The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(15)

Texting, calling, and DM-ing Max all led to the same result: nothing. She had definitely had her phone confiscated—and possibly her laptop, which meant that she couldn’t advise me on the appropriate response when one’s lawyer started talking about ordering a car like it was a foxing pizza.

This is unreal. Less that twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been sleeping in a parking lot. The closest I’d come to splurging was the occasional breakfast sandwich.

Breakfast sandwich, I thought. Harry. I sat up in bed. “Alisa?” I called. “If I didn’t want a new car, if I wanted to spend that money on something else—could I?”





Bankrolling a place for Harry to stay—and getting him to accept it—wouldn’t be easy, but Alisa told me to consider it handled. That was the world I lived in now. All I had to do was speak, and it was handled.

This wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Sooner or later, someone would figure out that this was some kind of screwup. So I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

That was the number one thought on my mind when we went to pick up Libby. As my sister stepped out of my private jet. I wondered if Alisa could get her into the Sorbonne. Or buy her a little cupcake shop. Or—

“Libby.” Every thought in my head came screeching to a halt the moment I saw her face. Her right eye was bruised and swollen nearly shut.

Libby swallowed but didn’t avert her eyes. “If you say ‘I told you so,’ I will make butterscotch cupcakes and guilt you into eating them every day.”

“Is there a problem I should know about?” Alisa asked Libby, her voice deceptively calm as she eyed the bruise.

“Avery hates butterscotch,” Libby said, like that was the problem.

“Alisa,” I gritted out, “does your law firm have a hit man on retainer?”

“No.” Alisa kept her tone strictly professional. “But I’m very resourceful. I could make some inquiries.”

“I legitimately cannot tell if you are joking,” Libby said, and then she turned to me. “I don’t want to talk about it. And I’m fine.”

“But—”

“I’m fine.”

I managed to keep my mouth shut, and all of us managed to make it back to the hotel. The plan was to finish up a few final arrangements and leave immediately for Hawthorne House.

Things did not go exactly according to plan.

“We have a problem.” Oren didn’t sound overly bothered, but Alisa immediately put down her phone. Oren nodded to our suite’s balcony. Alisa stepped outside, looked down, and swore.

I pushed past Oren and went out on the balcony to see what was going on. Down below, outside the hotel’s entrance, hotel security guards were struggling with what appeared to be a mob. It wasn’t until a flash went off that I realized what that mob was.

Paparazzi.

And just like that, every camera was pointed up at the balcony. At me.





CHAPTER 14


I thought you said your firm had this locked down.” Oren gave Alisa a look. She scowled back at him, made three phone calls in quick succession—two of them in Spanish—and then turned back to my head of security. “The leak didn’t come from us.” Her eyes darted toward Libby. “It came from your boyfriend.”

Libby’s answer was barely more than a whisper. “My ex.”





“I’m sorry.” Libby had apologized at least a dozen times. She’d told Drake everything—about the will, the conditions on my inheritance, where we were staying. Everything. I knew her well enough to know why. He would have been angry that she’d taken off. She would have tried to pacify him. And the moment she’d told him about the money, he would have demanded to tag along. He would have started making plans to spend the Hawthorne money. And Libby, God bless her, would have told him that it wasn’t theirs to spend, that it wasn’t his.

He hit her. She left him. He went to the press. And now they were here. A horde descended on us as Oren led me out a side door.

“There she is!” a voice yelled.

“Avery!”

“Avery, over here!”

“Avery, how does it feel to be the richest teenager in America?”

“How does it feel to be the world’s youngest billionaire?”

“How did you know Tobias Hawthorne?”

“Is it true that you’re Tobias Hawthorne’s illegitimate daughter?”

I was shuffled into an SUV. The door closed, dulling the roar of the reporters’ questions. Exactly halfway through our drive, I got a text—not from Max. From an unknown number.

I opened it and saw a screenshot of a news headline. Avery Grambs: Who Is the Hawthorne Heiress?

A short message accompanied the picture.

Hey, Mystery Girl. You’re officially famous.





There were more paparazzi outside the gates of Hawthorne House, but once we pulled past them, the rest of the world faded away. There was no welcome party. No Jameson. No Grayson. No Hawthornes of any kind. I reached for the massive front door—locked. Alisa disappeared around the back of the house. When she finally reappeared, there was a pained expression on her face. She handed me a large envelope.

“Legally,” she said, “the Hawthorne family is required to provide you with keys. Practically speaking…” She narrowed her eyes. “The Hawthorne family is a pain in the ass.”