The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(51)

What might have been.

What could have been.

What couldn’t be, now.

The next day, Grayson had left for Harvard without even saying good-

bye. And now he was back, right there behind me, and we were doing this.

Grayson, Jameson, and me.

“This way.” Grayson nodded to a clear glass door to our right. When he opened it, a burst of cold air hit my face. Stepping through the doorway, I let out a long, slow breath, half expecting to see it, wispy and white in the chilly air.

“This place is enormous.” I stayed in the present through sheer force of will. No more flashbacks. No more what-ifs. I focused on the game. That was what was needed. What I needed and what both of them needed from me.

“There are technically five cellars, all interconnected,” Jameson narrated. “This one’s for white wine. Through there is red. If you keep wrapping around, you’ll hit scotch, bourbon, and whiskey.”

There had to be a fortune down here in alcohol alone. Think about that.

Nothing but that.

“We’re looking for a red wine.” Grayson’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“A Bordeaux.”

Jameson reached for my hand. I took it, and he stepped away, allowing his fingers to trail down mine—an invitation to follow as he wound into the next room. I did.

Grayson pushed past me, past Jameson, snaking his way through aisle after aisle, scanning rack after rack. Finally, he stopped. “Chateau Margaux,” he said, pulling a bottle out of the closest rack. “Nineteen seventy-three.”

The caption on the photograph. Margaux. 1973.

“You want to guess what the steamer’s for?” Jameson asked me.

A bottle of wine. A steamer. I took the Chateaux Margaux from Grayson, turning it over in my hand. Slowly, the answer took hold. “The label,” I said. “If we try to tear it off, it might rip. But steam will loosen the adhesive.…”

Grayson held the steamer out to me. “You do the honors.”





CHAPTER 48

On the back of the label of the lone bottle of Chateau Margaux 1973 in Tobias Hawthorne’s collection, there was a drawing. A pencil sketch of a dangling, teardrop crystal.

“Jewelry?” Grayson ventured a guess, but I’d already been in the vault.

“No,” I said slowly, picturing the crystal in the drawing and thinking back. Where have I seen something like that before? “I think we’re looking for a chandelier.”

There were eighteen crystal chandeliers in Hawthorne House. We found the one we were looking for in the Tea Room.

“Are we going up?” I asked, craning my neck at the twenty-foot ceilings. “Or is that thing coming down?”

Jameson strolled over to a wall panel. He hit a button, and the chandelier slowly lowered to eye level. “For dusting purposes,” he told me.

Even the thought of trying to dust this monstrosity gave me palpitations.

There had to be at least a thousand crystals on the chandelier. One wrong move, and they could all shatter.

“What now?” I breathed.

“Now,” Jameson told me, “we take it one by one.”

Examining the individual crystals took time. Every few minutes, I brushed against Jameson or Grayson, or one of them brushed against me.

“This one,” Grayson said suddenly. “Look at the irregularities.”

Jameson was on top of him in a heartbeat. “Etching?” he asked.

Instead of responding to his brother, Grayson turned and handed the crystal to me. I stared at it, but if there was a message or clue contained in this crystal, I couldn’t make it out with my naked eye.

We could use a jeweler’s loupe, I thought. Or— “The flashlight,” I breathed. I reached inside the leather satchel. Locking my hand around the flashlight, I took a quick breath. I held out the crystal, then shined the light through. The irregularities caused the light to refract just so. At first, the result was incomprehensible, but then I flipped the crystal over and tried again.

This time, the flashlight’s beam refracted to form a message. As I stared at the light projected onto the floor, there was no missing the words—the warning.

DON’T TRUST ANYONE.





CHAPTER 49

A chill hit the base of my neck, like the feeling of being watched from behind or standing knee-deep in long grass and hearing the rattle of a snake.

My grip tightening around the crystal, I couldn’t look away.

DON’T TRUST ANYONE.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I said, my stomach lined with dread as I finally looked to Jameson and Grayson in quick succession. “Is it a clue?”

We still had one object left in the bag. This wasn’t over. Maybe the letters of this warning could be rearranged, or the first letter in every word made out initials, or— “Can I see the crystal?” Jameson asked. I gave it to him, and he slowly rotated it under the flashlight’s beam until he found what he was looking for. “There, at the top. Three letters, too small and faint to make out without the light.”

“Fin?” Grayson said, an edge to the question.

“Fin.” Jameson placed the crystal back in my hand, then brought his dark green eyes to mine. “As in finished, Heiress. The end. This isn’t a clue.