Author's Note: This two-part story is a follow-up to The Nerd Conquest.
*****
Chapter One
Brooke sat at her desk and scanned the empty classroom. The twenty-eight-year-old teacher was about to lose the job she loved. It would be her fourth position lost since graduating college six years earlier.
The sides of her lips curled slightly upward as she considered which excuse her principal would offer for her termination. Brooke assumed he would cite budget cuts or some sort of restructuring. One of her previous employers actually attempted to fire her for cause and ended up paying her a minimal wrongful termination settlement. Simple budget cuts are the smart way to get rid of someone; this Brooke understood all too well.
In a way, Brooke didn't blame the principal, the school system, or even her ineffective teacher's union. Like her, the system only served as a pawn in a much larger scheme. She couldn't fault the others for playing their part in her drama any more than she could personally accept responsibility for falling into this situation in the first place.
Brooke's problems all started when she was a senior in high school. Instead of enjoying a final year with her friends, she had to move to a different town and build all new relationships. Unfortunately, what started out as a rough senior year of high school turned into a decade of broken dreams and heartbreak.
Brooke's father, a college professor, got himself into trouble with one of his students. Unfortunately, that pupil, Janice Barnette, was looking for much more than a simple teacher-student fling. She secretly videotaped several of their meetings and even tricked him into a compromising situation at one of the sororities. Despite claims that he never had actual intercourse with Janice or anyone at the sorority, he lost his job.
Even after Brooke's father moved to another school, Janice continued to use her leverage against him. To avoid further embarrassment, he basically paid for Janice's education in addition to numerous miscellaneous expenses.
Determined to help her father escape Janice's blackmail, Brooke enrolled at his former university. During her freshman year, she made friends with Janice and eventually participated in extortion schemes against several other college students. She was committed to winning Janice's trust at almost any cost.
One of their victims eventually helped Brooke break into Janice's computer and steal the evidence against her father. Mark was different than the other guys Janice entrapped, however. He wasn't some pervert stalker or creep; he was just a coed who found himself at the wrong time and place.
Mark was a stereotypical genius, great with equations and computers but not so skilled with personal relationships. In a strange way, Brooke and Mark had formed an effective team. She used her social acumen to work her way into Janice's inner circle, and he used his computer savvy to secure evidence against both the professor and him.
Unfortunately, Brooke also took advantage of Mark's social limitations and used his situation for her own amusement. While she helped him secure his freedom from Janice, she also took every opportunity to humiliate him along the way.
After securing the damning evidence, Brooke reached out to her father and let him know that he was off the hook. She also confronted Janice and warned her father's tormentor to back off. Brooke figured she would never hear from Janice again; she was wrong.
Less than a year after Janice graduated college, Brooke's father divorced her mother and quit his most recent teaching job. While he denied as much, Brooke knew the divorce was somehow connected to Janice. Within a few years, the former professor was bankrupt and substitute teaching at a local high school.
Brooke eventually graduated and embarked on a teaching career of her own. She met a nice guy and planned to start a family. Despite her father's combination of poor decisions and bad luck, she was finally enjoying her life.
Two years into Brooke's first teaching job, her world crashed in on itself. Her problems started when she found a bouquet of lilies on her classroom desk. At first, she thought the flowers were a gesture from her fiancé, but she was wrong. The note on the bouquet simply read "Like father, like daughter." She realized immediately that the gift was from Janice, and that they weren't a kind gesture at all; they were a message, a threat even.
That same afternoon, Brooke lost her first job. Despite her positive performance reviews, the superintendent told her that the school district was restructuring and had to cut her position. Less than a month later, her fiancé broke up with her; he used some lame excuse about the heart wanting what it wanted and insisted that the breakup hurt him more than it could ever hurt her. Bullshit.
Over the next few years, Brooke lost another fiancé and two more jobs. Now she was going to lose her fourth job, and there was nothing she could do about it. She knew Janice was somehow behind everything, but there was nothing she could do to prove it; she wouldn't even know where to start.
Brooke didn't even bother meeting with her boss. Instead, she boxed up her belongings and left her school keys in the desk drawer. She had been through enough layoffs to understand that she would get a month of severance pay as negotiated by her ineffective teacher's union. She would receive her last check via certified letter in a week to ten days. She also realized that it would be tough to find a fifth teaching job since she had already been laid off from every district in the area.
Brooke's mind raced as she drove out of the teacher's parking lot for the final time. She had no idea how to proceed with her life and career. Her bills were already piling up from several periods of unemployment. Her family was broke, and she didn't have time to go back to college. It was more than she could bear. Once a safe distance from the school, she pulled her dated red Corolla into a gas station parking lot, dropped her head to the steering wheel, and cried.
Eventually, Brooke managed to refocus. She had never been a quitter and wasn't about to give up now. She had no idea how she would deal with her current crisis, but she was prepared to press on with her life. She would worry about the specifics later. For the time being, she would go home, take a warm bath, and drink a glass of wine.
The drive home felt like it took hours even though she lived only a short distance from her former workplace. As Brooke pulled into her driveway, she was surprised to find a black SUV parked in front of her garage. She couldn't figure out who would show up unannounced at such a difficult time; her only guess was that Janice might be paying her a surprise visit. Brooke almost hoped it was Janice; a confrontation would make her feel at least a little better.
Brooke parked behind the SUV and attempted to look through the tinted windows. It didn't appear as though anyone was in the truck. Would Janice, or whoever's vehicle this was, actually break into her house? How would the visitor get past the alarm? Brooke thought for a second that it might be a thief but quickly convinced herself that such a scenario was unlikely.
Brooke cautiously opened her front door and peered inside the house. The alarm warning tone failed to sound indicating that someone had definitely disabled it. "Hello," she yelled through the entryway. "I've called the police. They'll be here any minute."
"You didn't call the police," a voice returned from Brooke's living room. "Come on in, Brooke. I just want to talk."
The voice sounded familiar to Brooke, but she couldn't place it; it sure as hell wasn't Janice. "Who are you?"
"Come on in," the voice insisted. "I'm here to help, and I imagine you could use some support about now."
Brooke stepped into her living room and saw a beautiful woman with long blonde hair sitting on the couch. The woman was wearing a professional blue skirt suit with a white ruffled blouse. She had an expensive leather satchel opened on the coffee table beside a tablet computer and a stack of papers.
"Hi, Brooke," the woman said extending an arm toward an empty recliner. "You don't remember me. Do you? I'll take that as a compliment."
"Take it however you want," Brooke snapped. "Who are you, and why are you in my house?"
"I'm Emily," the woman answered brushing her curly blonde hair over her shoulder and motioning again for Brooke to take a seat. "We went to college together."
"Emily?" Brooke replied. She sat down and leaned in toward her guest with squinted eyes. "Emily Childress? How long's it been? Five...six years?"
"Emily Chapman," Brooke's former acquaintance corrected. "It has been a while. Ten years, actually."
Perplexed, Brooke leaned back in her chair. Why would someone she barely knew from college show up out of nowhere? Why today?
"You're confused," Emily consoled. "I don't blame you at all. Like I said, I'm here to help you. Mr. Griffin sent me."
"Mr. Griffin?" Brooke laughed. "You mean Mark?"
