“Fuck.” I shook my head. “Fuck all of this.”
“That gives your son a huge motive,” Rock said. “Don’t try to protect him.”
“I’m not. I don’t believe my son killed his father. Why should he? He was already the beneficiary to this place.”
“Maybe he wanted it all,” I said.
“My son only had one Achilles heel,” Diamond said, “and it wasn’t his father. Or me.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Derek’s girlfriend. Fonda Burke.”
“So it was her,” Rock said. “Lace was right.”
“Why would you try to protect her?” I asked.
“I’m not protecting anyone,” Diamond said. “I did it.”
“Are you really still selling that story?” Rock asked. “No one’s buying.”
“You’re not a killer, Diamond,” Zee said. “You’ll never get me to believe it.
“Fine,” she said. “Don’t believe it. But you can at least believe this. I’m not sure who did it.”
49
Lacey
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
My heart raced. I already knew Rock was in danger, but Jordan made it that much more real.
“It means I’m not going down for any of this. And neither is Fonda.”
“Oh my God.” Recognition dawned on me. His eyes told the tale. “You’re in love with her.”
“She was too good for him.”
“I don’t deny it,” I said. “Everyone was too good for Derek Wolfe. Even Connie.”
“Bitch,” he said.
“Your father was the bigamist, not Connie. At least not knowingly.”
“She’s still a bitch.”
Knowing what I knew, I couldn’t deny it. Any woman who let her children be abused was definitely a bitch. But did Jordan even know any of that?
I’d inadvertently found Jordan’s weak spot. Now I had to figure out how to use it.
He held his gun nonchalantly in his right hand. I looked down the hall. Now or never. I had to try.
“Fonda!” I called.
He turned swiftly—
And I made my move.
I knife-handed his forearm, the gun slipped, and I dived toward it, grabbing it. Without thinking, I turned toward him and pointed it at his head. “Don’t you fucking move.”
The gun was hot against my palm. Was it even loaded?
Yeah, it was, or Jordan would be hightailing it out of here or trying to overpower me.
It was definitely loaded. I was holding a fucking loaded gun.
I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to make him think I did. I was a trained attorney. I could make him believe anything I wanted.
Right?
“You’re going to start talking,” I said through clenched teeth. “Or I’m going to blow your fucking head off and then Fonda’s. No. Scratch that. I’m going to make you watch while I blow Fonda’s head off. Then I’ll take care of you. The two of you can be soul mates in hell.”
My words surprised me. I was ruthless. This was what being wrongly accused had done to me. I flashbacked to Rock pulling a gun on the dirty cop in Montana who threatened to arrest me for murder.
I was doing the same thing.
Jordan was good. I’d give him that. His features were icy and cold. I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t scared at all or if he was secretly pissing his pants. I didn’t dare look down. My gaze remained firm on his.
I walked closer to him. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, asshole.”
Finally, he raised his hands. “Okay, okay. Ease up.”
“Ease up? Really? After you’ve been dragging me around and holding me at gunpoint? I don’t think so.”
“I told you. Fonda and I weren’t going to let you go down for this.”
“Really.”
“Yes. We never wanted that. Our plan was to…”
“To what? Your plan was to what?”
“To let his other kids go down. They got all his assets. I got…”
“You got something,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Never mind that. I never wanted any of it. Not after I met Fonda. I made sure every one of my half-siblings had a motive and that evidence pointed at each of them. You weren’t my idea.”
“Then whose idea was I?” I stalked up next to him and touched the nose of the gun to his temple. “Who stole the surveillance tape from my building that would have proved my innocence? Who planted my belongings?”
“It was… It was the cop. The dirty cop. But that was before…”
“Before what?”
“Before you went and married my brother. For God’s sake. You ruined everything.”
“I ruined everything? You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“I wanted one of my half-assed siblings to go down.”
“But they’re innocent.”
“Are they? Are they really? They got the high life, living in New York as Derek Wolfe’s real children. For all I know they actually are behind his death.”
“You don’t know anything.” I shook my head. “He abused every single one of them. Seems to me you’re the lucky one.”
“I know what he did to them. What makes you think he didn’t do the same thing to me? To Fonda? Why the hell do you think we wanted him dead?”
“At the cost of one of your brothers? Your sister? Me?”