Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (37)

I’m not taking any damn deals. Eve’s game, on the other hand—that, Lyra would play. “What does your file say about omega?”

“Nothing.” Eve tilted her head to one side. “What’s omega?”

Lyra’s gut said Eve wasn’t acting, that the word omega rang no bells for her whatsoever. Lyra took a beat to consider her second question and zeroed in on one more likely to yield results. “What does your file say about calla lilies?”

“Only that Tobias Hawthorne had some sent to your father’s funeral.” Eve gave a little shrug. “A bit sentimental, if you ask me. One question left.”

Tobias Hawthorne knew something. Lyra’s heart rate accelerated. He sent calla lilies for a reason. The dead billionaire had clearly been a man whose every action was layered with meaning, and he didn’t strike Lyra as the type to send flowers to funerals out of sentiment.

Putting a pin in that line of thinking, Lyra considered the fact that Eve had offered true answers but not necessarily full ones, and yet, when Lyra had asked about calla lilies, Eve had responded that her file contained only one thing on the topic. Lyra didn’t trust her so-called sponsor as far as she could throw her, but her gut said—again—that Eve was telling the truth, that she really didn’t know anything more about the calla lilies.

Not that Lyra’s father had given her one the night he died. Not anything else about what that particular flower meant.

Then why send me one? Lyra wasn’t about to burn her last question on that.

“I’m waiting,” Eve said.

Make it count. Lyra went straight for to the heart of the matter. “What does your file on my father say about Tobias Hawthorne’s dead wife?”

“Alice Hawthorne?” If Eve knew Alice wasn’t dead, she gave no sign of it. “Absolutely nothing.” Eve stared bullet holes in Lyra for a few seconds.

She wasn’t expecting that question. If anything, Eve seemed to be wondering now what Lyra knew—but she got over it. “I almost feel bad about all the questions you didn’t ask,” Eve said finally. “So out of the goodness of my heart, I’m going to give you something—proof that you want the file that I have. Your father used dozens of last names. The man who made my List had it narrowed down to three possibilities for his real one.”

Lyra didn’t want that to mean anything. It was such a small thing—a last name. But after the Grandest Game was finished, a name would at least be something to go on.

A name might tell her something she’d never known about herself.

“I’m listening.” Lyra’s throat tightened around the words.

“Drakos. Reyes. Aquila.”

Lyra filed those names away for future reference, refusing to let them mean too much.

“Now it’s my turn,” Eve said. “Here’s my offer for you, Lyra: Lose this game and ensure that Grayson Hawthorne does the same, and I will give you two-point-five million dollars and the entirety of your father’s file.”

Two-point-five million dollars was more than enough to save Mile’s End. It was more than enough for Lyra, period. And that file…

Lyra’s jaw tightened. “Why do you want me to lose?”

“Does it matter?”

Maybe it didn’t. So Lyra focused on what did. “Why would I take any deal from you? Why would I believe anything you’re saying when you’ve been playing mind games with me since I got here? My father’s names on self-destructing notes. Sending me that flower.”

There was a long, barbed silence.

“I never sent you a flower,” Eve said. “But I’m guessing it was a calla lily?”

“You’re lying,” Lyra replied, but she didn’t really believe that.

“I’ll admit,” Eve said, “you’ve piqued my interest, but I can’t count on this little interlude of ours lasting much longer. I had those notes with your father’s names planted to remind you what you lost, what the Hawthorne family took from you. And you can trust my offer because I have no reason to fail to follow through. Two-point-five million dollars is nothing to me. That file is nothing to me.”

“What’s the catch?” Lyra refused to believe there wasn’t one.

“Well, I suppose there is one other thing,” Eve said, as she walked back toward the ladder. “If you want the money and the file, I’m also going to need you to break Grayson Hawthorne’s heart.”





Chapter 33





GRAYSON


Grayson returned to southeastern side of the island to find Lyra exactly where he’d left her: on top of the boathouse, standing Hawthorne-close to the edge. Even from a distance, Grayson clocked Lyra’s posture, the width of her stance, the tilt of her head.

Grayson would have known it was her even if the only thing he’d been able to see was the outline of her body. Picking up his pace, he made quick work of the distance separating him from the boathouse and scaled the ladder to join Lyra on the roof.

Grayson greeted his partner in crime with a question. “What did you see?”

Lyra kept her back to him and her gaze locked on the island. “One more flash after you left. No lemniscates. No discernable pattern.”

Grayson walked to join her, right at the edge. “Are you going to ask me what I found?”