I thought about that. “Your son-in-law had a list of threats. Blake wasn’t on it.”
“Then Tobias must not have considered Blake a threat—that, or he thought the threat was neutralized.”
“Why would Blake take Toby?” I asked. “Why now?”
“Because my son-in-law isn’t here anymore to hold him at bay.” Nan took my hand and held it tight. The expression on her face grew tender. “You’re the one playing the piano now, girl. Men like Vincent Blake—they’ll break every one of those fingers of yours if you let them.”
CHAPTER 56
As I made my way back to the others, I thought about the fact that Vincent Blake had addressed every one of his missives to me. And he’d made it clear on the phone that he wouldn’t speak to anyone but “the heiress.”
You’re the one playing the piano now, girl.… Nan’s words were still echoing in my mind when I stepped into the foyer and heard a hushed conversation, bouncing off the walls of the Great Room.
“Don’t do this.” That was Thea, her voice low and intense. “Don’t fold in on yourself.”
“I’m not.” Rebecca.
“Don’t be sad, Bex.”
Rebecca read meaning in that emphasis. “Be angry.”
“Hate your mom, hate Emily and Eve, hate me if you have to, but don’t you dare disappear.”
The second he saw me, Jameson crossed the foyer. “Anything?”
I swallowed. “Vincent Blake brought your grandfather into his inner circle. Treated him like family—or his version of family, anyway.”
“The prodigal son.” Jameson’s eyes lit on mine.
“Eve?” That was Grayson—and he was yelling. I scanned the foyer. Oren, Xander, Thea and Rebecca stepping in from the Great Room. But no Eve.
Grayson burst into view. “Eve’s gone. She left a note. She’s going after Blake.”
“What about her guard?” I asked Oren.
Grayson was the one who answered. “She went to the bathroom, gave him the slip.”
“Should we be worried?” Xander threw that question out there.
Men like Vincent Blake and Tobias, I could hear Nan warning me, they’re always dangerous.
“I’m going after her.” Grayson viciously cuffed his sleeves, like he was preparing for a fight.
“Grayson, stop,” I said urgently. “Think.” Eve bolting made no sense. Did she think she could just show up on Vincent Blake’s door and demand Toby back?
Jameson stepped between Grayson and me. He held my gaze for a second or two, then turned to his brother. “Stand down, Gray.”
Grayson looked like someone who didn’t know the meaning of the words. He was stone: unmovable, the muscles in his jaw rock hard. “I can’t fail her again, Jamie.”
Again. My heart twisted. Jameson placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I invoke On Spake.”
Grayson swore. “I don’t have time—”
“Make. Time.” Jameson leaned forward and said something—I couldn’t hear what—directly into Grayson’s ear. On Spake was a Hawthorne rite; it meant that Grayson couldn’t speak until Jameson was done.
As Jameson finished whispering furiously in his ear, Grayson stood very still. I waited for him to call for a fight, to exercise his right to respond to what Jameson had said in a physical way. But instead, Grayson Davenport Hawthorne parted with two and only two words. “I waive.”
“Waive what?” Rebecca asked.
Thea snorted derisively. “Hawthornes.”
“Heiress?” Jameson turned back to me. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”
CHAPTER 57
Jameson led me to the third floor, to a hobby room filled with model trains. There were dozens of them and twice as many tracks set up on glass tables. Jameson pressed a button on the side of one of the trains. At his touch, the wall behind us split in two, revealing a hidden room the size and shape of an old-fashioned phone booth. Its walls were made entirely out of gemstone slabs—a shining, metallic black for half the room and iridescent white for the other.
“Obsidian,” Jameson told me. “And agate crystal.”
“What are we doing here, Jameson?” I asked. “What do you need to tell me?”
It felt like we were on the verge of something. A secret? A confession? Jameson nodded toward the gemstone room. I stepped inside. The ceiling overhead glimmered in a rainbow of colors—more gems.
I realized too late that Jameson hadn’t followed me into the room.
The wall behind me closed. It took me a second to process what had just happened. Jameson trapped me in here. “What are you doing?” I banged on the wall. “Jameson!” My phone rang. “Let me out of here,” I demanded the second I hit Answer.
“I will,” Jameson promised on the other end of the line. “When we get back.”
We. Suddenly, I understood why Grayson had waived his right to fight, post–On Spake. “You promised him you’d go after Eve together.”
Jameson didn’t tell me I was wrong.
“What if she’s dangerous?” I asked. “Even if all she wants is to get Toby back, can you honestly say that she wouldn’t trade you or Grayson to get him? We barely know her, and your grandfather’s message said—”
“Heiress, have you ever known me to shy away from danger?”
My fingers curled into a fist. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne lived for danger. “If you don’t let me out of here, Hawthorne, I will—”
“Do you want to know how I got my scar?” Jameson’s voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. I knew immediately what scar he was talking about.
“I want you to open the door,” I said.
“I went back.” He let those words linger. “To the place where Emily died—I went back.”
Emily’s heart had given out after cliff jumping. “Jameson…”
“I jumped from dangerously high up, the way she did. Nothing happened the first time. Or the second. But the third…”
I could picture the scar in my mind, running the full length of Jameson’s torso. How many times had I dragged my fingers along its edges, feeling the smooth skin of his stomach on either side?
“There was a fallen tree, submerged in the water. I could only see one branch. I had no idea what was underneath. I thought I’d cleared the whole thing, but I was wrong.”
I pictured Jameson barreling down from the top of a cliff, hitting the water. I pictured a jagged branch catching his flesh, barely slowing him down.
“I didn’t feel pain, not at first. I saw blood in the water—and then I felt it. Like my skin was on fire. I made my way to the shore, my body screaming. Somehow, I managed to pull myself to my feet. The old man was standing there. He didn’t bat an eye at the blood, didn’t ask me if I was okay, didn’t yell. All he said, looking my bleeding body up and down, was Got that out of your system, did you?”
I leaned against the wall of my gemstone cage. “Why are you telling me this now?”
I could hear the sound of his footstep on the end of the line. “Because Gray is going to keep jumping until it hurts. He’s always been the solid one, Heiress. The one who never trembles, never backs down, never doubts. And now, he’s lost his mooring, and I have to be the strong one.”