You are not worthy of my son. If not for the baby, he would have forgotten you already.
I wish he’d never laid eyes on you!
Luna had stood like a guilty child, taking her punishment. But she wasn’t guilty. Jerome loved her. She was a good person. A good woman and wife, and she would be a good mother. The bad things that had happened in the Boyett family’s history had nothing to do with Luna. Her own mother, God rest her soul, was someone Luna hadn’t even known. How could she possibly be like her?
But the trickle-down effect created by Jackie’s evil tongue had started with Geneva. She had turned against Luna. Several of the ladiesfrom church had started to snub her. Luna wasn’t sure she could even bear to go to church this upcoming Sunday.
It was a nightmare. A total nightmare.
But it was done. Luna could not change what had happened. No matter how much she wanted to ... she couldn’t.
The sound of Jackie calling out to her as Luna stormed out the door would haunt her forever.
She closed her eyes and battled the flood of tears. Jerome’s mother had been screaming for Luna to come back, but she had kept walking without a backward glance.
No one—not even Vera—could ever know that truth.
19
Thursday, September 4
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
1211 Medical Center Drive
Nashville, 9:30 a.m.
“I expect you to stand by your word.”
Vera considered the man behind the wheel and his edict. “I always stand by my word.” When had she not—at least where this man was concerned?
He wasn’t someone she had expected to ever use for a ride, but there simply was no one else. Bent didn’t need to be distracted from the Wilton investigation. Eve had twovisitorsto prepare for visitations this evening. No way was she asking Luna. Since Vera hadn’t found time to make the kind of friends you call at the last minute asking for this sort of favor, she’d had to resort to calling in a marker.
Nolan Baker owed Vera. Really, really owed her, and today she had needed to collect.
“I won’t be long,” she promised as she reached for the door handle.
“Just one question.”
Vera huffed a breath and turned back to him. “What now, Nolan?”
“Why are you visiting the Wilton heiress if she’s in a coma?”
If the wannabe big news reporter only knew. Alicia was far from an heiress. When taking into consideration the amount of money andassets Thomas Wilton possessed, a measly ten mil was nothing. Alicia was a victim and a murder suspect currently imprisoned by a coma. Hopefully she would recover and be able to share enough of what had happened at that cabin over the weekend for Vera to piece together who did what—unless she refused to talk because she was the killer.
Then againifAlicia woke up, there was no guarantee she would remember a solitary thing.
“Just because she’s in a coma doesn’t mean she isn’t aware of what’s happening around her.” Vera fully recognized if she didn’t give him something, that diabolical mind of his would conclude the worst. He was a reporter, after all. “She has no family that we know of, so I thought I’d drop by and give her a little reassurance.”
“Bullshit.” He chuckled. “You just want her to wake up so you can close your case. You don’t care about Alicia Wilton.”
Vera shot him a look. “Like you care about the subjects of all your hit pieces.”
“My allegiance is to my readers,” he tossed back.
What a crock of shit. He was just like his mother. He was the spitting image of her, only in male form and twenty-odd years younger. Dark hair and eyes. Perfectly chiseled profile. He dressed like a media influencer sporting the hottest fashions. But Vera knew him. Really knew him. Beneath that trendy facade, he was not nearly as brave and altruistic as he would have folks believe.
“Assume what you will, Nolan, just stay put until I return. I’ll be thirty or forty minutes, tops.”
