The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(4)

Alisa forced a smile. “Yes,” she told me. “Something like that—minus the black lipstick, the black nail polish, and the choker.” Libby was pretty much the world’s most cheerful goth, and Alisa was not a fan of my sister’s sense of fashion. “As I was saying,” Alisa continued emphatically, “tonight is important. While Avery plays Cinderella for the cameras, I’ll circulate among our guests and get a better sense of where they stand.”

“Where they stand on what?” I asked. I’d been told again and again that Tobias Hawthorne’s will was ironclad. As far as I knew, the Hawthorne family had given up on trying to challenge it.

“It never hurts to have a few extra power players in your corner,” Alisa said. “And we want our allies breathing easy.”

“Hope I’m not interrupting.” Nash acted like he’d just happened upon the three of us—like he wasn’t the one who’d warned me that Alisa and Libby were looking for me. “Go on, Lee-Lee,” he told my lawyer. “You were sayin’ something about breathing easy?”

“We need people to know that Avery isn’t here to shake things up.” Alisa avoided looking directly at Nash, like a person avoiding looking into the sun. “Your grandfather had investments, business partners, political relationships—these things require a careful balance.”

“What she means when she says that,” Nash told me, “is that she needs people to think that McNamara, Ortega, and Jones has the situation entirely under control.”

The situation? I thought. Or me? I didn’t relish the idea of being anyone’s puppet. In theory, at least, the firm was supposed to work for me.

That gave me an idea. “Alisa? Do you remember when I asked you to get money to a friend of mine?”

“Harry, wasn’t it?” Alisa replied, but I got the distinct feeling that her attention was divided three ways: between my question, her grand plans for the night, and the way Nash’s lips ticked upward on the ends when he saw Libby’s outfit.

The last thing I needed my lawyer focused on was the way that her ex was looking at my sister. “Yes. Were you able to get the money to him?” I asked. The simplest way to get answers would be to track down Toby—before Jameson did.

Alisa tore her eyes away from Libby and Nash. “Unfortunately,” she said briskly, “my people have been unable to find a trace of your Harry.”

I rolled the implication of that over in my mind. Toby Hawthorne had appeared in the park days after my mother’s death, and less than a month after I left, he was gone.

“Now,” Alisa said, clasping her hands in front of her body, “about your wardrobe…”





CHAPTER 3


I had never seen a game of football in my life, but as the new owner of the Texas Lone Stars, I couldn’t exactly say that to the crowd of reporters who mobbed the SUV when we pulled up to the stadium, any more than I could have admitted that the off-the-shoulder jersey and metallic-blue cowboy boots I was wearing felt about as authentic as a Halloween costume.

“Lower the window,” Alisa told me, “smile, and yell, ‘Go, Lone Stars!’”

I didn’t want to lower the window. I didn’t want to smile. I didn’t want to yell anything—but I did it. Because this was a Cinderella story, and I was the star.

“Avery!”

“Avery, look over here!”

“How are you feeling about your first game as the new owner?”

“Do you have any comments about reports that you assaulted Skye Hawthorne?”

I hadn’t had much media training, but I’d had enough to know the cardinal rule of having reporters shout questions at you rapid-fire: Don’t answer. Pretty much the only thing I was allowed to say was that I was excited, grateful, awed, and overwhelmed in the most incredible possible way.

So I did my best to channel excitement, gratitude, and awe. Nearly a hundred thousand people would attend the game tonight. Millions would watch it around the world, cheering for the team. My team.

“Go, Lone Stars!” I yelled. I went to roll up my window, but just as my finger brushed the button, a figure pulled away from the crowd. Not a reporter.

My father.

Ricky Grambs had spent a lifetime treating me like an afterthought, if that. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year. But now that I’d inherited billions?

There he was.

Turning away from him—and the paparazzi—I rolled my window up.

“Ave?” Libby’s voice was hesitant as our bulletproof SUV disappeared into a private parking garage beneath the stadium. My sister was an optimist. She believed the best of people—including a man who’d never done a damn thing for either one of us.

“Did you know he’d be here?” I asked her, my voice low.

“No!” Libby said. “I swear!” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, smudging her black lipstick. “But he just wants to talk.”

I bet he does.

Up in the driver’s seat, Oren, my head of security, parked the SUV and spoke calmly into his earpiece. “We have a situation near the north entrance. Eyes only, but I want a full report.”

The nice thing about being a billionaire with a security team brimming with retired Special Forces was that the chances of my being ambushed again were next to none. I shoved down the feelings that seeing Ricky had dredged up and stepped out of the car into the bowels of one of the biggest stadiums in the world. “Let’s do this,” I said.