“He can’t even stand to be in the same room with me,” Alisa said softly, “but he called. Because he knows I am good at my job.” She walked toward me, her heels clicking against the wood floor. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me, Avery, not with this and not with everything you’re about to have on your plate.”
The money. She was talking about my inheritance—and the trust.
“What happened, Alisa?” Oren crossed his arms over his chest.
“What makes you think something happened?” Alisa asked coolly.
“Instinct,” my head of security replied. “And the fact that someone has been trying to chip away at Avery’s security team.”
I could practically see Alisa filing that piece of information away. “I’ve become aware of a smear campaign,” she said, giving Oren tit for tat. “Gossip websites, mostly. Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Avery, but one of my connections in the press has informed me that the going rate for pictures of you with any of the Hawthornes has inexplicably tripled. Meanwhile, at least three companies that Tobias Hawthorne owned a significant stake in are experiencing… turbulence.”
Oren’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of turbulence?”
“CEO turnover, sudden scandal, FDA investigations…”
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.
“On the business end of things, what are we looking for?” Oren asked Alisa.
“Wealth. Power. Connections.” Alisa set her jaw. “I’m on it.”
She was on it. Oren was on it. But we weren’t any closer to an answer or to getting Toby back, and there was nothing I could do about it. An incomplete riddle. A story—and we’re at the mercy of the storyteller.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I find something,” Alisa said. “In the meantime, we need to keep Eve happy, away from the press, and under surveillance until the firm can assess the best course of action. I suspect a modest settlement, in exchange for an NDA, may be in order.” In full-on lawyer mode, Alisa didn’t even pause before moving on to the next item on her agenda. “If, at any point, a ransom needs to be arranged, the firm can handle that as well.”
Was that where this was headed? The end of this story, once the riddle was complete? Was Toby’s captor just waiting until he had me where he wanted me to make demands?
“I’ll have my team keep you in the loop,” Oren told Alisa briskly.
My lawyer nodded like she expected nothing less, but I got the sense that Oren letting her back in mattered to her. “I suppose the only business that remains is that.” Alisa nodded toward the leather satchel she’d placed on my dresser. “When I updated the partners on the current situation, I was given this bag and its contents to pass along to you, Avery.”
“What is it?” I asked, walking toward my dresser.
“I don’t know.” Alisa sounded perturbed. “Mr. Hawthorne’s instructions were that it was to remain secure and unopened, unless certain conditions were met, in which case it was to be delivered promptly to you.”
I stared at the bag. Tobias Hawthorne had left me his fortune, but the only message I’d ever received from him was a grand total of two words: I’m sorry. I reached out to touch the leather bag. “What conditions?”
Alisa cleared her throat. “We were to deliver this to you in the event that you ever met Evelyn Shane.”
I remembered vaguely that Eve was short for Evelyn—but then another realization took over. The old man knew about Eve. That revelation hit me like splinters to my lungs. I’d assumed that the dead billionaire hadn’t known about Toby’s actual daughter. At some point, I’d started believing, deep down, that I’d only been chosen to inherit because Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t realized there was someone out there who suited his purposes better than I did.
A stone that killed at least as many birds. A more elegant glass ballerina. A sharper knife.
But he knew about Eve all along.
CHAPTER 25
Alisa left. Oren took up position in the hall, and all I could do was stare at the bag. Even without opening it, I knew in my gut what I would find inside. A game.
The old man had left me a game.
I wanted to call Jameson, but everything he’d said the night before lingered, ghostlike in my mind. I didn’t know how long I stood there staring at my last bequest from Tobias Hawthorne before Libby poked her head into my room.
“Cupcake pancakes?” My sister held out a plate, piled high with her latest concoction, then followed the direction of my gaze. “New laptop bag?” she guessed.
“No,” I said. I took the pancakes from Libby and told her about the leather satchel.
“Are you going to… open it?” my sister prodded innocently.
I wanted to see what was in that bag. I wanted—so badly—to play a game that actually went somewhere. But opening the satchel without Jameson here felt like admitting that there was something wrong.
Libby handed me a fork, and my gaze caught on the inside of her left wrist. A few months ago, she’d gotten a tattoo, a single word inked from wrist bone to wrist bone, just under the heel of her hand. SURVIVOR.
“Still thinking about what you want for the other wrist?” I asked.
Libby looked down at her arm. “Maybe, for my next tattoo, I should go with… open the bag, Avery!” The enthusiasm in her voice reminded me of the moment when we’d first found out that I’d been named in Tobias Hawthorne’s will.
“How about love?” I suggested.
Libby narrowed her eyes. “If this is about me and Nash…”
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s just about you, Lib. You’re the most loving person I know.” Enough of the people she’d loved had hurt her that, these days, it seemed like she saw her giant heart as a point of weakness, but it wasn’t one. “You took me in,” I reminded her, “when I had no one.”
Libby stared at both of her wrists. “Just open the darn bag.”
I hesitated again, then got annoyed with myself. This was my game. For once, I wasn’t a part of the puzzle, a tool. I was a player.
So, play.
I reached for the bag. The leather was supple. I let my fingers explore the bag’s strap. It would have been just like the old man to leave a message etched in the leather. When I found nothing, I unclasped the flap and flipped it open.
In the main pouch, I found four things: a handheld steamer, a flashlight, a beach towel, and a mesh bag filled with magnetic letters. On the surface, that collection of objects seemed random, but I knew better. There was always a method to the old man’s madness. At the beginning of each Saturday-morning challenge for the boys, the billionaire had laid out a series of objects. A fishing hook, a price tag, a glass ballerina, a knife. By the end of the game, all of those objects would have served a purpose.
Sequential. The old man’s games are always sequential. I just have to figure out where to start.
I searched the side pouches and was rewarded with two more objects: a USB drive and a circular piece of blue-green glass. The latter was the size of a dinner plate, as thick as two stacked quarters, and just translucent enough that I could see through it. As I held up the glass and peered through it, my mind went to a piece of red acetate that Tobias Hawthorne had left taped to the inside cover of a book.