Break Her Stride

Claude opened the door, ready to take on the world.  Humming the tune 'Break My Stride' by Matthew Wilder, she locks her front door and walks down the stairs of her modest two bedroom one bathroom home.
At her trusty sedan, she stops momentarily and breaths in the fresh morning air.  "Alright Mr. Harrison, her we go again," she mutters as she closes the door and starts her nondescript tan vehicle.
"I am fabulous.  I am strong.  I am not going to let you get to me today Mr. Big Bad Chef of the Year Chastain Harrison IV.  Arrogant bastard," she muttered the last words under her breath as she pulled out onto the main road.
Twenty minutes later Claude pulls into her marked parking space, noting that Chastain's muscle motorcycle was already in it's designated parking space next to hers.
"Great, Mr. Wonderful is here already," she noted as she alighted from her car and walked into the back of the world famous restaurant, listening for the chirp of the alarm as she raised her arm and pushed the security button.
Stepping into the back of the restaurant, Claude inhales the scents swirling around the kitchen.  "Morning everyone," she calls out as she makes her way to the office she shares with the accountant for the entire chain of restaurants.


Claude is the adopted child of New Orleans Madame, Melinda Michaels.  Claude and her adopted sisters are all the children of the call girls and their high-class clientele.  Madame is herself the daughter of an oil billionaire and his mistress, an oil heiress.  Both her father and her mother are still alive, but have nothing to do with each other.  Her mother Melinda didn't know that she was his mistress until she became pregnant and told him.  Barron Dowager, her father, had never wanted children and was livid when he found out that Melinda was pregnant.  
Madame Melinda is herself the daughter of an oil billionaire and his mistress, an oil heiress.  Melinda left after he told her that he was married and that he wanted her to get rid of the baby.  She refused and took off, but she couldn't tell her parents that she was pregnant by a married man, let alone a rival in the family business.  Melinda begins working as a waitress and becomes friends with the working girls that frequent the diner where she works.  She and the girls become roommates after she has her baby and they collectively move into a beat up old house and renovate it.
Because Melinda is so business smart, she and the girls go into the brothel business together and improve the men the women associate with.  If one of the women becomes pregnant and wants to keep it, Melinda is put on the birth certificate as the mother and the paternity is verified and the fathers have to pay a one-time payout to be put in trust for the child.    

Barron Dowager is in his 80s but is still running his company.  He doesn't know that Claude is his daughter and her mother wanted it kept that way.  Too late in life he realizes that he wants an heir to his fortune.  His wife died without giving him any children, by his own demand, and now he wishes he had allowed her to have at least one.  He hires a private detective to find Melinda and see if she had his child, since she is the only candidate for having his progeny.