“And who might you be?” Grayson asked.
Stillness, sudden and absolute. “Who I am is less important than who I work for.”
Young. Utterly unafraid. That was Grayson’s immediate impression. Probably fast.
“Trowbridge?” Grayson said, looking to his opponent’s face, to eyes like midnight beneath thick, angled brows, one of them slashed through with a small white scar.
“Not Trowbridge.” The guy took a series of slow steps, circling Grayson. Young. Unafraid. Probably fast. Grayson added two more descriptors: Dangerous. Hard. Dark eyes glittered as the guy came to a sudden stop. “Guess again.”
Grayson bared his teeth in a smile full of warning. “I don’t guess.” Power and control. It always came down to power and control—who had them, who didn’t, who would lose them first.
“She wasn’t kidding,” his opponent replied, the words cutting through the night air like a butcher knife, “when she said you were arrogant.”
Grayson took a single step forward. “She?”
The guy smiled and began to circle him once more. “I work for Eve.”
NINE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS AGO
Jameson stood at the base of the tree house and looked up. Scowling at the cast on his arm, he moved toward the closest staircase.
“Taking the easy way up?”
That wasn’t Xander or Grayson, who were supposed to be meeting him here. It was the old man. Jameson fought the urge to whip his head toward his grandfather and kept his gaze locked on the staircase instead.
“It’s the smart thing to do,” Jameson said. The sound of footsteps alerted him to his grandfather’s approach.
“And are you?” the old man asked, the question pointed. “Smart?”
Jameson swallowed. This was a conversation he’d been avoiding for days. His eyes darted upward, searching the tree house for his brothers.
“I’m not who you expected to find here.” Tobias Hawthorne wasn’t a tall man, and at ten, Jameson was already past his chin. But it felt like the old man towered over him anyway. “I’m afraid that your brothers are otherwise occupied.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Jameson heard it in the distance: the telltale sound of a violin, the notes caressed and carried by the wind.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the old man said. “But that’s to be expected. Perfection without artistry is worth very little.”
From the tone in his voice, Jameson knew that his grandfather had said those exact words to Grayson before sending him away. He wanted me alone.
Jameson glowered at the cast on his arm, then raised his eyes—and his chin—defiantly. “I fell.”
Sometimes, it was better to just rip off the bandage.
“That you did.” How was it that Tobias Hawthorne’s words could sound so nonchalant and cut so deeply? “Tell me, Jameson, what did you find yourself thinking, midair, when your motorbike went in one direction and you the other?”
It had been during a competition, his third this year. He’d won the first two. “Nothing.” Jameson spoke the word into the dirt.
Hawthornes weren’t supposed to lose.
“And that,” Tobias Hawthorne said, his voice low and silky, “is the problem.”
Jameson lifted his gaze without being told. It would be worse if he didn’t.
“There are moments in life,” his grandfather the billionaire continued, “when we are gifted with the opportunity to go outside ourselves. To see the world anew. To see what other people miss.”
The emphasis in those words made Jameson draw in a breath. “I didn’t see anything when I crashed.”
“You didn’t look.” The old man let that hang in the air, and then he reached to knock lightly on Jameson’s cast. “Tell me, does your arm hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Is it supposed to?”
The question caught Jameson off guard, but he tried not to show it. “I guess.”
“In this family, we do not guess.” The old man’s tone wasn’t harsh, but it was sure, like the words he’d just spoken were as certain as the rise and fall of the sun. “You’re old enough now for me to be honest, Jamie. I see a great deal of myself in you.”
Jameson hadn’t expected that, not at all, and it let him focus on his grandfather fully, completely.
“But you must know there are certain… weaknesses.” Now that Tobias Hawthorne had Jameson’s full attention, he clearly had no intention of letting it go. “Compared to your brothers,” he said, “your mind is ordinary.”