Skye?” I tried to wrap my mind around that. She’d never seemed like a threat, the way Zara had. Passive-aggressive, sure, and petty. But violent?
We’re all friends here, aren’t we? I could hear her declaring. I make it a policy to befriend everyone who steals my birthright.
I could see her holding out a glass of champagne and telling me to drink.
“Skye was down here with Drake the night of the shooting,” I said, making myself confront the implications head-on. “She gave him access to the estate, probably even pointed him toward the Black Wood.”
Toward me.
“I should have told someone,” Rebecca said softly. “After the shooting, as soon as I realized what I’d seen—I should have spoken up.”
“Yes.” That word was razor sharp—and spoken by someone other than me. “You should have.” Overhead, Grayson stepped into view.
Rebecca turned to face him. “It was your mother, Gray. I couldn’t—”
“You could have told me,” Grayson said quietly. “I would have taken care of it, Bex.”
I doubted Grayson’s method of taking care of it would have involved turning his mother over to the police.
“Drake tried again,” I said, glaring daggers at Rebecca. “You know that, right? He tried to run us off the road. He could have killed me—and Alisa and Oren and Thea.”
Rebecca made a garbled sound the second I said Thea’s name.
“Rebecca,” Grayson said, his voice low.
“I know,” Rebecca said. “But Emily wouldn’t have wanted…”
“Emily’s gone.” Grayson’s tone wasn’t harsh, but his words took Rebecca’s breath away. “Bex.” He made her look at him. “Rebecca. I’ll take care of this. I promise you: Everything is going to be fine.”
“Everything is not fine,” I told Grayson.
“Go,” he murmured to Rebecca. She went, and we were alone.
Grayson lowered himself slowly into the hidden room. “Xander said you needed me.”
He’d come. Maybe that would have meant more if I hadn’t just had that conversation with Rebecca.
“Your mother tried to have me killed.”
“My mother,” Grayson said, “is a complicated woman. But she’s family.”
And he would choose family over me, every time.
“If I asked you to let me handle this,” he continued, “would you? I can guarantee that no more harm will come to you or yours.”
How exactly he could guarantee anything was unclear, but there was no doubt that he believed he could. The world bends to the will of Grayson Hawthorne. I thought about the day I’d met him, how sure he’d seemed of himself, how invincible.
“What if I play you for it?” Grayson asked when I didn’t reply. “You like a challenge. I know you do.” He stepped toward me. “Please, Avery. Give me a chance to make this right.”
There was no making this right—but all he’d asked for was a chance. I don’t owe him that. I don’t owe him anything. But—
Maybe it was the expression on his face. Or the knowledge that he’d already lost everything to me once. Maybe I just wanted him to see me and think about something other than October eighteenth.
“I’ll play you for it,” I said. “What’s the game?”
Grayson’s silver eyes held mine. “Think of a number,” he told me. “One to ten. If I guess it, you let me handle the situation with my mother my way. If I don’t…”
“I turn her in to the police.”
Grayson took half a step toward me. “Think of a number.”
The odds were in my favor here. He only had a 10 percent chance of guessing correctly. I had a 90 percent chance that he would get it wrong. I took my time choosing. There were certain numbers that people defaulted to. Seven, for instance. I could go for an extreme—one or ten, but those seemed like easy guesses, too. Eight was on my brain, from the days we’d spent solving the numerical sequence. Four was the number of Hawthorne brothers.
If I wanted to keep him from guessing, I needed to go for something unexpected. No rhyme, no reason.
Two.
“Do you want me to write the number down?” I asked.
“On what?” Grayson asked softly.
I swallowed. “How do you know that I won’t lie about my number if you get it right?”
Grayson was quiet for a few seconds, then spoke. “I trust you.”
I knew, with every fiber of my being, that Grayson Hawthorne didn’t trust easily—or much. I swallowed. “Go ahead.”
He took at least as much time generating his guess as I had choosing my number. He looked at me, and I could feel him trying to unravel my thoughts and impulses, to solve me, like one more riddle.
What do you see when you look at me, Grayson Hawthorne?
He made his guess. “Two.”
I turned my head toward my shoulder, breaking eye contact. I could have lied. I could have told him that he was wrong. But I didn’t. “Good guess.”
Grayson let out a ragged breath, and then I felt him gently turning my face back toward his. “Avery.” He almost never used my given name. He gently traced the line of my jaw. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.”
He thought he could protect me. He wanted to. He was touching me, and all I wanted was to let him. Let him protect me. Let him touch me. Let him—
Footsteps. The clattering above pushed me into taking a step back from him, and a few moments later, Xander and Nash climbed down into the room.
I managed to look at them—not Grayson “Where’s Jameson?” I asked.
Xander cleared his throat. “I can report that some very colorful language was used when I requested his presence.”
Nash snorted. “He’ll be here.”
We waited—five minutes, then ten.
“You might as well unlock yours,” Xander told the others. “Your hands, if you please.”
Grayson went first, then Nash. After the touch pads scanned their hands, we heard the telltale sound of deadbolts being thrown, one after the other.
“Three locks down,” Xander murmured. “One to go.”
Another five minutes. Eight. He’s not coming, I thought.
“Jameson isn’t coming,” Grayson said, like he’d lifted the thought from my mind as easily as he’d guessed my number.
“He’ll be here,” Nash repeated.
“Don’t I always do what I’m told?”
We looked up—and Jameson jumped. He landed between his brothers and me, going almost to the ground to absorb the shock. He straightened, then met their eyes, one at a time. Nash. Xander. Grayson.
Then, me. “You don’t know when to stop, do you, Heiress?” That didn’t exactly feel like an indictment.
“I’m tougher than I look,” I told him. He stared at me for a moment longer, then turned to the door. He placed his hand flat on the pad that bore his initials. The last deadbolt was thrown, and the door was released. It creaked open—an inch, maybe two. I expected Jameson to reach for the door, but instead, he walked back to the opening and jumped, catching its sides with his hands.
“Where are you going?” I asked him. After everything it had taken to get to this point, he couldn’t just walk away.
“To hell, eventually,” Jameson answered. “Probably to the wine cellar, for now.”
No. He couldn’t just leave. He was the one who had dragged me into this, and he was going to see it through. I jumped to catch onto the opening overhead, to go after him. I felt my grip slipping. Strong hands grabbed me from beneath—Grayson. He pushed me upward, and I managed to climb out and to my feet.
“Don’t leave,” I told Jameson.
He was already walking away. When he heard my voice, he stopped but didn’t turn back.
“I don’t know what’s on the other side of that door, Heiress, but I do know that the old man laid this trap for me.”
“Just for you?” I said, an edge working its way into my voice. “That’s why it required all four brothers’ hands and my face to get this far?” Clearly, Tobias Hawthorne had meant for all of us to be here.
“He knew that any game he left, I would play. Nash might say screw it, Grayson might get bogged down in legalities, Xander might be thinking about a thousand and one other things—but I would play.” I could see him breathing—see him hurting. “So, yes, he meant this for me. Whatever is on the other side of that door…” Jameson drew in another ragged breath. “He knew. He knew what I did, and he wanted to make sure I never forgot.”
“What did he know?” I asked.
Grayson appeared beside me and repeated my question. “The old man knew what, Jamie?”
Behind me, I could hear Nash and Xander climbing into the tunnel, but my mind barely registered their presence. I was focused—wholly, intensely—on Jameson and Grayson.
“Knew what, Jamie?”
Jameson turned back to face his brother. “What happened on ten-eighteen.”
“It was my fault.” Grayson strode forward, taking Jameson’s shoulders in his hands. “I’m the one who took Emily there. I knew it was a bad idea, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to win. I wanted her to love me.”
“I followed you that night.” Jameson’s statement hung in the air for several seconds. “I watched the two of you jump, Gray.”
All of a sudden, I was back with Jameson, headed for the West Brook. He’d told me two lies and one truth. I watched Emily Laughlin die.
“You followed us?” Grayson couldn’t make sense of that. “Why?”
“Masochism?” Jameson shrugged. “I was pissed.” He paused. “Eventually, you ran off to get the towels, and I…”
“Jamie.” Grayson dropped his hands to his sides. “What did you do?”
Grayson had told me that he’d left to get the towels, and when he’d gotten back, Emily was lying on the shore. Dead.
“What did you do?”
“She saw me.” Jameson turned from his brother to look at me. “She saw me, and she smiled. She thought she’d won. She thought she still had me, but I turned and walked away. She called my name. I didn’t stop. I heard her gasp. She was making this little strangling sound.”
I brought my hand to my mouth in horror.
“I thought she was playing with me. I heard a splash, but I didn’t turn around. I made it probably a hundred yards. She wasn’t calling after me anymore. I glanced back.” Jameson’s voice broke. “Emily was hunched over, crawling out of the water. I thought she was pretending.”
He’d thought she was manipulating him.
“I just stood there,” Jameson said dully. “I didn’t do a damn thing to help her.”
I watched Emily Laughlin die. I thought I was going to be sick. I could see him, standing there, trying to show her that he wasn’t hers anymore, trying to resist.
“She collapsed. She went still, and she stayed still. And then you came back, Gray, and I left.” Jameson shuddered. “I hated you for taking her there, but I hate myself more because I let her die. I stood there, and I watched.”
“It was her heart,” I said. “What could you have—”
“I could have tried CPR. I could have done something.” Jameson swallowed. “But I didn’t. I don’t know how the old man knew, but he cornered me a few days later. He told me that he knew I’d been there and asked whether I felt culpable. He wanted me to tell you, Gray, and I wouldn’t. I said that if he was so damn set on you knowing that I’d been there, he could tell you himself. But he didn’t. Instead… he did this.”
The letter. The library. The will. Their middle names. The date of my birth—and Emily’s death. The numbers, scattered all over the estate. The stained glass, the riddle. The passage down into the tunnel. The grate marked M. E. The hidden room. The moving wall. The door.
“He wanted to make damn sure,” Jameson said, “that I never forgot.”
“No,” Xander blurted out. The others turned to look at him. “That’s not what this is,” he swore. “He wasn’t making a point. He wanted us—all four of us—together. Here.”
Nash put a hand on Xander’s shoulder. “The old man could be a real bastard, Xan.”
“That’s not what this is,” Xander said again, his voice more intense than I’d ever heard it—like he wasn’t speculating. Like he knew.
Grayson, who hadn’t said a word since Jameson’s confession, spoke up now. “What precisely are you saying, Alexander?”
“The two of you were walking around like ghosts. You were a robot, Gray.” Xander was speaking quickly now—almost too quickly for the rest of us to follow. “Jamie was a ticking time bomb. You hated each other.”
“We hated ourselves more,” Grayson said, his voice like sandpaper.
“The old man knew he was sick,” Xander admitted. “He told me, right before he died. He asked me to do something for him.”
Nash’s eyes narrowed. “And what was that?”
Xander didn’t answer. Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “You had to make sure we played.”
“It was my job to make sure you saw this to the end.” Xander looked from Grayson to Jameson. “Both of you. If either of you stopped playing, it was my job to draw you back.”
“You knew?” I said. “All this time, you knew where the clues led?”
Xander was the one who’d helped me find the tunnel. He was the one who’d solved the Black Wood. Even back at the very beginning…
He told me that his grandfather didn’t have a middle name.
“You helped me,” I said. He’d manipulated me. Moved me around, like a lure.
“I told you that I am a living, breathing Rube Goldberg machine.” Xander looked down. “I warned you. Kind of.” I thought of the moment he’d taken me to see the machine he’d built. I’d asked him what it had to do with Thea, and his response had been Who said this had anything to do with Thea?
I stared at Xander—the youngest, tallest, and arguably most brilliant Hawthorne. Where you go, he’d told me back at the gala, they’ll follow. All this time, I’d thought that Jameson was the one who was using me. I’d thought that he’d kept me close for a reason.
It had never once occurred to me that Xander had his reasons, too.
“Do you know why your grandfather chose me?” I demanded. “Have you known the answer all this time?”
Xander held his hands up in front of his body, like he thought I might throttle him. “I only know what he wanted me to know. I have no idea what’s on the other side of that door. I was only supposed to get Jamie and Gray here. Together.”
“All four of us,” Nash corrected. “Together.” I remembered what he’d said in the kitchen. Sometimes you gotta excise a wound before it can heal.
Was that what this was? Was that the old man’s grand plan? Bring me here, spur them into action, hope that the game let the truth come out?
“Not just the four of us,” Grayson told Nash. He looked back toward me. “Clearly, this was a game for five.”
