Page 103 of Seductive Sin

“Hello?”

“Mom, it’s me.”

“Oh, Savannah,” she says. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

My heart lurches. Her voice is venomous. I’ve never heard my sweet mother speak this way before. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Do you ever think, Savannah? Do you ever consider the consequences of your actions?”

“Mom? I don’t understand what you mean. I haven’t done anything. I’m in the hospital with someone I care for deeply, and?—”

“Yes, the Bellamy boy.”

“He’s hardly a boy. I love him, and he loves me.”

“He’s a convict,” she says.

“An ex-convict. Plus, he says he’s innocent, and I believe him.”

She sighs through the phone. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“Mom, Vinnie’s home. Vinnie. Your son.”

“You think that makes me happy?” She’s shouting now. “Vinnie had a life. A life away from all this. He came back because of you.”

“My God,” I say. “Who are you and what have you done with my mother?”

“I lost my Michael, but at least I knew my Vincent was safe and happy. Far away from here.”

“What about me, Mom? I was here, and I wasn’t happy.”

“You made a deal, Savannah. You agreed to go with Miles.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I know everything that goes on in this family. I always have. I may look and act a certain part, I may have married a man I didn’t know to do my duty to my family, but I’ve always known the truth of what’s going on.”

“And you were willing to forsake your only daughter?”

“Of course not! Your father let you out largely because of me. I went to bat for you, Savannah, not once, not twice, but three times, first getting out of marriage to Miles at eighteen and at twenty-two, but also freeing you from the business months ago when you moved to Summer Creek. You were home free, Savannah. You are the one who made the deal with Miles McAllister.”

“That’s not fair, Mom. He sent gunmen to Falcon’s house to get me.”

“But he didn’t get you. And they would have been dealt with. This is on you, Savannah. You made a deal with the devil, and then you backed out. Vinnie, Falcon, Miles’s death, your father… It’s all on you.”

I swallow against the rage inside me.

How dare she? Though Vinnie came back for me. And now…

And Falcon… He went to Austin for… I don’t even know.

But Miles. What do I care about Miles? He was a vile rapist and a waste of human skin.

How dare?—

“Wait. What? What happened to Daddy?”

My mother sobs through the phone. “He was arrested, Savannah. Arrested for the murder of Miles McAllister.”

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