The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner

Chapter 1

Bella

I stood in front of the judge, my chin high, my hands clasped behind my back as I fought to keep the pose I’d perfected years ago, when I’d first started working as an attorney.

Actually, though, it had started a whole lot earlier than that. It had started when I’d first figured out that I didn’t have the same things other people had—and that I was going to have to do a whole lot of faking it till I made it. Which meant a whole lot of pretending like I was completely fine when I really, really wasn’t.

It was tough, let me tell you. And a whole lot tougher than I could let on. Because letting on? That would just alert the entire courtroom—and all the members of the press packed into the back of it—to how freaking nervous I was. How much I didn’t feel like I belonged in that situation… and how nervous I was to be on that big of a stage.

Well. Let’s backtrack on that one, shall we? Because it wasn’t that I didn’t belong there. The opposite, in fact. I knew I did belong there, and that I’d been waiting my entire freaking life for a break like this one. Waiting my entire career for a case like this to pop up on my desk. A case, and a client, where I could really prove what I knew and how good I was. Really prove how strong I could be in the courtroom, and how much I could get in there and kick butt, when the occasion called for it.

It was just that… now that I was here, and about to hear the final ruling, with my heart pounding so hard that I thought the entire courtroom could probably hear it, all of that planning and wanting and studying seemed like it might have been pointed in completely the wrong direction. Because I was terrified, and there was no other way to even say it.

I was more nervous than I’d ever been in my entire life.

What’s that term—imposter syndrome? Yeah, imposter syndrome and I were very well acquainted. And it was like the friend who comes over to your house at exactly the wrong time. Every. Single. Time.

Beside me, my client, Josh Lee, was standing with his chin up as well, his eyes laser-focused on the judge as he waited to hear the outcome of this case that he’d spent every cent he had to bring against the defendant.

And what a defendant it was. Harmon-e Music Group. Oh nothing, only the biggest music production company out there. The record label that all artists wanted to be with. The corporation that had the Top 40 covered and had the number one record. Every. Single. Week.

The richest record company in the country. In the world, actually, if you wanted to come right down to it. The record company with the most power, and the scariest, most expensive lawyers they could find.

It had been a huge case. And I still didn’t know why Barbor and Associates—the firm I worked for—had handed it over to me, one of the lower-level lawyers in the corporate law division. I’d never prosecuted such a big case before, and I certainly hadn’t done anything to make them think I could.

They’d barely even let me touch the more interesting intellectual property cases in my time there. Because, according to them, my resumé didn’t show that I had enough experience yet.

But hand it over they had—maybe so I could actually start building the experience they wanted to see. Maybe because they’d wanted to hand it to a younger woman who would play better in the music industry. Whatever their reasoning, I’d spent every second of my life for the last six months learning about the music business, including how it worked and how copyrights functioned in that particular industry.

And it had turned out that no matter how big and powerful you were, and no matter how much money you had to spend, you still weren’t allowed to lift one artist’s music right off the internet and use it for an artist signed to your own record label—which was exactly what Harmon-e had done. Josh had recorded a song and released it via an online streaming service, produced and recorded in his own basement, and it had gone right to the top of the site’s charts in terms of downloads and thumbs-ups.

Which was when Harmon-e had stepped in, lifted the track, and transferred it into the