The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(90)

“Rebecca.” I lunged forward in my seat suddenly, remembering. “Thea helped Mellie abduct me because someone had Rebecca.”

“It’s been handled,” Oren told me. “They’re fine. So are you. The rest of the family is none the wiser.” From his tone, you would have thought this was just business as usual. The kidnapping. The body. The cover-up.

“Was it like this for the old man?” I asked. “Or am I just lucky?”

I thought about Toby, sparing Eve from my fate, like inheriting this fortune was less blessing than curse.

“Mr. Hawthorne had a list.” Oren took his time with his reply. “It was a different kind of list from yours. He had enemies. Some of them had resources, but by and large, we knew what to expect. Mr. Hawthorne had a way of seeing things coming.”

I was starting to think that if I was going to survive being the Hawthorne heiress, I was going to have to start doing the same. I would have to learn to think like the old man.

Twelve birds, one stone.





Back at Hawthorne House, Oren made it clear that he intended to escort me all the way to my room. When we hit the grand staircase, I cleared my throat.

“We’ll need to disable the passageway,” I told him. “Permanently.”

I paused on the staircase, in front of Tobias Hawthorne’s portrait. Not for the first time, I stared at the old man. Had he known who Mellie and Eli were? Had he known about Eve? I was certain he would have run a DNA test on me at some point. He knew I wasn’t Toby’s daughter—not by blood.

But he’d still used me to lure Toby out—the same way Sheffield Grayson had, the same way Mellie and Eli had. You’re not a player, Nash had told me a small eternity ago. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.

Maybe I was both. Maybe I was a dozen different things, chosen for a dozen different reasons—none of them having a damn thing to do with who I was or what made me special.

I met the portrait’s eyes and thought about my dream—about playing chess with the old man. You didn’t choose me. You used me. You’re still using me. But as of this moment?

I was done being used.





CHAPTER 87


An hour later, I went in search of a Hawthorne. “I have something to tell you.”

Xander was in his “lab,” a hidden room where he built machines that did simple things in complicated ways. “Something to tell me? Is it possible you have me confused with one of my brothers?” he asked. “Because people don’t tell me things.”

He was tinkering with some kind of miniature catapult mechanism, part of a complicated chain reaction born from the brain of Xander Hawthorne.

“This was your game,” I said. “The old man left it to you.”

“Or so it appeared.” Xander settled a metal ball on the catapult. “At first.”

I gave him a look. “What do you mean?”

“Jameson has laser focus. Grayson always finishes what he starts. Even Nash, he might take the scenic route, but he’s wired to go from point A to point B.” Xander finished tinkering and finally turned to face me. “But me? I’m not wired that way. I start at point A, and somewhere along the way, I end up at the intersection of one hundred and twenty-seven and purple.” He shrugged. “It’s one of my many charms. My brain likes diversions. I follow the paths that I find. The old man knew that.” Xander shrugged. “Did he expect me to start the ball rolling this time? Yes. But where I’d end up?” Xander stepped back from his work and took in the entirety of the Rube Goldberg machine he’d built. “The old man knew damn well that it wasn’t going to be point B.”

I needed to tell someone what had happened. I’d chosen him because I felt like I owed it to him—like the universe, or maybe his grandfather, owed it to him. And now Xander was seeming an awful lot like someone who didn’t want closure.

Someone who didn’t need it.

“So where did you end up?” I asked.

Xander leaned forward and triggered the catapult. The metal ball sailed into a funnel, spiraled down a series of ramps, and hit a lever, dumping a bucket of water, releasing a balloon…

Eventually, the entire machine parted, revealing the wall behind it. That wall was covered with pictures—photographs of men with brown skin. The placards beneath the photographs informed me that every one of them had the last name Alexander.

I thought about the game we’d spent the past weeks playing. Sheffield Grayson. Jake Nash. Was this the detour that the old man had expected Xander to take?

“Do you want to know what I found?” I asked Xander.

“Sure,” he said gamely. “But before I forget: two things.” He held up his middle and index fingers. “First, this is Thea’s phone number.” He handed me a scrap of paper with the number scrawled across it. “I’m supposed to call her and let her know you’re alive.”

I frowned. “So why give me her number?” I asked.

“Because,” Xander replied, “when it comes to Thea, forewarned is forearmed.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What’s the second thing?” I asked suspiciously.

Xander pressed a button, and the wall slid to reveal a second workshop. “Voilà!”