“I’m fine, Nash,” I said. “You can go.”
“I reckon I can.” Nash made no move to push off the doorframe. He was the oldest of the four Hawthorne brothers and used to riding herd on the other three. Over the past year, he’d extended that to me. He and my sister had been “not dating” for months.
“Isn’t it not-date night?” I asked. “And doesn’t that mean you have somewhere to be?”
Nash removed his cowboy hat and let his steady eyes settle on mine.
“Dollars to doughnuts,” he said, turning to amble out of the room, “she wants to talk to you about establishing a trust.”
I waited until Nash was out of earshot before I turned back to Alisa. “A trust?”
“I merely want you to be aware of your options.” Alisa avoided specifics with lawyerly ease. “I’ll put together a dossier for you to look over. Now, regarding your birthday, there’s also the matter of a party.”
“No party,” I said immediately. The last thing I wanted was to turn my birthday into a headline-grabbing, hashtag-exploding event.
“Do you have a favorite band? Or singer? We’ll need entertainment.”
I could feel my eyes narrowing. “No party, Alisa.”
“Is there anyone you’d like to see on the guest list?” When Alisa said anyone, she wasn’t talking about people I knew. She was talking about celebrities, billionaires, socialites, royals.…
“No guest list,” I said, “because I’m not having a party.”
“You really should consider the optics—” Alisa began, and I tuned out. I knew what she was going to say. She’d been saying it for nearly eleven months. Everyone loves a Cinderella story.
Well, this Cinderella had a bet to win. I studied the wrought-iron staircases. Three spiraled counterclockwise. But the fourth… I walked toward it, then scaled the steps. On the second-story landing, I ran my fingers along the underside of the shelf opposite the stairs. A release. I triggered it, and the entire curved shelf arced backward.
Number twelve. I smiled wickedly. Take that, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.
“No party,” I called down to Alisa again. And then I disappeared into the wall.
CHAPTER 2
That night, I slid into bed, Egyptian cotton sheets cool and smooth against my skin. As I waited for Jameson’s call, my hand drifted toward the nightstand, to a small bronze pin in the shape of a key.
“Pick a hand.” Jameson holds out two fists. I tap his right hand, and he uncurls his fingers, presenting me with an empty palm. I try the left—the same. Then he curls my fingers into a fist. I open them, and there, in my palm, sits the pin.
“You solved the keys faster than any of us,” Xander reminds me. “It’s past time for this!”
“Sorry, kid,” Nash drawls. “It’s been six months. You’re one of us now.”
Grayson says nothing, but when I fumble to put the pin on and it drops from my fingers, he catches it before it hits the ground.
That memory wanted to loop into another— Grayson, me, the wine cellar—but I wouldn’t let it. In the past few months, I’d developed my own methods of distraction. Grabbing my phone, I navigated to a crowd-funding site and did a search for medical bills and rent. The Hawthorne fortune wasn’t mine for another six weeks, but the partners at McNamara, Ortega, and Jones had already seen to it that I had a credit card with virtually no limit.
Keep gift anonymous. I clicked that box again and again. When my phone finally rang, I leaned back and answered. “Hello.”
“I need an anagram of the word naked.” There was a hum of energy to Jameson’s voice.