Seven Men Called Me Her Stand-In, So I Made Them Pay novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: My Mother's Son

The hotel heir kept his eyes on his mother's face.

He did not look at me, and I understood that it was the hardest thing he had ever done.

"I'm not lying, Mother," he said.

"Darling."

"At eight o'clock you sent me to the wall safe in the library. I opened it with the code you gave me. I put the emerald in a velvet bag and carried it to the service gate."

A low sound went through the room.

"I handed it to you," he said. "You gave it to a man in a cardigan. Then you told me to go back in and eat cake."

"You were a boy."

"I was twenty-six."

"You were my boy," said Constance. "You're drunk on the idea of being good. It won't last."

He opened the folder with both hands.

"The insurance claim, filed Monday after the party. Twice the value." He held up the first page, and then the second. "The invoice for the paste copy, in May. Two months before."

"Planning for the insurers," she said. "Everyone has a copy."

"The Hartford receipts. Fifty dollars a month. Seven years of them."

"You've been through my files."

"I've been through them for three days," he said, and now his voice broke. "I didn't want to find any of it."

The senator had stood up at the front table.

His son sat beside him with his face lowered.

The senator laid one hand on the back of his son's neck and left it there.

I looked away from them. It felt like looking at something private.

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