The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(47)

“You took these?” I breathed, staring at the photos all around me. It was a guess—but I’d always been a good guesser.

“My grandfather believed that you have to see the world to change it.” Grayson looked at me, then caught himself staring. “He always said that I was the one with the eye.”

Invest. Create. Cultivate. Nash’s explanation of their childhood came back to me, and I wondered how old Grayson was the first time he held a camera, how old he was when he started traveling the world, seeing it, capturing it on film.

I wouldn’t have pegged him as the artist.

Irritated that I’d been tricked into thinking about him at all, I narrowed my eyes. “Your aunt must not have noticed your tendency to make threats. I’m betting she also didn’t know about the background check on my dead mother. Otherwise, there is no way she could have come to the conclusion that I’d prefer working with you.”

Grayson’s lips twitched. “Zara doesn’t miss much. And as for the background checks…” He disappeared behind the front desk and reappeared holding two folders. I glared at him, and he arched a brow. “Would you prefer I kept the results of my searches from you?”

He held out one folder, and I took it. He’d had no right to do this—to pry into my life or my mom’s. But as I looked down at the folder in my hand, I heard my mother’s voice, clear as a bell, in my head. I have a secret.…

I flipped open the folder. Employment records, death certificate, credit report, no criminal background, a photograph…

I pressed my lips together, trying desperately to stop looking at it. She was young in the picture, and she was holding me.

I forced my eyes to Grayson’s, ready to unleash on him, but he calmly handed me the second folder. I wondered what he’d found out about me—if there was anything in this folder that could possibly explain what his grandfather had seen in me. I opened it.

Inside, there was a single sheet of paper, and it was blank.

“That’s a list of every purchase you’ve made since inheriting. Things have been purchased for you but…” Grayson dipped his eyes toward the page. “Nothing.”

“Is that what passes for an apology where you’re from?” I asked him. I’d surprised him. I wasn’t acting like a gold digger.

“I won’t apologize for being protective. This family has suffered enough, Ms. Grambs. If I were choosing between you and any one of them, I would choose them, always and every time. However…” His eyes made their way back to mine. “I may have misjudged you.”

There was something intense in those words, in the expression on his face—like the boy who’d learned to see the world saw me.

“You’re wrong.” I flipped the folder closed, turning away from him. “I did try to spend some money. A big chunk. I asked Alisa to find a way to get it to a friend of mine.”

“What kind of friend?” Grayson asked. His expression shifted. “A boyfriend?”

“No.” I answered. What did he care if I had a boyfriend? “A guy I play chess with in the park. He lives there. In the park.”

“Homeless?” Grayson was looking at me differently now, like in all his travels, he’d never encountered anything quite like this. Like me. After a second or two, he snapped out of it. “My aunt is right. You’re in desperate need of an education.”

He started walking, and I had no choice except to follow, but I refused to stay in his wake, like a duckling toddling after its mother. He stopped at a conference room and held the door open for me. I brushed past him, and even that split second of contact made me feel like I was going two hundred miles an hour.

Absolutely not. That was what I would have told Max if she were on the phone. What was wrong with me? Grayson had spent most of our acquaintance threatening me. Hating me.

He let the conference room door close behind him, then continued walking to the back wall. It was lined with maps: first a world map, then each continent, then broken down by countries, all the way down to states and towns.

“Look at them,” he instructed, nodding toward the maps, “because that is what’s at stake here. Everything. Not a single person. Giving money to individuals does little.”

“It does a lot,” I said quietly, “for those people.”

“With the resources you have now, you can no longer afford to concern yourself with the individual.” Grayson spoke like this was a lesson he’d had beaten into him. By whom? His grandfather? “You, Ms. Grambs,” he continued, “are responsible for the world.”

I felt those words like a lit match, a spark, a flame.

Grayson turned to the wall of maps. “I deferred college for a year to learn the ropes at the foundation. My grandfather assigned me to make a study of modes of charitable giving, with an eye to improving ours. I was to make my pitch in the coming months.” Grayson stared hard at the map that hung even with his eyes. “Now I suppose that I will be making my pitch to you.” He seemed to be measuring the pace of his words. “The foundation conservatorship has its own paperwork. When you turn twenty-one, it’s yours, just like everything else.”

That hurt him, more than any of the terms of the will. I thought about Skye referring to him as the heir apparent, even though she insisted that Jameson had been Tobias Hawthorne’s favorite. Grayson had spent his gap year dedicated to the foundation. His photographs hung in the lobby.