Page 104 of The Brothers Hawthorne

“Did I give you a choice, girl?” Kim’s voice shook.“Get out.”

Grayson gave a slight nod toward his sisters, then calmly began reassembling the puzzle box.

“Put it down!”

“Aunt Kim—” Gigi tried.

“I said—”

“Put it down,” Grayson finished calmly. He reached inside his suit jacket and removed his wallet. Opening it, he began to slip out bills. Not tens or twenties—hundreds. Staying in the black-card suite came with the expectation that one would be an excellent tipper. “Your brother isn’t coming back.” Grayson did not enjoy being cruel, butbribe,threaten,buy out—that was the Hawthorne way. “And even if he did come back, there’s no money left for him to give you.”

There were eight bills sticking out of the wallet now. In a single move, Grayson withdrew all of them and folded the bills in half over his thumb. His target stared at the money.Good.Kim brought her gaze to his.Better.

“I know,” Grayson said softly, “that your brother hated my family. He didn’t want me. We met only once, and he made that quite clear.”

Sometimes, after you backed a person into a corner, the best way to ensure they took the out you offered was to show just a flash of humanity—enough to make them think that maybe the two of you didn’t have to be enemies, but not enough that they forgot who was in change.

Grayson held the money out to his aunt. Kim skittered forward and snatched it from his hands. “Take the damn box,” she said, her voice gravelly, “and get out.”

CHAPTER 71

GRAYSON

Savannah drove in silence, and the rest of them rode the same way until Xander, who was sitting in the front passenger seat with the reassembled puzzle box on his lap, couldn’t take the quiet anymore. “Knock, knock.” He rapped against the box’s lid.

“Who’s there?” Gigi chimed from the back seat.

“Scone.”

“Scone who?”

“As it turns out, it’s surprisingly difficult to make up knock-knock jokes on the spot.” Xander paused. “Wait! I’ve got it! Knock, knock!” He rapped on the box again.

“Don’t break anything,” Savannah ordered without ever taking her eyes off the road.

“Generally speaking,” Xander responded, “I excel at dealing with things—and people—that need to be handled with care. And on that note…” He turned to glance back at Grayson. “Jamie didn’t answer when I called. His phone didn’t even ring. And it appears that Oren and his teammayhave lost track of our dynamic duo.”

Grayson allowed his eyes to narrow. “Oren doesn’t lose track of Avery.”

“It’s not so much that Oren doesn’t know where she is,” Xander admitted, “as it seems to be that he has been forbidden from following her. Curiouser and curiouser, am I right?”

Grayson recognized an attempt at distraction when he saw one.

“Who’s Oren?” Gigi took the bait—but not for long. “And while I’m asking questions, Grayson, what do you think Dad meant by that whole ‘Hawthornes are going to get theirs’ thing?”

That question tread dangerously close to the reason that Grayson was here, the reason that he was already sorting through possible maneuvers to get that box away from Gigi and Savannah for long enough to open it and do damage control on whatever was inside. No matter how much he hated having to betray them all over again.

Whether you want to do something, Grayson, is immaterial to whether or not it needs to be done.

“I have some thoughts to share with the class,” Xander volunteered, cheerfully diving on the live bomb of Gigi’s question. “A lot of people hated our grandfather. It was kind of his thing—that and painstakingly creating the perfect heirs even though he always intended to disinherit us. Those were really his two things.”

Grayson followed up Xander’s buoyant, stream-of-consciousness reply with one of his own. “Based on the only conversation I ever had with our father, I have reason to believe that I was conceivedbecauseSheffield Grayson hated my grandfather. Sleeping with his daughter, getting her pregnant, abandoning her—and me…” Grayson swallowed. “That was the Hawthornes getting theirs.”

Sometimes, the easiest way to lie was to tell the truth.

“Then why did he keep all of those pictures of you?” Gigi asked.

Why even have them taken?That question crept into Grayson’s conscious mind from where it had been circling in his subconscious.