The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(75)

There’s a first time for everything, I thought, but before I could lay out my case, the car pulled up to the boutique, and the paparazzi circled us in a deafening, claustrophobic crunch.

I slumped back in my seat. “I have an entire mall in my closet.” I shot Alisa an aggrieved look. “If I just wore something I already have, we wouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“This,” Alisa echoed as Oren got out of the car and the roar of the reporters’ questions grew louder, “is the point.”

I was here to be seen, to control the narrative.

“Smile pretty,” Thea murmured directly into my ear.





The boutique Alisa had chosen for this carefully choreographed outing was the kind of store that had only one copy of each dress. They’d closed the entire shop down for me.

“Green.” Thea pulled an evening gown from the rack. “Emerald, to match your eyes.”

“My eyes are hazel,” I said flatly. I turned from the dress she was holding up to the sales attendant. “Do you have anything less low-cut?”

“You prefer higher cuts?” The sales attendant’s tone was so carefully nonjudgmental that I was almost certain she was judging me.

“Something that covers my collarbone,” I said, and then I shot a look at Alisa. And my stitches.

“You heard Ms. Grambs,” Alisa said firmly. “And Thea is right—bring us something green.”





CHAPTER 68


We found a dress. The paparazzi snapped their pictures as Oren ushered the lot of us back into the SUV. As we pulled away from the curb, he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Seat belts buckled?”

Mine was. Beside me, Thea fastened hers. “Have you thought about hair and makeup?” she asked.

“Constantly,” I replied in a deadpan. “These days, I think of literally nothing else. A girl has to have her priorities in order.”

Thea smiled. “And here I was thinking your priorities all had the last name Hawthorne.”

“That’s not true,” I said. But isn’t it? How much time had I spent thinking about them? How badly had I wanted Jameson to mean it when he’d told me I was special?

How clearly could I still feel Grayson checking my wound?

“Your bodyguard didn’t want me to come today,” Thea murmured as we turned onto a long and winding road. “Neither did your lawyer. I persevered, and do you know why?”

“Not a clue.”

“This has nothing to do with my uncle or Zara.” Thea played with the tips of her dark hair. “I’m just doing what Emily would want me to do. Remember that, would you?”

Without warning, the car swerved. My body kicked into panic mode—fight or flight, and neither one of them was an option, strapped into the back seat. I whipped my head toward Oren, who was driving—and noticed that the guard in the passenger seat had his hand on his gun, vigilant, ready.

Something’s wrong. We shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have trusted, even for a moment, that I was safe. Alisa pushed this. She wanted me out here.

“Hold tight,” Oren yelled.

“What’s going on?” I asked. The words lodged themselves in my throat and came out as a whisper. I saw a flash of movement out of my window: a car, jerking toward us, high speed. I screamed.

My subconscious was screaming at me to run.

Oren swerved again, enough to prevent full-scale impact, but I heard the screech of metal on metal.

Someone is trying to run us off the road. Oren laid on the gas. The sound of sirens—police sirens—barely broke through the cacophony of panic in my head.

This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening.

Please, no.

Oren roared into the left lane, ahead of the car that had attacked us. He swung the SUV around, up and over the median, sending us racing in the opposite direction.

I tried to scream, but it wasn’t loud or shrill. I was keening, and I couldn’t make it stop.

There was more than one siren now. I turned toward the back of the car, expecting the worst, preparing for impact—and I saw the car that had hit us spinning out. Within seconds, the vehicle was surrounded by cops.

“We’re okay,” I whispered. I didn’t believe it. My body was still telling me that I would never be okay again.

Oren eased off the gas, but he didn’t stop, and he didn’t turn around.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, my voice high enough in pitch and volume to crack glass.

“That,” Oren replied calmly, “was someone taking the bait.”

The bait? I swung my gaze toward Alisa. “What is he talking about?”

In the heat of the moment, I’d thought that it was Alisa’s fault that we were here. I’d doubted her—but Oren’s response suggested that maybe I should have blamed them both.

“This,” Alisa said, her trademark calm dented but not destroyed, “was the point.” That was the same thing she’d said when we’d seen the paparazzi outside the boutique.

The paparazzi. Making sure we were seen. The absolute need to come dress shopping, despite everything that had happened.

Because of everything that had happened.

“You used me as bait?” I wasn’t a yeller, but I was yelling now.