Grayson was done making mistakes.
He put the withdrawal slips in the box, alongside the fake journal, then reassembled it. He called down to the concierge, requested that an additional piece of luggage be acquired on his behalf, and sent her the specifications he needed.
Then Grayson turned his attention to the photographs. He began stacking them facedown, avoiding looking at any of the pictures.
He didn’t think about his father.
He didn’t think about the boy in these photographs, the boy he’d been.
He didn’t think about anything except what needed to be done now.
That worked until it didn’t. The photograph that pierced his protective shields had been taken during his gap year, halfway around the world. My whole life, my father watched me. Even when I was grown. Even when I was traveling.
How much money did he spend having these pictures taken?
How much time did he spend looking at them?
Clamping his jaw, Grayson flipped the photo in his hand over and stacked it with the others. His gaze caught on the date on the back of the photograph. He got the date wrong. Grayson wasn’t certain about the day, and the year was correct, but the month was off.
What did it matter? What did any of this matter?
Grayson finished stacking the photographs and returned them to the briefcase the bank had provided. “Done.” As the word left his mouth, his phone rang—an unknown number. He answered. “Grayson Hawthorne.”
“Most people just go with hello.” The sound of the girl’s voice washed over him, a balm on open wounds, and the second Grayson recognized the effect it had on him, the muscles in his face tightened.
“What is it?” he asked, clipping the words.
“I guess you don’t have any answers for me.” Her tone was thorns now, not roses, rough and sharp.
Grayson swallowed. “I don’t have answers for anyone,” he said. “Stop calling.”
After another second or two, the line went dead. It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. He had a life to get back to, work to do.
On his way to the airport, his phone rang again. Eve. Grayson didn’t bother with hello this time, either. “I am done with this,” he said instead, the only greeting she deserved. “Done with you.”
She’d threatened him, threatened his sisters. The FBI’s sudden raid on the Grayson household was proof enough that Eve had already started making good on those threats.
“You don’t get to be done with me,” Eve said.
Grayson went to end the call, but she spoke again before he could.
“Blake’s still in surgery.” Her voice grew hoarse. “It’s taking too long. The doctors won’t tell me anything. I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
The death of Vincent Blake would be no great tragedy. He was a bad man, a dangerous man. Grayson steeled himself against Eve’s tone and focused on the only thing he had to say to her. “I warned you to stay away from my sisters.”
“I haven’t done a damn thing to your sisters.” Eve was an easy person to believe. True liars always were.
“You sicced the FBI on their mother.” Grayson’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “You said it yourself: If Vincent Blake dies tonight, there won’t be anything holding you back.”
“I say a lot of things, Grayson.”
His chest tightened, but he didn’t give her the courtesy of a reply.
“Forget it,” Eve bit out. “Forget I called. Forget me. I’m used to it.”
“Don’t, Eve.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t bleed for me. Don’t show me your wounds and expect me to tend to them. I’m not playing that game with you again.”
“Is it so hard to believe that I’m not playing?” Eve asked. “Vincent Blake is my family, Grayson. And maybe you think I don’t deserve one. Maybe I never did. But can you at least believe me when I say that I don’t want to be alone right now?”
Grayson remembered calling her Evie. He remembered the girl he’d thought she was. “You have Toby. He’s your father.”
For the longest time, there was silence on the other end of the line. “He wishes I was her.”
For Eve, there was only one her. Eve was Toby’s daughter biologically, but Avery was the one that Toby had watched out for longer, the one whose mother he’d loved with that once-in-a-lifetime, undying, ruinous, Hawthorne kind of love.
“I’m not your person, Eve. You don’t get to call me. You don’t get to ask me for anything.”