The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(67)

Gigi was practically vibrating with intensity now. Grayson wanted to reach for her, but something in him wouldn’t let him.

“You should have told me.” Gigi took a step back, then another and another. “You all should have told me.” Hitting the wall, she shot each of them a final, furious look, then bolted from the room.

“Gigi!” Savannah started to go after her, but Acacia reached out a gentle hand to stop her.

“Let her go.” Acacia closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “Is there anything else?” she said. “In the box?”

Grayson removed and stacked the photographs, refusing to look too closely at any of them. My whole life, Sheffield Grayson knew about me. My whole life, he kept an eye on me.

At the bottom of the box, near the back, Grayson found a bank envelope. It was thick. Full. He pulled it out and opened it, expecting to find a fortune in large bills, but all he saw was slips of paper. Dozens of them.

“Deposit slips?” Acacia asked, and Grayson knew what she was thinking. The investigation. The embezzling. Her drained accounts.

He examined the papers. “Withdrawal slips, actually,” Grayson said, removing a handful of them, skimming each one with brutal efficiency. “Petty cash. This one’s for two hundred and seventeen dollars. Another for five hundred and six dollars. Three hundred and twenty-one dollars.” He turned one of the slips over. “There’s a notation on the back. KM.” He glanced up toward his father’s wife. “Do you know anyone with those initials?”

Savannah blew out a long, controlled breath. “Probably another side piece.”

“Savannah, I do not appreciate you talking about another woman that way.”

“I think you mean the other woman.” Savannah went for the jugular, like she’d utterly lost the ability to do anything else. “Or other women, plural, I guess,” she continued icily. “Not that you care.”

“Enough.” Grayson hadn’t meant to use that tone, but he didn’t regret it, either. He thought about Acacia telling him that she couldn’t even think about a life without her daughters. He thought about children’s paintings displayed like fine art and handprints captured in cement.

Grayson fixed Savannah with a look and spoke with an emphasis capable of sending chills down spines. “Your mother doesn’t deserve that from you.”

“My mother,” Savannah shot back. Her expression was a study in ice-cold fury, ruined only by the tears on her white-blonde lashes. “And as for my dad…” She titled her chin up. “I always knew he wanted a boy.”

That statement affected Acacia more than Savannah’s earlier barbs. She folded her daughter into her arms. To Grayson’s surprise, Savannah didn’t fight it. They both stood there for the longest time, their arms around each other, holding on for dear life and leaving Grayson with a feeling he barely recognized.

Hawthornes weren’t supposed to long for things they could not have.

Eventually, Savannah pulled back, and Acacia turned to Grayson. “We’re going to go,” she told him. “Everything in this box—it’s yours.”





CHAPTER 54





GRAYSON


The photographs. The withdrawal slips. Grayson only allowed himself to focus on the latter. Evidence of who knows what.

“Sir.” The bank employee’s voice was stiff. “The box must be returned to the wall before the owner can leave.”

The owner. Acacia. Savannah with her. Grayson was well aware of how fragmented his thoughts were, but the alternative—actually thinking in any detail about what had just happened—was even less desirable.

“I’ll need a briefcase.” Grayson phrased that as neither an order nor a request, but there was difference between saying I need and I’ll need. The future tense implied that one expected the need to be met before it became pressing.

“A briefcase?”

Grayson stared him down. “Will that be a problem?”

Ten minutes later, he walked out of the bank holding a briefcase.





The hotel valets were very amendable to the idea of driving the Ferrari out to him. Probably a little too amendable, but when they arrived at the bank, Grayson did them the courtesy of pretending not to notice their adrenaline-soaked exuberance.

“That was incredible!”

Per the plan, one valet drove the other home, leaving the incredible car behind. Grayson wasn’t sure how long he sat in the parking lot of that bank, behind the wheel of the Ferrari, the briefcase on the passenger-side floor, out of reach.

He should have left the photos in the safe-deposit box. Should have—but didn’t.

What did it matter that Sheffield Grayson had kept tabs on him? My whole life. Those words managed to penetrate the forced silence in his brain. He watched me my whole life.

Grayson’s hand snaked out and pressed the ignition. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he thought about the look in the valets’ eyes. Clearly, both of them had taken a turn behind the wheel. Grayson wondered how fast they’d gone. How much of a thrill they’d allowed themselves.

Pulling onto the highway, Grayson pushed the pedal down farther—and farther. He looked at the positioning of the cars ahead of him, calculated the spacing between them. When Jameson needed to outrun something, he found an excuse to go way too fast or way too high. Only one of those was an option for Grayson at the moment.