This was Tobias Hawthorne, billionaire, balancing his ledger. That’s not balance.
“Did you know about this?” Grayson said, his voice low, his silver eyes targeting Nash.
“Which ‘this’ might we be talkin’ about, little brother?”
“How about buying patents from a grieving widow for one one-hundredth of what they were worth?” Grayson threw down the file, then picked up another one. “Or posing as an angel investor when what he really wanted was to incrementally acquire enough of the company to be able to shut it down to clear the way for another of his investments?”
“I’ll take boilerplate contracts that give him control of his employees’ IP for two thousand, Alex.” Jameson paused. “Whether that IP was created on the clock or not.”
Across the room, Xander swallowed. “You really don’t want to read about his foray into pharmaceuticals.”
“Did you know?” Grayson asked Nash again. “Is that why you always had one foot out the door? Why you couldn’t stand to be under the old man’s roof?”
“Why you save people,” Libby said quietly. She wasn’t looking at Nash. She was looking at her wrists.
“I knew who he was.” Nash didn’t say more than that, but I could see tension beneath the rough stubble on his jaw. He angled his head down, the rim of his cowboy hat obscuring his face.
“Do you remember the bag of glass?” Jameson asked his brothers suddenly, an ache in his tone. “It was the puzzle with the knife. We had to break a glass ballerina to find three diamonds inside. The prompt was Tell me what’s real, and Nash won because the rest of us focused on the diamonds—”
“And I handed the old man a real bag of shattered glass,” Nash finished. There was something in his voice that made Libby stop looking at her wrists and walk to put one hand silently on his arm.
“The shattered glass,” Grayson said, a wave of tension rippling through his body. “That lecture he gave us about how, to do what he had done, sacrifices had to be made. Things got broken. And if you didn’t clean up the shards…”
Xander finished the sentence, his Adam’s apple bobbing, “People got hurt.”
CHAPTER 40
Thirty-six hours passed—no word from Toby’s captor, an ever-growing hoard of paparazzi outside the gates, and too much time spent in the solarium with files on Tobias Hawthorne’s enemies. His many, many enemies.
I finished the files in my stack. Each of the four Hawthorne brothers finished theirs. So did Libby. So did Eve. Nothing matched. Nothing fit. But I didn’t want to admit that we’d hit another wall. I didn’t want to feel cornered or outmatched or like everyone around me had taken repeated shots to the gut for nothing.
So I kept going back to the solarium, rereading files the others had already gone through, even though I knew the Hawthornes hadn’t missed a damn thing. That these files were burned into them now.
The moment Jameson had finished his stack, he’d disappeared into the walls. The only reason I knew he hadn’t taken off for parts unknown halfway around the world was that the bed was warm beside me when I woke in the morning. Grayson took to the pool, pushing himself past the point of human endurance again and again, and after Nash had finished, he’d dodged the press at the gates, snuck out to a bar, and came back at two in the morning with a split lip and a trembling puppy tucked into his shirt. Xander was barely eating. Eve seemed to think that she didn’t need sleep and that if she could just memorize every detail of every file, an answer would present itself.
I understood. The two of us didn’t talk about Toby, about the silence from his captor, but it fueled us on.
I’ll be in touch.
I reached for another file—one of the few I hadn’t made it through myself yet—and opened it. Empty. “Have you read this one?” I asked Eve, my heart whamming against my rib cage with sudden, startling force. “There’s nothing here.”
Eve looked up from the file she’d been scouring for the past twenty minutes. The desperate hope in her eyes flickered and died when she saw which file I was referring to. “Isaiah Alexander? There was a page in there before. Just one. Short file. Another disgruntled employee, fired from a Hawthorne lab. PhD, rising star—and now the guy has nothing.”
No wealth. No power. No connections. Not what we’re looking for.
“So where’s the page?” I asked, the question gnawing at me.
“Does it matter?” Eve said, her tone dismissive, annoyance marring her striking features. “Maybe it got mixed in with another file.”
“Maybe,” I said. I closed the file, and my gaze caught on the tab. Alexander, Isaiah. Eve had said the name, but I hadn’t processed it—not until now.
Grayson’s father was Sheffield Grayson. Nash’s father was named Jake Nash. And Xander’s name was short for Alexander.
I found my BHFF in his lab. It was a hidden room filled with the most random assortment of items imaginable. Some people did found art, turning everyday objects into artistic commentary. Xander was more of a found engineer. As far as Hawthorne-brother coping mechanisms went, it was probably the healthiest one in the House.
“I need to talk to you about something,” I said.
“Can it be about off-label uses for medieval weaponry?” Xander requested. “Because I have some ideas.”
That was concerning on many levels, and it was so Xander that I wanted to cry or hug him or do anything except hold up that file and make him talk to me about something he’d made it very clear during Chutes and Ladders that he didn’t want to talk about.
“Is this your father?” I said gently. “Isaiah Alexander?”
Xander turned to look at me. Then, as if coming to a very serious decision, he lifted his hand and pressed one finger to the end of my nose. “Boop.”
“You’re not going to distract me,” I told him, the exasperation I might have normally felt replaced by something more tender and painful. “Come on, Xan. I’m your BHHFF. Talk to me.”
“Double boop.” Xander pressed my nose again. “What’s the extra H for?”
“Honorary,” I told him. “You guys made me an honorary Hawthorne, and that makes me your Best Honorary Hawthorne Friend Forever. So talk.”
“Triple boo—” Xander started to say, but I ducked before he could touch my nose. I straightened, caught his hand gently in mine, and squeezed.
This was Xander, so there wasn’t a hint of accusation in my voice when I asked my next question. “Did you take the page that was in this file?”
Xander gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I didn’t even know Isaiah was on the List. I can probably tell you what his file says, though. I kind of spent the past several months making a file of my own.”
This time, I didn’t push down the urge to hug him. Hard. “Eve said he was a PhD who got fired from a Hawthorne lab,” I said, once I’d pulled back.
“That about covers it,” Xander replied, his cheery tone a copy of a copy of the real thing. “Except for timing. It’s possible that Isaiah was fired around the time I was conceived. Maybe because I was conceived? I mean, maybe not! But maybe?”