Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (70)

“The piper has to be paid either way,” Grayson said quietly. “The human brain is a miraculous thing, but it can’t keep anything caged forever. You’ll still pay the cost. Repressing something, pushing it down, refusing to feel it just means that you have to pay that cost again and again and again.”

A ball of emotion rose in Lyra’s throat as Rohan and Savannah drew closer to them. “Ask me how protected I felt when I found out the truth.”

Grayson took an audible breath. “Our father is a murderer, Savannah’s and Gigi’s and mine.” Lyra hadn’t asked for his secrets, but there he was, offering them up like penance. “That’s what I was trying to protect Savannah from. Do you remember seeing anything in the news a few years ago about a bomb on one of Avery’s jets?”

That story had been everywhere. Lyra remembered. “You don’t have to tell me this.” Her voice, as quiet and low as it was, echoed through the trees.

“My father planted that bomb. He lost someone in the Hawthorne Island fire, years ago. He held my uncle Toby responsible for that, and he believed Avery was Toby’s daughter. It was all very an eye for an eye.” The muscles in Grayson’s jaw tensed. “Avery ended up in a coma, but she survived the explosion. Two of the men on her security detail did not.”

Lyra tightened her right hand around the handhold she was gripping, then let her left snake slowly around the trunk toward Grayson. “You didn’t have to tell me that.”

“I wanted to.” His hand made its way toward hers. “I think sometimes,” he continued, in a voice that was just a little more detached, “about what I might have inherited from my father. Do I have his perverted sense of justice? His ability to just shut morality off in pursuit of his own ends?”

“You’re nothing like him.” Lyra’s words came out fiercer than she’d meant for them to.

“You’re probably right. Of all of my brothers, I was always the one who was a Hawthorne through and through.” Grayson paused. “I wonder sometimes about what that means about me, too.”

Lyra could feel his mind churning again, and she knew—knew—that there wasn’t a thing she could say to stop it.

“There’s nothing up here,” Grayson declared finally. “And we’re about to have company.”

Rohan and Savannah weren’t more than twenty yards away now, compasses in hand, but as Lyra and Grayson began the climb back down the tree, Lyra caught sight of movement in the shadow of the closest, massive tree, and she realized: We already have company.

As Lyra’s feet hit the ground, Brady Daniels met her gaze from the shadows. And then—slowly, deliberately—he angled his gaze down to the ground, to the base of the tree.

Lyra ran her foot over grass and dirt, and she realized that something had been buried there, in the forest floor. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Lyra didn’t start digging immediately, not with Rohan and Savannah incoming, but she couldn’t help thinking that Grayson had been right about what he’d said before, when he’d talked about paying the piper.

Nothing stayed buried forever.





Chapter 59





GRAYSON


Grayson had not meant to tell Lyra about his father, but he was fully cognizant of why he’d done so. He’d wanted to tell her something real, something true, to give her a secret, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been lying and not-lying to keep from her since the bonfire.

The secret he was keeping still.

Lyra couldn’t have made it clearer or more explicit: She didn’t want that kind of protection. Not from him. Not from anyone. But she wasn’t the only person Grayson was trying to protect. Alice had threatened Jameson in Prague. Based on Jameson’s behavior, it was a sure bet that the woman had threatened Avery, too.

Lyra Kane wanted, maybe even needed, truth from those she loved. And Grayson couldn’t give it to her.

Knowing he’d pay for it later, Grayson shoved that thought aside, because Savannah and Rohan were here.

Savannah took one look at the handholds on the tree and began to climb. Grayson expected Rohan to follow, but instead, Rohan took up position at the bottom of the tree, tilted his head slightly to one side, and set his sights on Lyra.

“Figured out why yet?” Rohan asked her. Grayson levied a thousand-yard stare at Rohan, but apparently, the Brit had never encountered a warning he didn’t wholly ignore. “Why your brother is so sure that Ms. Kane is a liability,” Rohan clarified for Grayson’s benefit, and then, without waiting for a response, Rohan angled his gaze toward the canopy. “I suppose some people just don’t know when to stop.”

Grayson allowed himself to be baited into looking up. Savannah hadn’t stopped her climb where the handhelds ended, the way that Grayson and Lyra had. Now, she was climbing the tree with no holds, no branches—and no sign of stopping.

As loath as Grayson was to leave Lyra with Rohan, Grayson knew quite well that Rohan had assessed Savannah with remarkable accuracy. Grayson’s sister simply was not going to stop.

Not at the lowest branch.

Not at any of them.

Not until she found a ledger.

“This tree is more than a hundred feet tall,” Grayson said grimly.

Lyra caught his gaze. Go. This was Lyra telling Grayson that, when it came to handling Rohan, she could damn well take care of herself.