Chapter 21: What Brent Was Told

Cora held out her hand.

"Show me the proof," she said.

Brent took his phone out of his coat and found the picture, and his thumb left a wet print on the glass.

She took it from him.

The photograph showed a hotel bar at night, with a candle on the table and a blurry crowd behind.

A woman sat in a booth with her face turned toward the lens.

She had Cora's brown wavy hair and Cora's chin.

Across from her sat a man, shot from behind, in a dark jacket, with his big hand resting over hers on the table.

"The date's on the corner," Brent said. "Three years ago, March. The weekend you said you were at the Cincinnati conference."

"I was at the Cincinnati conference."

"My mother had it sent to her by a private investigator."

"Did you read the investigator's name?"

Brent opened his mouth, and closed it.

"No," he said.

Cora enlarged the picture with two fingers.

She looked at the woman's wrist, resting on the table, and her breath stopped.

Pearl's silver bracelet sat on the wrong arm.

It was on the woman's right wrist, and Cora wore it on her left, every day, because the clasp was too small for the right.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Queen Reborn: Claiming What's Mine from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.