeboat upon the big waves.

  Looking around her home again, she realized that there was no point in staying there any longer than she had to. She sighed heavily and picked up her phone to call Alice.

  Alice answered after several rings and it was obvious that she had been sleeping.

  "What's wrong?" she asked in a muffled tone.

  "I need you to come over to the apartment when you get up today,” Brandy said with a quiet voice.