The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3)(77)

I tried to picture my mom threatening a man like Tobias Hawthorne.

“Did you know about the seal?” Tobias asked, his tone almost conversational. “Did you know this family’s darkest secret? I think not, but I am a man who has made an empire by always, always questioning my own assumptions. I excel at nothing if not contingencies. So here we are, Avery Kylie Grambs. The little girl with the funny little name. A skeleton key for so many little locks.

“I had six weeks from my diagnosis until now. Another two, I wager, until my deathbed. Enough time to put the final pieces in place. Enough time to draw up one last game with so very many layers. Why you, Avery? To draw the boys in one last time? To bequeath to them a mystery befitting Hawthornes, the puzzle of a lifetime? To bring them back together through you? Yes.” He said the word yes like a man who relished saying it. “To pull Toby out of the shadows? To do in death what I was unable to do in life and force him back onto the board? Yes.”

The sound of my own body was suddenly overwhelming. The beating of my heart. Each breath I somehow managed to draw. The rush of blood in my ears.

“And,” Tobias Hawthorne continued with an air of finality, “to my great shame, to pull Blake’s attention and focus—and the attention and focus of all of my enemies, of whom there are doubtlessly many—to you.”

Yes. He didn’t say it this time, but I thought it, and then I thought about Nan telling me that I was the one playing the piano now—and men like Vincent Blake, they’d break every single one of my fingers if they could.

“Call it misdirection,” the dead billionaire said. “I needed someone to draw fire, and who better than Hannah Rooney’s daughter, on the off chance that she had told you my secret? You’d hardly have motive to reveal it once the money was yours.”

Traps upon traps. And riddles upon riddles. The words that Jameson had spoken to me long ago came back to me—followed by something Xander had said. Even if you thought that you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.

“But take as your consolation this, my very risky gamble: I have watched you. I have come to know you. As you draw fire away from those that I hold most dear, know that I believe there is at least a sliver of a chance that you will survive the hits you take. You may be tested by the flames, but you need not burn.

“If you are listening to this, Blake is coming.” Tobias Hawthorne’s tone was intense now. “He will box you in. He will hold you down. He will have no mercy. But he will also underestimate you. You’re young. You’re female. You’re nobody—use that. My greatest adversary—and yours now—is an honor-bound man. Best him, and he’ll honor the win.”

Something in Tobias Hawthorne’s tone made those words sound not just like advice but also like good-bye.

“My boys.” Hawthorne sounded like he was smiling again, a crooked smile like Jameson’s, a hard one like Grayson’s. “If you are indeed listening to this, judge me as harshly as you like. I’ve made my deals with so very many devils. Find me wanting. Hate me if you must. Let your anger light a fire that the world will never extinguish.

“Nash. Grayson. Jameson. Xander.” He said their names one at a time. “You were the clay, and I was the sculptor, and it has been the joy and honor of my life to make you better men than I will ever be. Men who may curse my name but will never forget it.”

My hand found its way to Jameson’s, and he held on to me for dear life.

“On your marks, boys,” Tobias Hawthorne said on the recording. “Get set. Go.”





CHAPTER 70


Silence had never sounded this loud. I’d never seen the Hawthorne brothers so still—all of them, like they’d been stung with a paralyzing venom. As big an impact as hearing the truth from Tobias Hawthorne’s mouth had on me, he wasn’t the formative influence of my life.

I forced myself to speak because they couldn’t. “You always did say that the old man liked to kill ten birds with one stone.”

Jameson brought his eyes up from the ground to me, then let out a rough, pained chuckle. “Twelve.”

Twelve birds, one stone. I’d been warned. From the moment I’d received a ring holding a hundred keys—from before that, even—I’d been warned by each of the Hawthorne brothers in turn.

Traps upon traps. And riddles upon riddles.

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

This family—we destroy everything we touch.

You’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.

And then there was the message that Tobias Hawthorne had left me himself, back at the very beginning. I’m sorry.

“We did exactly what he thought we would.” Xander snapped out of it and began to move—wild gestures, weight on the balls of his feet. “All of us. From the beginning.”

“That sonofabitch.” Nash let out a long whistle, then leaned back against the wall. “How dangerous do we think Vincent Blake is?” The question sounded casual and calm, but I could imagine Nash strolling up to a rabid bull with that exact expression on his face.

“Dangerous enough to require a decoy.” Grayson’s calm was a different sort than Nash’s—icy and controlled. “We’re dealing with a family whose fortune, though significantly smaller, goes back a lot further than ours. There’s no telling what people or institutions Blake has in his pocket.”