Fortune & Fame: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

his power to get her out. Then, just a month after they’d gotten married, he’d received an offer to lead a church in Atlanta. He’d taken it and each time he’d returned to visit, he was hungrier and hungrier for money and power.
    “I told you, we’ve been doing big things,” Nathan said. “I hired a top-notch marketing team. We got a grant. And you know the actor, Laurence Hill?”
    She smiled, enjoying his enthusiasm. “Yeah, he went to prison for tax evasion. Right?”
    “Yeah, but he’s out and he’s bankrolling a whole new facility at Pleasant City. Once word started spreading about his support, everyone else started getting on board. I told you, moving to Atlanta was the smartest thing I’d ever done!”
    She loved seeing her husband so excited. She snuggled closer to him as he pulled out of the parking lot and away from Huntsville Correctional facility for the last time.
    Her husband.
    Mary still couldn’t believe that she’d met and married her soul mate while in prison. She had a flash as she recalled the man she’d thought was her soul mate—Lester Adams. She’d gone to great lengths to get Lester, especially because his wife, Rachel, treated him like dirt. Seducing Lester had started out as just a job, something set up by Rachel’s enemy. Mary had pretended to be in need of counseling, and the more time she spent with the good pastor, the more she wanted him. For real. He’d been attentive, loving, caring. All things she’d never had from a man. Not even her absentee father.
    She had seduced Lester, they had a brief affair, and Rachel and Mary both ended up pregnant at the same time. Confident that she was meant to be Mrs. Lester Adams, Mary had shown up at Rachel’s church, proclaimed her love for Lester on the altar,and caused nothing but chaos after that. Mary told anyone who would listen that hers was Lester’s baby. Turns out he wasn’t, but by then, the whole church knew Lester had cheated on Rachel.
    Mary had managed to get his body, but she could never get his heart, and at the end of the day, Lester and Rachel had overcome their problems and worked things out. Even Mary’s baby hadn’t been able to break them up.
    Her heart dropped as she thought of her baby. Rachel had sent her pictures of Lester Jr. (they called him Lewis, but he would always be Lester Jr. to Mary). Her baby looked just like his no-good father, Craig, who was doing twenty to life for counterfeiting. She’d been sentenced to twenty-five years herself for all the cons and hustles she and Craig were involved in. It wasn’t until Nathan and his prison ministry started coming to Huntsville that she realized she could turn her life around.
    Nathan had done that. Then, he indeed had pulled some strings and gotten her case overturned on appeal. Now, she was ready to start her life anew.
    There was a part of Mary that wished Lester Jr. could be with her. But in order to keep her son out of the foster system that she herself had grown up in, Mary had signed away her parental rights to Rachel when she thought she’d be spending twenty-five years in prison.
    “Hey, what are you over there deep in thought about?” Nathan asked, gently rubbing her thigh.
    “I’m just thinking about everything,” she said, looking out the window. She ran her fingers over the plush seat of the rented Mercedes. “I’m just not used to all of this.”
    “Sweetheart, you are now a First Lady, so get used to the finer things. I’ve got big plans for us. For you.” He looked over and grinned widely at her.
    “For me? What kind of plans?”
    “Can’t tell you yet.” He grinned like he had a major secret. “But if it pans out, it’s gonna be huge.”
    Mary didn’t need anything else. She had Nathan, and his eleven-year-old son, Alvin, whom she’d met while she was in prison. Alvin’s mom had died of cancer and he’d taken a liking to Mary so she was looking forward to mothering him. Mary’s own mother, Margaret, was reportedly