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“Who?”

“You!”

“Before me, William. Before me! Have you ever been faithful to anybody before me?”

William exhaled. This was the very reason he never fooled with younger women. But Joy was the exception. She was always the exception.

But she had to understand his mindset during the time before he committed his life to her. “What do you want me to say, Joynetta? I know you’re scared. I know you’re convinced, based on how I behaved in the past, that I won’t be faithful to you. But that was how I rolled back then, sweetheart. I wasn’t interested in being faithful because I wasn’t in any kind of relationship that required anything of my partners, and absolutely nothing of myself. My relationship with you is lightyears different than those previous affairs. They meant nothing to me. You mean everything to me.”

“But why?” Joy needed reason in this madness. “What makes me so special in your eyes that you didn’t see in all of those other ladies?”

“You’re the only one that touched me on a visceral level. I don’t know why. I cannot tell you why. But you moved my heart. You still move my heart. You always will move my heart. Nobody else ever has, nor ever will, come close.”

Joy’s heart soared as tears filled her large, beautiful eyes. This was the man she married! This was the man she loved. He wasn’t perfect. But neither was she. And he was perfect for her.

She threw her arms around him. “I love you so much, William,” she said. “I love you so much!”

“I love you, too, baby,” William said as he held her tightly as he could, and closed his eyes even tighter. “I love you too.”

Max felt as if he was an interloper in a very private, personal moment. But he had more. And what else he had would make that tape look like child’s play.

And when the couple stopped embracing, and Joy leaned against William and William placed his arm around her in that so-protective way she always adored, Max got back down to business. “Putting the tape aside,” he said, “the real problem, our real problem, is the shooter.”

This got William and Joy’s attention. “Meaning?” William asked him.

“There’s no easy way to put this, but we found a connection to the shooter. And it goes back to Bridell.”

Joy sat upright. “Bridell? Who in Bridell would wanna kill us?” Then Joy’s eyebrows raised. “My mother? Is it my mother? Is she involved in this?”

“It’s not your mother that I’m referring to. It’s Delvin Armstrong.”

William frowned. “Who in the world is Delvin Armstrong?”

Joy was shocked. “It can’t be.”

William looked at her. “You know him?”

But Joy was staring at Max. “Are you telling me that my Gramps is involved in that shooting?”

William was blown away too. “Delvin Armstrong is your grandfather?”

Joy looked at William. And nodded her head. “That’s Gramps’ name, yes. I just never use it.” Then she looked at Max again. “But that can’t be true. There’s something wrong with your paperwork if you think my grandfather would ever do anything to harm me.”

William squeezed her as they both looked at Max. “What’s the connection?”

“From everything we can ascertain,” Max said, “we believe Delvin Armstrong hired his brother, an ex-con by the name of Donte Jamison, although everybody calls him DJ, to handle the ambush.”

Joy was still perplexed. “What brother? Gramps doesn’t even have a brother.”

“A half-brother, yes he does. They have different fathers. He may not have mentioned him because he’s not exactly an upstanding citizen. His arrest record is extensive. The man has spent more time in the penitentiary than he’s been out in the world. And I’m talking from murder charges to dope. He’s done it all.”

William was shocked to hear that. But Joy was still certain that her grandfather had nothing to do with that ambush. “But what did Gramps hire him to do?”

“We believe he hired his brother DJ to find a hitman to take out Mr. Skeffington. We believe DJ, in turn, hired his son, the now-deceased gunman Tim Jamison, to do the job.”

Joy’s heart dropped. A part of William’s heart soared. He was afraid Joy was the target. He was glad that that wasn’t the case.

But Joy was even more perplexed. “Why would Gramps want William killed?”