The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(9)

I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. I didn’t care who these people were. No one got to lay hands on me. “I was told there are four Hawthorne grandsons,” I said, my voice steely. “By my count, you’re still down by one. I’ll be back in a minute. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

I ended up in the backyard instead of the front—if you could even call it a yard. The grounds were immaculately kept. There was a fountain. A statue garden. A greenhouse. And stretching into the distance, as far as I could see, land. Some of it was treed. Some was open. But it was easy enough, standing there and looking out, to imagine that a person who walked off to the horizon might never make their way back.

“If yes is no and once is never, then how may sides does a triangle have?” The question came from above me. I looked up and saw a boy sitting on the edge of a balcony overhead, balanced precariously on a wrought-iron railing. Drunk.

“You’re going to fall,” I told him.

He smirked. “An interesting proposition.”

“That wasn’t a proposition,” I said.

He offered me a lazy grin. “There’s no shame in propositioning a Hawthorne.” He had hair darker than Grayson’s and lighter than Xander’s. He wasn’t wearing shirt.

Always a good decision in the middle of winter, I thought acerbically, but I couldn’t keep my gaze from traveling downward from his face. His torso was lean, his stomach defined. He had a long, thin scar that ran from collarbone to hip.

“You must be Mystery Girl,” he said.

“I’m Avery,” I corrected. I’d come out here to get away from the Hawthornes and their grief. There wasn’t a trace of a care on this boy’s face, like life was one grand lark. Like he wasn’t grieving just as much as the people inside were.

“Whatever you say, M.G.,” he retorted. “Can I call you M.G., Mystery Girl?”

I crossed my arms. “No.”

He brought his feet up to the railing and stood. He wobbled, and I had a moment of chilling prescience. He’s grieving, and he’s too high up. I hadn’t allowed myself to self-destruct when my mom died. That didn’t mean I hadn’t felt the call.

He shifted his weight to one foot and held the other out.

“Don’t!” Before I could say anything else, the boy twisted and grabbed the railing with his hands, holding himself vertical, feet in the air. I could see the muscles in his back tensing, rippling over his shoulder blades, as he lowered himself… and dropped.

He landed right beside me. “You shouldn’t be out here, M.G.”

I wasn’t the shirtless one who’d just jumped off a balcony. “Neither should you.”

I wondered if he could tell how fast my heart was beating. I wondered if his was racing at all.

“If I do what I should no more often than I say what I shouldn’t”—his lips twisted—“then what does that make me?”

Jameson Hawthorne, I thought. Up close, I could make out the color of his eyes: a dark, fathomless green.

“What,” he repeated intently, “does that make me?”

I stopped looking at his eyes. And his abs. And his haphazardly gelled hair. “Drunk,” I said, and then, because I could sense an annoying comeback coming, I added two more words. “And two.”

“What?” Jameson Hawthorne said.

“The answer to your first riddle,” I told him. “If yes is no and once is never, then the number of sides a triangle has… is… two.” I drew out my reply, not bothering to explain how I’d arrived at my answer.

“Touché, M.G.” Jameson ambled past me, brushing his bare arm lightly over mine as he did. “Touché.”





CHAPTER 9


I stayed out back a few minutes longer. Nothing about this day felt real. And tomorrow, I’d go back to Connecticut, a little richer, hopefully, and with a story to tell, and I’d probably never see any of the Hawthornes again.

I’d never have a view like this again.

By the time I returned to the Great Room, Jameson Hawthorne had miraculously managed to find a shirt—and a suit jacket. He smiled in my direction and gave a little salute. Beside him, Grayson stiffened, his jaw muscles tensing.

“Now that everyone is here,” one of the lawyers said, “let’s get started.”

The three lawyers stood in triangle formation. The one who’d spoken shared Alisa’s dark hair, brown skin, and self-assured expression. I assumed he was the Ortega in McNamara, Ortega, and Jones. The other two—presumably Jones and McNamara—stood to either side.

Since when does it take four lawyers to read a will? I thought.

“You are here,” Mr. Ortega said, projecting his voice to the corners of the room, “to hear the last will and testament of Tobias Tattersall Hawthorne. Per Mr. Hawthorne’s instructions, my colleagues will now distribute letters he has left for each of you.”

The other men began to make the rounds of the room, handing out envelopes one by one.

“You may open these letters when the reading is concluded.”

I was handed an envelope. My full name was written in calligraphy on the front. Beside me, Libby looked up at the lawyer, but he passed over her and went on delivering envelopes to the other occupants of the room.