“Don’t go convincing yourself Lee-Lee is consortin’ with the enemy,” Nash told Mrs. Laughlin. “Avery isn’t anyone’s enemy. There are no enemies here. This is what he wanted.”

  He. Tobias Hawthorne. Even dead, he was larger than life.

  “None of this is Avery’s fault,” Libby said beside me. “She’s just a kid.”

  Nash swung his attention to my sister, and I could feel her trying to fade into oblivion. Nash peered through her hair to the black eye underneath. “What happened here?” he murmured.

  “I’m fine,” Libby said, sticking her chin out.

  “I can see that,” Nash replied softly. “But if you decide you’d like to give me a name? I’d take it.”

  I could see the effect those words had on Libby. She wasn’t used to having anyone but me in her corner.

  “Libby.” Oren got her attention. “If you’ve got a moment, I’d like to introduce you to Hector, who will be running point on your detail. Avery, I can personally guarantee that Nash will not ax-murder you or allow you to be ax-murdered by anyone else while I’m gone.”

  That got a snort from Nash, and I glared at Oren. He didn’t have to advertise how little I trusted them! As Libby followed Oren into the bowels of the house, I became keenly aware of the way that the oldest Hawthorne brother watched her go.

  “Leave her alone,” I told Nash.

  “You’re protective,” Nash commented, “and you seem like you’d fight dirty, and if there’s one thing I respect, it’s those particular traits in combination.”

  There was a crash, then a thud in the distance.

  “That,” Nash said meditatively, “would be the reason I came back and am not living a pleasantly nomadic existence as we speak.”

  Another thud.

  Nash rolled his eyes. “This should be fun.” He began striding toward a nearby hall. He looked back over his shoulder. “You might as well tag along, kid. You know what they say about baptisms and fire.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Nash had long legs, so a lazy amble on his part required me to jog to keep up. I looked in each room as we passed, but they were all a blur of art and architecture and natural light. At the end of a long hall, Nash threw open a door. I prepared myself to see evidence of a brawl. Instead, I saw Grayson and Jameson standing on opposite sides of a library that took my breath away.

  The room was circular. Shelves stretched up fifteen or twenty feet overhead, and every single one was lined completely with hardcover books. The shelves were made of a deep, rich wood. Spread across the room, four wrought-iron staircases spiraled toward the upper shelves, like the points on a compass. In the library’s center, there was a massive tree stump, easily ten feet across. Even from a distance, I could see the rings marking the tree’s age.

  It took me a moment to realize that it was meant to be used as a desk.

  I could stay here forever, I thought. I could stay in this room forever and never leave.

  “So,” Nash said beside me, casually eyeing his brothers. “Whose ass do I need to kick first?”

  Grayson looked up from the book he was holding. “Must we always resort to fisticuffs?”

  “Looks like I have a volunteer for the first ass-kicking,” Nash said, then shot a measuring look at Jameson, who was leaning against one of the wrought-iron staircases. “Do I have a second?”

  Jameson smirked. “Couldn’t stay away, could you, big brother?”

  “And leave Avery here with you knuckleheads?” Until Nash mentioned my name, neither of the other two seemed to have registered my presence behind him, but I felt my invisibility slip away, just like that.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about Ms. Grambs,” Grayson said, silver eyes sharp. “She’s clearly capable of taking care of herself.”

  Translation: I’m a soulless, gold-digging con artist, and he sees straight through me.

  “Don’t pay any attention to Gray,” Jameson told me lazily. “None of us do.”

  “Jamie,” Nash said. “Zip it.”

  Jameson ignored him. “Grayson is in training for the Insufferable Olympics, and we really think he can go all the way if he can just jam that stick a little farther up his—”

  Asterisk, I thought, channeling Max.

  “Enough,” Nash grunted.

  “What did I miss?” Xander bounded through the doorway. He was wearing a private school uniform, complete with a blazer that he shed in one liquid motion.

  “You haven’t missed anything at all,” Grayson told him. “And Ms. Grambs was just leaving.” He flicked his gaze toward me. “I’m sure you want to get settled.”

  I was the billionaire now, and he was still giving orders.

  “Wait a second.” Xander frowned suddenly, taking in the state of the room. “Were you guys brawling in here without me?” I still saw no visible signs of a fight or destruction, but obviously, Xander had picked up on something I hadn’t. “This is what I get for being the one who doesn’t skip school,” he said mournfully.

  At the mention of school, Nash looked from Xander to Jameson. “No uniform,” he noted. “Playing hooky, Jamie? Two ass-kickings it is.”

  Xander heard the phrase ass-kicking, grinned, bounced to the balls of his feet, and pounced with no warning, tackling Nash to the ground. Just some friendly impromptu wrestling between brothers.

  “Pinned you!” Xander declared triumphantly.

  Nash hooked his ankle around Xander’s leg and flipped him, pinning him to the ground. “Not today, little brother.” Nash grinned, then flashed a much darker look at the other two brothers. “Not today.”

  They were—the four of them—a unit. They were Hawthornes. I wasn’t. I felt that now, in a physical way. They shared a bond that was impervious to outsiders.

  “I should go,” I said. I didn’t belong here, and if I stayed, all I would do was stare.

  “You shouldn’t be here at all,” Grayson replied tersely.

  “Stuff a sock in it, Gray,” Nash said. “What’s done is done, and you know as well as I do that if the old man did it, there’s no undoing it.” Nash swiveled his head toward Jameson. “And as for you: Self-destructive tendencies aren’t nearly as adorable as you think they are.”

  “Avery solved the keys,” Jameson said casually. “Faster than any of us.”

  For the first time since I’d walked into the room, all four brothers fell into an extended silence. What is going on here? I wondered. The moment felt tense, electric, borderline unbearable, and then—

  “You gave her the keys?” Grayson broke the silence.

  I was still holding the key ring in my hand. It suddenly felt very heavy. Jameson wasn’t supposed to give me these.

  “We were legally obligated to hand over—”

  “A key.” Grayson interrupted Jameson and started stalking slowly toward him, snapping the book in his hand closed. “We were legally obligated to give her a key, Jameson, not the keys.”

  I’d assumed that I was being messed with. At best, I’d thought it was a test. But from the way they were talking, it seemed more like a tradition. An invitation.

  A rite of passage.

  “I was curious how she’d do.” Jameson arched an eyebrow. “Do you want to hear her time?”

  “No,” Nash boomed. I wasn’t sure if he was answering Jameson’s question or telling Grayson to stop advancing on their brother.

  “Can I get up now?” Xander interjected, still pinned beneath Nash and seemingly in a better humor than the other three combined.

  “Nope,” Nash replied.

  “I told you she was special,” Jameson murmured as Grayson continued closing in on him.

  “And I told you to stay away from her.” Grayson stopped, just out of Jameson’s reach.

  “So I see that you two are talking again!” Xander commented jollily. “Excellent.”

  Not excellent, I thought, unable to draw my eyes away from the storm brewing just feet away. Jameson was taller, Grayson broader through the shoulders. The smirk on the former’s face was matched by steel on the latter’s.

  “Welcome to Hawthorne House, Mystery Girl.” Jameson’s welcome seemed to be more for Grayson’s benefit than for mine. Whatever this fight was about, it wasn’t just a difference of opinion on recent events.

  It wasn’t just about me.

  “Stop calling me Mystery Girl.” I’d barely spoken since the moment the library door had swung inward, but I was getting sick of playing spectator. “My name is Avery.”

  “I’d also be willing to call you Heiress,” Jameson offered. He stepped forward into a beam of light shining down from a skylight above. He was toe-to-toe with Grayson now. “What do you think, Gray? Got a nickname preference for our new landlord?”

  Landlord. Jameson was rubbing it in, like he could handle being disinherited if it meant that the heir apparent had lost everything, too.

  “I’m trying to protect you,” Grayson said lowly.

  “I think we both know,” Jameson replied, “that the only person you’ve ever protected is yourself.”

  Grayson went completely, deathly still.

  “Xander.” Nash stood, pulling the youngest brother to his feet. “Why don’t you show Avery to her wing?”

  That was either Nash’s attempt to prevent a line from being crossed or an indication that one already had been.

  “Come on.” Xander bumped his shoulder lightly against mine. “We’ll stop for cookies on the way.”

  If that statement was meant to dissipate the tension in the room, it didn’t work, but it did draw Grayson’s attention away from Jameson—for the moment.

  “No cookies.” Grayson’s voice was strangled, like his throat was closing down around the words—like Jameson’s last shot had cut off his air completely.

  “Fine,” Xander replied cheerily. “You drive a hard bargain, Grayson Hawthorne. No cookies.” Xander winked at me. “We’ll stop for scones.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The first scone is what I like to call the practice scone.” Xander stuffed an entire scone in his mouth, handed one to me, then swallowed and continued lecturing. “It is not until the third—nay, fourth—scone that you develop any kind of scone-eating expertise.”

  “Scone-eating expertise,” I repeated in a deadpan.

  “Your nature is skeptical,” Xander noted. “That will serve you well in these halls, but if there is one universal truth in the human experience, it is that a finely honed scone-eating palate does not just develop overnight.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Oren and wondered how long he had been tailing us. “Why are we standing here talking about scones?” I asked Xander. Oren had insisted that the Hawthorne brothers weren’t a physical threat, but still! At the very least, Xander should have been trying to make my life miserable. “Aren’t you supposed to hate me?” I asked.

  “I do hate you,” Xander replied, happily devouring his third scone. “If you notice, I have kept the blueberry confections for myself and gave you”—he shuddered—“the lemon-flavored scones. Such is the depth of my loathing for you personally and on principle.”

  “This isn’t a joke.” I felt like I’d fallen into Wonderland—and then fallen again, rabbit hole after rabbit hole, in a vicious cycle.

  Traps upon traps, I could hear Jameson saying. And riddles upon riddles.

  “Why would I hate you, Avery?” Xander asked finally. There were layers of emotion in his tone that hadn’t been there before. “You aren’t the one who did this.”

  Tobias Hawthorne had.

  “Maybe you’re blameless.” Xander shrugged. “Maybe you’re the evil genius that Gray seems to think you are, but at the end of the day, even if you thought that you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.”

  I thought of the letter that Tobias Hawthorne had left me—two words, no explanation.

  “Your grandfather was a piece of work,” I told Xander.

  He picked up a fourth scone. “I agree. In his honor, I eat this scone.” He did just that. “Want me to show you to your rooms now?”

  There’s got to be a catch here. Xander Hawthorne had to be more than he appeared. “Just point me in the right direction,” I told him.

  “About that…” The youngest Hawthorne brother made a face. “There’s a chance that Hawthorne House is just a tiny bit hard to navigate. Imagine, if you will, that a labyrinth had a baby with Where’s Waldo?, only Waldo is your rooms.”

  I attempted to translate that ridiculous sentence. “Hawthorne House has an unconventional layout.”

  Xander did away with a fifth and final scone. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a way with words?”

  “Hawthorne House is the largest privately owned residential home in the state of Texas.” Xander led me up a staircase. “I could give you a number for square footage, but it would only be an estimate. The thing that truly separates Hawthorne House from other obscenely large, castle-like structures isn’t so much its size as its nature. My grandfather added at least one new room or wing every year. Imagine, if you will, that an M. C. Escher drawing conceived a child with Leonardo da Vinci’s most masterful designs.…”

  “Stop,” I ordered. “New rule: You’re no longer allowed to use any terminology for baby-making when describing this house or its occupants—including yourself.”

  Xander brought a hand melodramatically to his chest. “Harsh.”

  I shrugged. “My house, my rules.”

  He gawked at me. I couldn’t believe I’d said it, either, but there was something about Xander Hawthorne that made me feel like I didn’t have to apologize for my own existence.

  “Too soon?” I asked.

  “I’m a Hawthorne.” Xander gave me his most dignified look. “It’s never too soon to start trash-talking.” He resumed playing the tour guide. “Now, as I was saying, the East Wing is actually the Northeast Wing, located on the second floor. If you get lost, just look for the old man.” Xander nodded toward a portrait on the wall. “This was his wing, these last few months.”

  I’d seen pictures of Tobias Hawthorne online, but once I looked at the portrait, I couldn’t look away. He had silver-gray hair and a face more weather-worn than I’d realized. His eyes were Grayson’s, almost exactly, his build Jameson’s, his chin Nash’s. If I hadn’t seen Xander in motion, I might not have recognized a resemblance between him and the old man at all, but it was there in the way Tobias Hawthorne’s features pulled together—not the eyes or nose or mouth, but something about the shape in between.

  “I never even met him.” I tore my eyes from the portrait and looked at Xander. “I’d remember if I had.”

  “Are you sure?” Xander asked me.

  I found myself looking back at the portrait. Had I ever met the billionaire? Had our paths crossed, even for a moment? My mind was blank, except for one phrase, looping through over and over again. I’m sorry.

  CHAPTER 18

  Xander left me to explore my wing.

  My wing. I felt ridiculous even thinking the words. In my mansion. The first four doors led to suites, each of them sized to make a king bed look tiny. The closets could have doubled as bedrooms. And the bathrooms! Showers with built-in seats and a minimum of three different showerheads apiece. Gargantuan bathtubs that came with control panels. Televisions inlaid in every mirror.

  Dazed, I made my way to the fifth and final door on my hall. Not a bedroom, I realized when I opened it. An office. Enormous leather chairs—six of them—sat in a horseshoe shape, facing a balcony. Glass display shelves lined the walls. Evenly spaced on the shelves were items that looked like they belonged in a museum—geodes, antique weaponry, statues of onyx and stone. Opposite the balcony, at the back of the room, was a desk. As I got closer, I saw a large bronze compass built into its surface. I trailed my fingers over the compass. It turned—northwest—and a compartment in the desk popped open.

  This wing was where Tobias Hawthorne spent his last few months, I thought. Suddenly, I didn’t just want to look in the open compartment—I wanted to rifle through every drawer in Tobias Hawthorne’s desk. There had to be something, somewhere, that could tell me what he was thinking—why I was here, why he’d pushed his family aside for me. Had I done something to impress him? Did he see something in me?

  Or Mom?

  I got a closer look at the opened compartment. Inside, there were deep grooves, carved in the shape of the letter T. I ran my fingers across the grooves. Nothing happened. I tested the rest of the drawers. Locked.

  Behind the desk, there were shelves filled with plaques and trophies. I walked toward them. The first plaque had the words United States of America engraved on a gold background; underneath them, there was a seal. It took a little more reading of the smaller print for me to realize that it was a patent—and not one issued to Tobias Hawthorne.

  This patent was held by Xander.

  There were at least a half dozen other patents on the wall, several world records, and trophies in every shape imaginable. A bronze bull rider. A surfboard. A sword. There were medals. Multiple black belts. Championship cups—some of them national championships—for everything from motocross to swimming to pinball. There was a series of four framed comic books—superheroes I recognized, the kind they made movies about—authored by the four Hawthorne grandsons. A coffee table book of photographs bore Grayson’s name on the spine.

  This wasn’t just a display. It was practically a shrine—Tobias Hawthorne’s ode to his four extraordinary grandsons. This made no sense. It didn’t make sense that any four people—three of them teenagers—could have achieved this much, and it definitely didn’t make sense that the man who’d kept this display in his office had decided that none of them deserved to inherit his fortune.

  Even if you thought that you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I could hear Xander saying, I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.

 

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