The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(98)

I answered. The Hawthorne Foundation had its own charter, which laid out the minimum and maximum percentage of its assets that could be given away each year. I couldn’t empty it out—but I could make sure that my foundation had different rules.

That my inheritance wouldn’t stay earmarked for charity for long.

Grinning, I handed Libby a sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s account information for about a dozen different websites I signed you up for,” I told her. “Mutual aid, mostly, and microloans to women entrepreneurs in the developing world. The new foundation will be handling official charitable giving, but we both know what it’s like to need help and have nowhere to go. I’ve set aside ten million a year for you—for that.”

Before she could reply, I tossed something to Nash. He caught it, then examined what I’d tossed him. Keys.

“What’s this?” he drawled, his accent thick with amusement at this entire turn of events.

“Those,” I told him, “are the keys to my sister’s new cupcake truck.”

Libby stared at me, her eyes round, her lips making an O. “I can’t accept this, Ave.”

“I know.” I smirked. “That’s why I gave the keys to Nash.”

Before I could say anything else, Jameson stepped in front of me.

“You’re giving it away,” he said, his expression as much of a mystery to me as it had been the day we met. “Almost everything the old man left to you, everything he chose you for—”

“I’m keeping Hawthorne House,” I told him. “And more than enough money to maintain it. I might even keep a vacation home or two—after I’ve seen them all.”

After we had seen them all.

“If Tobias Hawthorne were here,” Thea declared, “he would lose it.”

All that money. All that power. Dispersed, where no one person would ever control it again.

“I guess that’s what happens,” Jameson said, his eyes never leaving mine as his lips curled upward, “when you take a very risky gamble.”





ONE YEAR LATER…

I’m here today with Avery Grambs. Heiress. Philanthropist. World changer —and at only nineteen years old. Avery, tell us, what is it like to be in your position at such a young age?”

I’d prepared for this question and for every question the interviewer might ask. She was the only one I’d granted an interview to in the past year, a media maven whose name was synonymous with savvy and success— and, more importantly, a humanitarian herself.

“Fun?” I answered, and she chuckled. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier,”

I said, projecting the sincerity I felt. “I am fully aware that I am pretty much the luckiest person on the planet.”

Landon had told me that the art to an interview like this one—intimate, much anticipated, with an interviewer who was almost as much of a draw as I was—was to make it sound like a conversation, to make the audience feel like we were just two women talking. Honest. Open.

“And the thing is,” I continued, the awe in my voice echoing through the room in Hawthorne House where the interview was taking place, “it never really becomes normal. You don’t just get used to it.”

Here in this room, which the staff had taken to calling the Nook, it was easy to feel awed. The Nook was small by Hawthorne House standards, but every aspect of it, from the repurposed wood floors to the ridiculously comfortable reading chairs, bore my mark.

“You can go anywhere,” the interviewer said, quietly matching the awe in my voice. “Do anything.”

“And I have,” I said. Built-in shelves lined the Nook’s walls. Every place I went, I found a keepsake—a reminder of the adventures I’d had there. Art, a book in the local language, a stone from the ground, something that had spoken to me.

“You’ve gone everywhere, done everything…” The interviewer smiled knowingly. “With Jameson Hawthorne.”

Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.

“You’re smiling,” she told me.

“You would, too,” I told her, “if you knew Jameson.” He was exactly what he’d always been—a thrill chaser, a sensation seeker, a risk taker— and he was so much more.

“How did he react when he found out that you were giving so much of the family’s fortune away?”

“He was shocked at first,” I admitted. “But after that, it became a game —to all of them.”

“All the Hawthornes?”

I tried not to smile too big this time. “All the boys.”

“The boys, as in the Hawthorne brothers. Half the world is in love with them—now more than ever.”

That wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.

“You said that after the shock of your decision wore off, giving away the money became a game to the Hawthorne brothers?”

Everything’s a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win. “We’re in a race against the clock to find the right causes and the right organizations to give the money to,” I explained.

“You set up your foundation with the stipulation that all of the money had to be gone in five years. Why?”