Page 122 of Most Eligible Billionaire

In the dark of the veranda, I open up my laptop. Before I even check my email, I click to a section of bookmarks that’s all jewelry. It’s a morbid ritual, perusing the latest debut designer collections of high-end boutiques around the world. I also look at solo designers.

She wouldn’t be so stupid to start up her sequined dog bowtie business again. And she probably wouldn’t create that Smuck U line I so loved and hated, either, but she has to do something.

She’s a maker—it’s in her bones—and women’s jewelry was her passion.

She told me so many things. I could’ve told her about the hearing and the good cop thing, explain that I’d abandoned it. Was some little part of me holding all that back to protect my advantage? Covering my ass? Needing to arrange things to come off perfect to her? Not wanting to rock the boat of our time together? Not trusting her to understand?

I click through collections. It’s not the names I’m looking at; it’s the pieces. I feel sure I’ll see a necklace or a pin or something, and I’ll recognize her vision in it, her sense of humor, her spirit—something essentiallyherbubbling up out of the pages of baubles, unmistakable as a fingerprint.

I stay out there until dawn, clicking through the images. Then I switch to coffee and get ready to deal with the world.

Over the next few weeks, Latrisha completes the cool-as-hell furnishings for the Moreno, and we collaborate on the installation and interior finishes. I make sure the website is updated with plenty of pictures, just so Vicky can see.

Or should I call her Vonda? I don’t know, but what I do know is that she’ll check. She won’t be able to help herself.

I throw myself into the Ten redesign. It feels good to do the place right. The neighbors are excited—we’re experimenting with bringing them into limited sections of the process. Maybe it’s arrogant, but I have this idea that one of these days, Vicky will pull up the website for that, too.

I want her to see it. I want her to see that beautiful things can be real. Or maybe that real things can be beautiful.

Not everything I do that autumn is noble. I have enough anger to go around, and my sights also happen to be set on Vicky’s mother and the Woodruffs.

TheNew York Nightly ReportsI-team is excited about the idea that I brought them for a news-hour segment about what really happened with Vonda O’Neil. Getting the salacious truth of the story. The mindfuck that everyone was wrong about her, and the opportunity to shame the true villains on camera.

That’s how I find myself flying up to Deerville the week before Thanksgiving with a stack of cash—a hundred thousand, to be exact.

I got the idea for this whole thing after Brett told me that he thinks the mother still has evidence. He figured it out from something Denny said to him about the Woodruffs having to keep her quiet.

This little nugget doesn’t put him back in my good graces, but it’s a start.

Maybe.

The news crew is made up of Marv Jenkins, the on-camera personality, two camera operators, and a tech guy. The address they got for Vicky’s mother, Esme O’Neil, is wrong, but we track her down to a trailer park and then follow the bread crumbs from there to a poorly lit local bar.

I recognize her right away, down at the end.

She’s the skinny woman drinking alone, hair dyed red, skin wrinkled beyond her fifty-something years. She looks bewildered and angry when the lights and cameras fire up—it’s an ambush and a half.

Newscaster Marv buys her a drink and coaxes her into repeating the lies on camera. My blood boils as she tells the world how surprised she was that her own daughter lied. She’d believed the girl—how would she know her own daughter turned out to be a liar? It’s a well-worn speech, calibrated for maximum sympathy.

Her voice wavers when she meets my eyes. Does she feel my rage? Does she sense it’s the end of the road for her story?

The cameras go off when she’s done. I step up and slap the cash onto the scratched wooden bar. Bundles of fifties. The Woodruffs were paying her, but probably in the low five figures. My money adds up to more.

“Now you’ll tell the truth,” I say. “And after that, you’ll deliver the evidence you’re holding back. We know you have it.”

She protests, but her gaze doesn’t leave that money. When she looks up at me, there’s defeat in her eyes, I know she’ll bite. She’ll take that money. She’ll sell herself out.

Maybe I should have some compassion.

She lost the love of her life and couldn’t cope.

I get it. I’ve been there.

I live there.

The footage they gather is insane. Esme O’Neil takes us to a safety deposit box where she has the shirt and a nanny cam—still inside a bear. There’s a cop along to keep the chain of evidence right. The footage inside the bear is Papa Woodruff and Denny bargaining with her for the shirt.

We fire it up on a tablet. It’s captured perfectly. The money exchange is clear as day. “Helloooooo,” Marv says, sounding like a mustachioed, bathrobe-wearing porn star greeting his bedmate. “And with this, the story goes national.”

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