Glorious Rivals(71)

“No. He wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t kidnap anyone.” Savannah’s voice shook—and so did her leg. “And he wasn’t our father, Grayson. He was mine.”

“Be that as it may, Savannah, Avery was not the one who shot him, and the person who did only pulled the trigger to save her life.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

“Are you under the impression that it would make a difference if I believed you?” Savannah asked. “If Avery’s only crime was the cover-up, do you think that it cost me any less?”

“The cover-up was Toby’s work—and he’s Eve’s father. She has more than one reason to point you at Avery instead.” Grayson did what Toby had told him to do. He gave Savannah a Hawthorne target, and he did it with the truth.

“How long did it take you to figure out what happened?” Savannah said, her voice far too calm for either their current height or the topic of conversation. “Or did Avery tell you the truth right away, because you deserved to know?”

If they’d been fencing, she would have scored a direct hit. Avery had told him. She hadn’t kept it from him, the way they’d all kept it from Savannah.

“I know exactly when Gigi found out.” Savannah’s voice echoed through the branches all around them. “Looking back, I can pinpoint the day. The hour.”

“We were trying to protect you,” Grayson said, Lyra’s words echoing in his mind: Ask me how protected I felt.

“We,” Savannah repeated, her hold on the tree so vicious it turned her knuckles white. “You and Gigi.”

She began to climb back down. Grayson paced her, ready to catch her if she faltered.

Savannah did not falter. “I am only going to say this once. It does not matter what lies Eve told me. It does not matter if you are telling me the truth now. Because this conversation? We both know that it’s not about protecting me anymore. All you’re trying to do now is make me complicit.”

Another direct hit. Grayson had seen what keeping this secret had done to Gigi.

“What about my mother?” Savannah clearly had no intention of letting up. Acacia Grayson was the closest thing that Grayson had to a real mother himself. She had Gigi’s open heart, Savannah’s bulletproof resolve. “Did you even think about her? Is the whole world just supposed to go on believing that Sheffield Grayson is alive and well and living a tax-evading life in the Maldives?”

Grayson forced himself to weather every ounce of his sister’s fury without a word.

“We were fine,” Savannah said, the words sounding like they’d been ripped from a part of her that was already dead. “Mom. Gigi. Me. Before you came, I was holding us together, and we were fine. And now, there is no us.” Savannah’s breaths were audible now and laden with pain—of all types. “And the worst part of it,” Savannah continued, her voice going uncharacteristically ragged, “is that Gigi chose you, but if push came to shove, you wouldn’t choose her. You’d choose your brothers and Avery. They are your family, the way Gigi was mine.”

Was. “Gigi is still your family,” Grayson said as they reached the handholds. “And like it or not, you are mine as well.”

Savannah didn’t even look at him. “The only thing I am,” she said in that same, ragged tone, “is alone.”

Chapter 60

ROHAN

Rohan noted the exact moment that Grayson and Savannah made it back down to the uppermost climbing holds—and the exact moment that Savannah reversed course once more. Rohan’s mind made quick work of that, and he turned his attention to Lyra Kane—not exactly an open book.

Fortunately, Rohan excelled at cracking open even the hardest shells. “You know, don’t you?” he said. This time, Rohan wasn’t referring to Jameson Hawthorne, wasn’t even trying to manipulate her—much. He raised his eyes to Grayson and Savannah overhead. “So does he.”

They knew Savannah’s intentions in this game were less than pure. Grayson almost certainly knew why. And Lyra…

Rohan studied her—openly, nakedly, letting her feel his gaze. “You have a tell,” he informed her. Rohan gave those words just a moment to sink in. A person could inadvertently show you quite a bit in the split second when they realized their face had already given away far too much. “It’s all about the direction of the eyes,” Rohan continued. “Where they go—and where they don’t.”

Hers went down. Rohan knelt, and before his knee had even reached the forest floor, Lyra was already there, crouched, her telltale grace exceeding even his own.

“A forest is more than its trees,” Rohan noted as he pushed his fingers into the grass. “This forest, for instance, is dirt and rocks and wild grass—and this.”

There was something there, hidden just below the dirt, barely covered.

In a single sweeping motion, Rohan cleared away enough soil for them to make out the top of a silver plaque—and the first two words.

Often… And right below it. Never.

Without a word to him, Lyra Kane began to dig out the plaque, utterly indifferent to the dirt lodging itself beneath her nails—and utterly indifferent to Rohan, or doing a good impression of it, at least.

“It really is a shame,” Rohan told her, never above issuing another little mental push, “that the Hawthorne family sees you less as a person—a highly capable one, by my reckoning—than as a threat.”