“Open your locket,” I said sharply. “Show me what’s inside.”
Eve stood very still. I moved, reaching for it—but Grayson caught my hand. He gave me a look like a shard of ice. “What are you doing, Avery?”
“Vincent Blake had a son,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to do this here, in front of Mallory and Mrs. Laughlin, but so be it. “His name was Will. I think he was Toby’s father. And this?” I withdrew the Blake family seal, the one that had been in Toby’s possession when he disappeared. “It was almost certainly Will’s. Blake gave them to family members who held his favor.” I could feel Eve watching me. Her face was blank—so carefully blank. “Isn’t that right, Eve?”
“You have no right,” Mallory Laughlin snapped shrilly, “to come in here and say any of this. Any of it.” She looked past me to Mrs. Laughlin. “Are you going to just stand there and let her do this?” she demanded, her voice going up an octave. “This is your home!”
“I think it would be best,” Mrs. Laughlin told me stiffly, “if you left.”
I’d spent a year making inroads with her and the rest of the staff. I’d gone from being an outsider and an enemy to being accepted. I didn’t want to lose that, but I couldn’t back down.
“He called himself Liam,” I said quietly, my gaze going to Mallory’s. “He didn’t tell you who he really was—or why he was here.”
Mrs. Laughlin took a step toward me. “You need to go.”
“Will Blake sought out your daughter,” I said, turning back toward the woman who’d served as a steward of the Hawthorne estate for most of her life. “He would have been in his twenties. She was only sixteen. She snuck him onto the estate—up to Hawthorne House, even.” I didn’t stop. “It was probably his idea.”
A pained expression forced Mrs. Laughlin’s eyes closed. “Stop this,” she begged me. “Please.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I said, “but I do know that Will Blake hasn’t been seen since. And for some reason, you and your husband let the Hawthornes adopt your grandson and pass him off as their own flesh and blood, even to the baby’s mother.”
A high-pitched mewling sound escaped Mallory’s throat.
“You were trying to protect them, weren’t you?” I asked Mrs. Laughlin softly. “Your daughter and Toby. You were trying to protect them from Vincent Blake.”
“What is she talking about?” Eve glided back toward Mallory, then ducked down, angling her head so that her eyes were looking directly into Mallory’s. “You have to tell me the truth,” she continued. “All of it. Your Liam… he didn’t leave, did he?”
I saw then what she was doing—what she had been doing. “That’s why you’re here,” I realized. “What did Vincent Blake offer you if you brought him answers?”
“That’s enough,” Grayson told me sharply.
“It really, really isn’t,” Jameson replied, blazing by my side.
“You know what this necklace means to me, Grayson,” Eve said, her fist covering the locket. “You know why I wear it. You know, Grayson.”
“Don’t trust anyone,” I said, my tone a match for hers. “That was the old man’s message. His final message, Gray. Because if Eve’s here, Vincent Blake might not be far behind.”
Eve turned her body into Grayson’s, her every movement a study in grace and fury. “Who cares about Tobias Hawthorne’s final message?” she asked, her voice shattering at the end of that question. “He didn’t want me, Grayson. He chose Avery. I was never going to be enough for him. You know what that’s like, Gray. Better than anyone—you know.”
I could feel him slipping through my fingers, but I couldn’t stop fighting. “You pushed us to ask Skye about the seal,” I said, staring Eve down. “You’ve been asking around about deep, dark Hawthorne family secrets. You pressed and pressed for answers on Toby’s father—”
A single tear rolled down Eve’s cheek.
“Avery.” Grayson’s tone was one I recognized. This was the boy who’d been raised as the heir apparent. The one who didn’t have to dirty his hands to put an adversary in their place.
Am I the enemy again, Gray?
“Eve has done nothing to you.” Grayson’s voice cut into me like a surgeon’s knife. “Even if what you’re saying about Toby’s parentage is true, Eve is not to blame for her family.”
“Then get her to open the locket,” I said, my mouth dry.
Eve walked toward me. When she got within three feet, Oren shifted. “That’s close enough.”
Without a word to him, or to anyone, Eve opened her locket. Inside, there was a picture of a little girl. Eve, I realized. Her hair was cut short and uneven, her little cheeks gaunt. “No one ever cherished her. No one ever would have put her picture in a locket.” Eve met my gaze, and though she looked vulnerable, I thought I saw something else underneath that vulnerability. “So I wear this as a reminder: Even if no one else loves you, you can. Even if no one else ever puts you first, you can.”
She was standing there admitting that she was going to put herself first, but it was like Grayson couldn’t see that. “Enough,” he ordered. “This isn’t you, Avery.”
“Maybe, Gray,” Jameson countered, “you don’t know her as well as you think.”
“Out!” Mrs. Laughlin boomed. “All of you, out!”
Not one of us moved, and the older woman’s eyes narrowed.
“This is my house. Mr. Hawthorne’s will granted us lifelong, rent-free tenancy.” Mrs. Laughlin looked at her daughter, then at Eve, and finally she turned back to me. “You can fire me, but you can’t evict me, and you will leave my home.”
“Lottie,” Oren said quietly.
“Don’t you Lottie me, John Oren.” Mrs. Laughlin glared at him. “You take your girl, you take the boys—and you get out.”
CHAPTER 64
What is wrong with you?” Grayson exploded as soon as we were outside.
“Did you hear a word I said in there?” I asked, my heart breaking like cracking glass, bit by jagged bit. “Did you hear what she said? She’s going to put herself first, Grayson. She hates your grandfather. We aren’t her family. Blake is.”
Grayson stopped walking toward the SUV. He went stiff, attending to the cuffs of his dress shirt and brushing an imaginary speck off the lapel of his suit. “Clearly,” he said, his tone almost regal, “I was wrong about you.”
I felt like he’d just thrown ice-cold water in my face. Like he’d hit me.
And then I watched Grayson Hawthorne walk away.
A guy who thinks he knows everything, I could hear myself saying what felt like a lifetime ago.
A girl with a razor-sharp tongue.
I could hear Grayson telling me that I had an expressive face, telling Jameson that I was one of them, in Latin, so I wouldn’t understand it. I could feel Grayson correcting my grip on a longsword, see him catching my Hawthorne pin before it could hit the ground. I saw him sliding a hand-bound journal across the dining room table to me.