He wondered if she could feel the pounding of his pulse. Was he imagining that he could feel her heartbeat? Feel her?
There are some things, he thought, that shouldn’t be said out loud.
On the floor of the tower, there was a box—a game one of them must have left up here way back when. Scrabble. Jameson knelt and took out the board.
“Are you sure?” Avery murmured.
He was—achingly sure, so sure that he could taste it. This wasn’t a mystery that either of them could risk trying to solve. They’d make their own mysteries instead, their own Game. But he didn’t want a damn thing standing between the two of them in the meantime.
Trusting her. Trusting himself. It was all the same.
So Jameson spelled out his secret, the truth he’d discovered that night in Prague, what he’d written down on that scroll for the Proprietor. Four words. An H. The word is. The letters v and e.
Avery took in the message on the Scrabble board and stared at him.
ALICE HAWTHORNE IS ALIVE.
SIX YEARS, TEN MONTHS, AND THREE WEEKS AGO
When you’re old enough, when you’re ready, be warned: There is nothing frivolous about the way a Hawthorne man loves.”
Jameson thought suddenly of the grandmother he’d never even met, the woman who’d died before he was born.
“Men like us love only once,” the old man said quietly. “Fully. Wholeheartedly. It’s all-consuming and eternal. All these years your grandmother has been gone…” Tobias Hawthorne’s eyes closed. “And there hasn’t been anyone else. There can’t and won’t be. Because when you love a woman or a man or anyone the way we love, there is no going back.”
That felt like a warning more than a promise.
“Anything less, and you’ll destroy her. And if she is the one…” The old man looked first at Jameson, then at Grayson, then back at Jameson again. “Someday, she’ll destroy you.”
He didn’t make that sound like a bad thing.
“What would she have thought of us?” Jameson asked the question on impulse, but he didn’t regret it. “Our grandmother?”
“You’re still works in progress,” the old man replied. “Let’s save my Alice’s judgment for when you’re done.”
EPILOGUE
EVE
The day that Vincent Blake died—the day Eve found him dead of a second heart attack less than five months after the first—she called nine-one-one. She dealt with the authorities and with the body, and then, that night, she hid herself away in the bowels of the Blake mansion and turned on the television. Numb.
He was my family, and he’s dead. He’s gone. And I’m alone. On the television screen, Avery wasn’t alone. She was being interviewed for the whole world to see.
“I’m here today with Avery Grambs. Heiress. Philanthropist. World changer—and at only nineteen years old. Avery, tell us, what is it like to be in your position at such a young age?”
Each breath burning in her chest, Eve listened to Avery’s reply to that question and the back and forth that followed between the Hawthorne heiress and one of the world’s most beloved media moguls.
“Wouldn’t watch that if I were you.”
Eve turned to Slate, feeling too hollow to be annoyed. “You’re not me,” she said flatly. “You work for me.”
“I keep you alive.”
“As of a few hours ago, I have an entire security team for that,” Eve replied. “Inherited, along with everything else.”
Slate said nothing. He was irritating that way. Eve turned her attention back to the screen—to Avery.
“Why, having been left one of the largest fortunes in the world, would you give almost all of it away?” the interviewer was asking. “Are you a saint?”
“Might as well be,” Eve muttered. “To them.” The Hawthornes.
“If I were a saint,” Avery said on screen, “do you really think I would have kept two billion dollars for myself? Do you understand how much money that is?”
Eve did. Seven times more than Vincent Blake’s fortune. Mine, now. That difference in magnitude didn’t matter to Eve. When you’d grown up with nothing, an empire was an empire. All Avery had over her—really—was the Hawthornes.
Eve tried not to think about Grayson, but not thinking about Grayson Hawthorne was harder some days than others.
Today was one of the days when it was very hard.
“Seriously,” Slate said beside her. “Turn it off.”