Xander Hawthorne stared down at the letter, the way he had every day for a week. On the surface, it said very little.
Alexander,
Well done.
Tobias Hawthorne
Well done. He’d gotten his brothers to the end of the game. He’d gotten Avery there, too. He’d done exactly as he’d promised—but the old man had made him a promise, too.
When their game is done, yours will begin.
Xander had never competed the way his brothers did—but oh, how he’d wanted to. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Avery that, just once, he wanted to win. When they’d made it to the final room, when she’d opened the box, when he’d torn open his envelope, he’d been expecting… something.
A riddle.
A puzzle.
A clue.
And all he’d received was this. Well done.
“Xander?” Rebecca said softly beside him. “What are we doing here?”
“Sighing melodramatically,” Thea sniped. “Obviously.”
That he’d gotten both of them here, in the same room, was a feat. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, other than the fact that he needed a witness. Witnesses. If Xander was being honest with himself, he’d brought Rebecca because he wanted her there, and he’d brought Thea because if he hadn’t…
He would have been alone with Rebecca.
“There are many types of invisible ink,” Xander told them. In the past few days, he had held a match to the back of the page, heating its surface. He’d bought a UV light and gone to town. He’d tried every way he knew of unmasking a hidden message on a page, except for one. “But there’s only one kind,” he continued evenly, “that destroys the message after it’s revealed.”
If he was wrong about this, it was over. There would be no game, no winning. Xander didn’t want to do this alone.
“What exactly do you think you’re going to find?” Thea asked him.
Xander looked down at the letter one last time.
Alexander,
Well done.
Tobias Hawthorne
Perhaps the old man’s promise had been a lie. Perhaps, to Tobias Hawthorne, Xander had only been an afterthought. But he had to try. He turned to the tub beside him. He filled it with water.
“Xander?” Rebecca said again, and her voice nearly undid him.
“Here goes nothing.” Xander laid his letter gingerly on the surface of the water, then pressed down.
At first, he thought he’d made a horrible mistake. He thought nothing was happening. Then, slowly, writing appeared, on either side of his grandfather’s signature. Tobias Hawthorne, he’d signed it, no middle name, and now the reason for that omission was clear.
The invisible ink darkened on the page. To the right of the signature, there were only two letters, equating to one Roman numeral: II. And to the left, there was a single word: Find.
Find Tobias Hawthorne II.
