shared knowledge. Love, success, fame–none of it meant anything without truth.
Elisabeth hoped she was doing OK. She decided that after this was over she’d call her up, see if she wanted to meet for coffee. Life was for living, and you had to love the people you picked up along the way.
She crossed her fingers for Lana to take the Award.
Lana Falcon heard her nomination and closed her eyes. She listened to her scene played out and the sound of her own voice. It was like another person, a different Lana talking across the many months that divided that place and this. The voice no longer belonged to her. It belonged to before.
She could never go back and change what happened–and, in a strange way, she didn’t want to. That fateful night in Vegas had been the death of her. But it had also been the birth. It was a line, a closed door, a mark that said, No more. There was life to be lived, and she would not take a moment longer to live it. She owed it to the people who had not made it.
Lester came back that night to take what was precious to her. He had killed her baby and with it a part of her had died for ever. She missed the child more than she had ever thought possible, more than she had missed anyone, even though they had never met. Gratitude did not come close. The baby had given her courage and made her fearless, had provided the strength she needed to change her life, and those things would live on always in her heart.
She had not killed her brother back in Belleville. Neither of them had. It was horror and it was ecstasy, to know she was both guilty and innocent. Guilty for hiding away from a truth she was too afraid to face; innocent because she was not and never would be a murderer. Unlike him. It seemed Lester Fallon, a supposed fraudster known across the Midwest in a variety of guises but most commonly Nelson Price, had finally got the fame and recognition he was desperate for.
Lana craved normal conversation. Save for Rita and Marty, nobody in LA seemed to know how to treat her. They eyed her sadly with a mixture of pity and unease, as though her misfortune might be contagious. The friends she had made as Cole Steel’s wife had gradually melted away–this sort of hardship didn’t happen to people like them: the protected; the rich; the stupid. It was a frightening, alien thing. Even Parker Troy, the father of her lost child, didn’t know what to say and so didn’t say anything at all.
She didn’t want to talk about the baby she had lost, or the intruder who had broken into her room that night. She didn’t want to talk about her near-rape, and the way he had knocked her out cold. She didn’t want to talk about waking up in a hospital bed and being told what had happened. She didn’t want to talk about the other death that night. The other death …
After it had happened she had gone away to Europe, moored on a yacht off the coast of Capri. She had stayed there for weeks, reading and drawing. She had found the nerve, after some correspondence, to telephone Arlene. Her voice was the same as she remembered and it shone a light in her time of darkness. They spoke about the baby Lana had lost. Lana felt sure she was a girl.
Amid the carnage of that night, a glimmer of hope had sprung.
On stage, the presenter slid a finger along the seal of the little gold envelope.
‘And the winner is …’
Next to her, Robert St Louis took her hand in his. He ran a thumb over hers.
She turned to him: her love, her life, the man she would adore the rest of her days. The same Robbie Lewis who had saved her soul.
The audience waited. Anticipation crackled round the theatre.
‘Lana Falcon!’
Applause came at her like a tidal wave. People were on their feet, wanting to show their support, wanting to be there at this, the first night of the rest of her life.
At the centre, two lovers stayed seated. Robert took Lana’s face in his hands.
‘Hey,’ he said, kissing her, ‘you know what I think? I think this is just the beginning.’
Read on for an exclusive extract from
Victoria Fox’s next title – Wicked Ambition
Prologue
Palisades Grand Arena, Los Angeles
Summer 2013
IF NOT VICTORY,